Ship of gold in the deep blue sea

Review by Booklist Review

The first half of this book uses a clever device to advance the story, alternating between the spectacular sinking of the steamship Central America off the Carolina coast in 1857 and the salvage and treasure-hunting efforts that went on in the 1980s. Kinder manages to create excitement over finding the shipwreck simply because we know the ship so well from its seagoing days. All-purpose genius Tommy Thompson takes control here, basically willing the salvage effort forward in the days before the sophisticated equipment had been developed to find the wreck of the Titanic and other ships. Thompson's efforts are painstakingly re-created here. (One can only imagine the money spent on finding the ship's remains in the hopes that gold can be pulled out of the hull and to the surface.) Kinder's prose (especially in the 1857 passages) is journalistic and fast paced, and the final triumph of the salvage of a billion dollars from the wreck really involves the reader in this truly heroic adventure saga. --Joe Collins

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Enormous publicity surrounded the 1989 recovery of an estimated billion dollars worth of gold‘one of the greatest sunken treasures ever found‘from the 1857 wreck of the SS Central America. Most of the publicity, however, came from media that, according to the author, "didn't have a clue what it was all about" and centered on the sensational aspects of the find off the Carolina coast. The story of the wreck itself, and the staggering effort it took to locate and recover the treasure, is the subject of Kinder's involving, fully realized history of the ship that amounts to a treasure in itself. He begins with a vivid account of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in California, then seamlessly moves into discussions of everything from the ship's departure from San Francisco to nuclear submarine technology to the modern legal mechanics of securing offshore salvage projects. Along the way, Kinder (Victim) introduces the reader to a genuine American archetype‘the eccentric Tommy Thompson. The inventor/scientist/adventurer, who led the decade-long "treasure hunt" (a term he despised) from start to finish, is constantly at the center of activity that involves not just finding a wreck 200 miles offshore but the juggling of investors, competitors, lawyers, scientists, a sea captain and an endless cast of cantankerous characters. The reader is thrilled by the thoroughness and intelligence of Thompson's planning and execution, as well as by Kinder's research and writing. This account of discovery, greed, technology and the elements makes for a splendid sea adventure. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

On September 12, 1857, the steamship Central America sank in a great storm off the coast of South Carolina and settled a mile and a half beneath the waves. Most of the 423 souls on board perished. Lost, too, was $2,189,000 (now worth $1 billion) in California gold. The Central America worked the Panama-New York route, bringing gold seekers to Panama and returning ex-miners and their gold to New York. In 1989, a group of investors and treasure salvagers equipped with the latest underwater equipment was able to bring back much of the cargo, including the largest treasure ever recorded. The discovery of this vessel and its riches led to protracted litigation between various claimants, and the case is still in the courts. Kinder (Light Years, 1987) has followed the story from its beginning. His account should make an exciting addition to libraries with collections of sea history and ship salvage. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/98.]ÄStanley Itkin, Hillside P.L., New Hyde Park, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

YA-There's a lot of deep blue sea out there and the Titanic isn't the only ship it has claimed. In 1857, the SS Central America, carrying over 400 people and 21 tons of gold from the California gold fields to New York, foundered and sank during a hurricane 200 miles off the coast of North Carolina. There it lay for 132 years until Tommy Thompson, an ever-questioning, enterprising young engineer from Columbus, OH, thought to find it and salvage its cargo. This account of Thompson's indefatigable quest describes how he put together a research team, got funding to establish a company, and ultimately came up with the technology to conquer depths never before explored. An engrossing story.-Pamela B. Rearden, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The truly fascinating tale of the first successful deep-water ocean salvage operation is a tribute to good, old-fashioned American ingenuity and gritŽwith a big dose of Titanic-like adventure to boot. In 1857, the SS Central America sank in 9,000 feet of water off the Carolina coast. Lost were nearly 500 California miners and their gold. It was the biggest maritime disaster in US history at that time, and the huge gold loss contributed to the financial panic of 1857. Because ocean explorers lacked the technology to work in blue water, the wreck lay undisturbed for 130 years. Then came Tommy ``Harvey'' Thompson, an innovative engineer and maverick thinker from Columbus, Ohio. Using sophisticated search theory and historical research to locate the wreck, Thompson and his talented helpers then designed and built a pathbreaking recovery robot (something the US government had failed to do, despite a huge expenditure of research dollars) in only months, using off-the-shelf components, on a shoestring budget, and in top secrecy. Kinder (Light Years: An Investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier, 1987) alternates between Thompson's decade-long quest to gather the necessary investors and technicians and a gripping re-creation of the doomed shipŽs voyage based on survivors' accounts. (Unlike the Titanic, the Central America tragedy occasioned great heroism; male passengers bailed relentlessly for hours and other ship crews risked their lives to evacuate women and children.) The driven genius Thompson and his crew brought a scientific approach to ocean salvage sorely missing in the operations of the typical hit-and-run treasure hunters who plunder shallow water wrecks. Greater than average scientific, financial, and archaeological dividends are their rewards. Kinder's well-told tale of the Central America recovery (which represents nothing less than the opening of a new frontier in the deep ocean) is one of the great scientific adventure stories of our times. (First printing of 150,000; $250,000 ad/promo; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club main selection; author tour)

