Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea

by Gary Kinder (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  1998

  $19.04

  Originally published in 1998 and a best seller in its hardcover and paperback publications, Gary Kinder s Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea tells the story of the sinking of the SS Central America, a side-wheel steamer carrying nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California Gold Rush, two hundred miles off the Carolina coast in September 1857. Over four hundred lives and twenty-one tons of California gold were lost. It was the worst peacetime disaster at sea in American history, a tragedy that remained lost in legend for over a century. In the 1980s, a young engineer from Ohio set out to do what no one, not even the U.S. Navy, had been able to do: establish a working presence on the deep ocean floor and open it to science, archaeology, history, medicine, and recovery. The SS Central America became the target of his project. After years of intensive efforts, Tommy Thompson and the Columbus-America Discovery Group found the Central America in eight thousand feet of water, and in October 1989 they sailed into Norfolk with her recovered treasure: gold coins, bars, nuggets, and dust, plus steamer trunks filled with period clothes, newspapers, books, journals, and even an intact cigar sealed under water for 130 years. Life magazine called it the greatest treasure ever found. Gary Kinder tells an extraordinary tale of history, human drama, heroic rescue, scientific ingenuity, and individual courage. Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea is a testament to the human will to triumph over adversity. It is also a great American adventure story of the opening of Earth s last frontier.

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.25

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $4.20

  In September 1857, SS Central America , a side-wheel steamer carrying 500 passengers and tons of gold from California, sank in a hurricane 200 miles off the Carolina coast and was lost in legend for more than a century. Its tragic story resurfaced in 1989, when Tommy Thompson, an ocean engineer, sailed into Norfolk harbour with over ten tons of pioneer gold. Using oceanography, computer science and information theory to sift through historical records and penetrate the deep sea, Thompson's team had recovered perhaps the greatest treasure ever found. This book presents an historical record of the initial disaster, rendered in detail from contemporary accounts, and a chronicle of the technological breakthrough in which deep-sea robots were developed to perform heavy, delicate and complex work one-and-a-half miles below sea level. It describes how a team of scientists and engineers, the Columbus-America Discovery Group, battled against massive storms, technological challenges and intrusive salvagers to succeed in their quest.