Ship Of Gold In The Deep Blue Sea - Softcover

Kinder, Gary

4.29

5,399 ratings by Goodreads

9780349112107: Ship Of Gold In The Deep Blue Sea

Softcover

ISBN 10: 034911210X ISBN 13: 9780349112107

Publisher: Abacus, 1999

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In September 1857, the side-wheel steamer SS "Central America", carrying 500 passengers and tons of gold from California, sank in a hurricane 200 miles off the Carolina coast. 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, as "LIFE" magazine wrote, "the greatest treasure ever found". This book is a historical record of the initial disaster, rendered in chilling detail from contemporary accounts. It is 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. And it is an adventure story of how a team of scientists and engineers, the Columbus-America Discovery Group, battled massive storms, technological challenges and intrusive salvagers to find one of the world's greatest lost treasures.

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Review:

The facts speak for themselves. In 1857, the Central America, a sidewheel steamer ferrying passengers fresh from the gold rush of California to New York and laden with 21 tons of California gold, encountered a severe storm off the Carolina coast and sank, carrying more than 400 passengers and all her cargo with her. She then sat for 132 years, 200 miles offshore and almost two miles below the ocean's surface--a depth at which she was assumed to be unrecoverable--until 1989, when a deep-water research vessel sailed into the harbour at Norfolk, Virginia, fat with salvaged gold coins and bullion estimated to be worth $1 billion.

Author Gary Kinder wisely lets the story of the Columbus-America Dicovery Group, led by maverick scientist and entrepreneur Tommy Thompson, unfold without hyperbole. Kinder interweaves the tale of the Central America and her passengers and crew with Thompson's own story of growing up landlocked in Ohio. An irrepressible tinkerer and explorer even in his childhood days, his progress to adulthood as a young man who always had "7 to 14" projects on the table or spinning in his head adds fascinating texture and depth to the story. One of those projects would become the unlikely recovery of the stricken steamer, and the resourcefulness and drive with which the project proceeds is contrasted poignantly in the narrative with the Central America's doomed battle to stay afloat in 1857.

Thompson, who spent nearly a decade planning and organizing his recovery effort, emerges as one of the great unsung adventurers of these times (the technical innovations alone required for such a task produced a windfall for the scientific community and defined a new state of the art for deep-sea explorers and treasure hunters), and the story of the steamer's sinking is compelling enough to make any reader wonder why the Central America sinking hasn't achieved greater notoriety in this Titanic-dominated area.

Review:

'A marvellous tale, with generous portions of history, adventure, intrigue, heroism and high technology interwoven' -- Los Angeles Times

'A riveting read' -- Time Out

'The summer's best nonfiction adventure story' -- Time Magazine

'What a yarn! ... Kinder spins a tale as informative as it is knucklebiting' -- Newsweek

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