Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea - Softcover

Kinder, Gary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080214425X ISBN 13: 9780802144256

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998

Synopsis

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."

About this title

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 National Bestseller

"White-knuckle reading . . . A marvelous tale, with generous portions of history, adventure, intrigue, heroism, and high technology interwoven . . . Gary Kinder has the skill to put it all together, and luckily for us, we get to read it."--Los Angeles Times

"Drawing on the extensive testimony of eyewitnesses and survivors, Kinder has reconstructed the sinking of the Central America in harrowing and often poignant detail."--New York Times

"A twenty-four-carat sea classic."--New York Times Book Review

"Engaging, magnificently researched . . . a complex, bittersweet history of two centuries of American entrepreneurship, linked by the mad quest for gold."--Entertainment Weekly

"An old-fashioned seafaring adventure, awash in time and vigor . . . A ripping true tale of danger and discovery at sea."--Washington Post

"Titanic meets Tom Clancy technology . . . Kinder has lashed together a thumping good narrative."--People

"Kinder makes the shipwreck so enthralling that it seems any later events are doomed to anticlimax. Not so . . . it is a truly great tale, cleverly organized and expertly written."--Atlantic Monthly

"What a yarn! . . . If you sign on for the cruise, go in knowing that you're going to miss meals and a lot of sleep."--Newsweek

"Gripping . . . the pages speed past."--Newsday

"Extraordinarily gripping . . . An astounding and marvelous book."--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"An extraordinarily good tale."--Chicago Tribune

"Moving and riveting."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"It wasn't easy money, but it sure is a great story. Kinder tells it in fascinating, exhaustive detail."--Time

"Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea is nonfiction treasure . . . The book takes hold of you from page one and never lets go. history and heroics, science and suspense--Ship of Gold has that blockbuster feel."--Sailing

"Worthy of the best fiction and enough action to shame James Bond."--Men's Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 080214425X
• ISBN 13: 9780802144256
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560