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Outside Battelle, Tommy was now amassing voluminous notes on underwater technology, beginning to formulate relationships with suppliers, and corresponding with historical archives at several libraries on the East Coast. For years he had collected information on deep-water, historic shipwrecks, and the list had grown to forty. He and Bob met more frequently, together refining what they called the Historic Shipwreck Selection Process and narrowing the targets to a project Tommy could present to investors. "We developed the language as we went along," said Bob, "the selection criteria for projects in general, and then we analyzed the risks involved with each ship." They divided risk into intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic risks were those inherent to the site: probability of previous recovery, accuracy of historical documentation, and the environment around the site. All deep-water shipwrecks scored high in the first category; most of them scored high in the second category; few of them did well in the third. Shipwrecks with a high total score then advanced to form a universe of "Feasibly Recoverable Shipwrecks with Low Intrinsic Risk." Next, they assessed the extrinsic risks, those that had to do with recovery: Favorable Operational Factors, Positive Site Security, Legal Rights Obtainable. Is the technology available to access that site, can we guarantee site security in that area of the world, and do we have legal protection? Once they had eliminated all ships but those with low intrinsic and low extrinsic risks, each ship had to pass a final test: Was there anything on board worth recovering? The Titanic was a hunk of steel seven hundred feet long that would burn a hole through a sonar chart; even if it rested in mountainous territory, they could probably find it, and the abundant historical documentation would help them narrow the search area. But the Titanic presented two insurmountable risks: Her steel hull would be impossible to penetrate even with the technology Tommy saw on the horizon. And if they could get inside, she carried nothing worth recovering; some loose jewelry perhaps, rings and bracelets and necklaces scattered in various small cubicles, but no treasure centrally stored, nothing they could use to make the payoff attractive to investors. "In terms of financial risk," said Bob, "the Titanic was not a good project." Other deep-water ships presented similar problems. Myths had arisen around some of them that tons of gold lay stored in secure compartments. But no historical data supported the myths. In 1909, the British White Star luxury liner Republic had gone down fifty miles off Nantucket, and for decades, rumors had circulated that it had taken millions in gold coins with it. But no official records existed. "Sure, there were a lot of rich people on board," said Bob,"but how much was in the purser's safe? Nobody knows." The Andrea Doria, an Italian liner hailed by her owners as the "Grande Dame of the Sea," collided with another ship in dense fog in 1956 and also went down just off Nantucket. She was a glistening seven-hundred-foot floating museum of murals, rare wood panels, and ceramics designed by Italian artists, and her passengers also were wealthy, but once again myth about the treasure on board sprouted from rumor with no documentation. Tommy and Bob were convinced that the San José had carried more than a billion dollars in treasure to the bottom when British warships landed a cannonball in her munitions cache and sank her in 1708. But the San José was off the coast of Colombia in murky, turbulent waters. After many deep-water shipwrecks were run through the selection process, the sidewheel steamer SS Central America rose to the top in every category. It had sunk in an era of accurate record keeping and reliable navigation instruments. Dozens of witnesses had testified to the sinking, and five ship captains had given coordinates that placed the ship in an area where sediment collected no faster than a centimeter every thousand years. The extrinsic risks looked as favorable: She had a wooden hull, which would be easier to get into, and massive iron works in her steam engines and boilers that would provide a good target for sonar, even if much of the iron had corroded and disappeared. And it was off the coast of the United States, so they wouldn't have to negotiate with a foreign government and they could more easily provide site security. One other thing appealed to Tommy and Bob: the ship was American and its treasure symbolized one of the most defining periods in American history, that narrow window running from the California Gold Rush through the Civil War. If they could find it, they would open a time capsule representing an entire nation during a crucial period in its formation. "The Central America, " said Bob, "scored much, much higher than any other project when subjected to this selection process." And her gold shipment was documented: With gold valued at $20 an ounce in 1857, the publicly reported commercial shipment totaled between $1.210 and $1.6 million. Although many of the Central America 's records, including her cargo manifest, had been destroyed in the Great San Francisco Fire of 1906, some accounts estimated that the gold carried by the passengers at least equaled the commercial shipment. And the Department of the Army recently had confirmed a story approaching myth that had circulated for years: that the Central America carried an official secret shipment of gold destined to shore up the faltering northern industrial economy. The letter, dated April 2, 1971, acknowledged that the information about the shipment had been declassified, and it verified that secreted in her hold the Central America had also carried six hundred fifty-pound bar boxes, or another thirty thousand pounds of gold.    From the Trade Paperback edition. Excerpted from Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea: The History and Discovery of America's Richest Shipwreck by Gary Kinder All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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