Central America
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The Central America was a 90 m long three-masted passenger-side paddle steamer put into service in 1853 , which sank in a hurricane on the evening of September 12, 1857 on the Panama - Havana - New York route about 175 miles east of Savannah . The Central America was loaded with several tons of gold , as she traveled the so-called "Panama Route" from California . Of the 477 passengers and 101 crew members who were on board at the time of the sinking, 30 women, 26 children and 44 men were rescued by the brig Marine under Captain Hiram Burt and 49 men by the Bark Ellen under Captain Anders Johnsen . The sinking of the ship is considered to be one of the greatest sea disasters .
history
The ship was built in 1852/53 as hull number 71 at the Webb shipyard in Greenport. The launch took place on October 28, 1852 as George Law and a year later the ship was put into service. During her three-year service, she commuted on the route between New York and the port of Aspinwall, now Colón , in Panama. She regularly ran out of New York on the 20th of each month. In total, she made this shuttle route forty-three times. A tour lasted between 19 and 24 days. In this way, the ship served one of the two routes between the American east coast and California at the time of the gold rush , the so-called "Panama Route". This led by sea to the isthmus of Panama, where the travelers had to cover a 75 km long stretch of land, and then take another ship north again. The longer and more dangerous alternative route led around Cape Horn . The steamer alone carried about a third of the gold that was officially transported on the Panama route during the gold rush. In 1856 the ship was renamed Central America .
On the evening of September 9, 1857, Central America , commanded by Captain William Lewis Herndon , got caught in a heavy storm after leaving Havana . A water ingress caused the ship to list so badly that the coal could no longer be transported into the boiler room with wheelbarrows. Without a drive, it was helpless in the storm and finally sank on September 12th. Before that, despite the storm, Herndon still managed to have all women and children on board as well as 44 men transferred to the brig Marine before it was driven off. Herndon himself went down with his ship.
On this voyage, Central America officially loaded gold with a value of US $ 1,595,497.13 and 38,000 letters. In addition, gold of roughly the same magnitude was likely to be found unannounced in the luggage of passengers, most of whom were returning gold prospectors from California. In addition to the official consignment, Central America had also loaded a secret shipment from the US government with gold bars of around 30,000 pounds from government holdings in California, which were intended to support the North American economy, which was hit by the economic crisis of 1857 . The loss of these 13.6 tons of gold worsened the economic crisis. Altogether there were probably around 21 tons of gold on board.
In memory of the captain of the Central America , William Lewis Herndon, on the site of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1860 a granite - Obelisk , the Herndon Monument , erected. It is the only monument to heroic conduct in peacetime at the academy.
Salvage
In 1985 the deep-sea engineer Thomas G. Thompson founded the Columbus-America Discovery Group to discover and salvage Central America . 161 investors financed the company with over ten million US dollars. After a long search and several failures, the wreck of the Central America was located on September 11, 1987 with the help of a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) 175 miles from Savannah at a depth of 2200 m (position 31 ° 35 ′ N , 77 ° 2 ′ W ). The cargo was subsequently recovered with a specially designed ROV, but not completely. Thompson was suspected of hiding gold in the deep instead of digging it up. During another expedition by Odyssey Marine Exploration in 2014, five gold bars and two gold coins were lifted and further gold discoveries were expected.
After Thompson had not paid out the funds raised from the sale of the gold to his investors by 2005, two investors filed a lawsuit against him. In 2006, nine members of his crew also sued him. He went into hiding in 2012 and has been wanted with an arrest warrant since 2014. After his arrest in Florida , Thompson was sentenced to a fine and imprisonment in April 2015.
In 1995, an unmanned submarine filmed a 6-meter-long Greenland Shark at a depth of 2200 meters while exploring the wreck .
literature
- Gary Kinder: The Gold Ship - The greatest treasure hunt of the 20th century . Roman, Piper, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-492-23256-6
Web links
- Overview of the history of the SS Central America (English)
- SME portal for an exhibition of the gold found ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
Footnotes
- ↑ When this gold ship went down, the US economy shook , Welt Online , February 3, 2018
- ↑ 30,000 pounds * 453.59237 grams = around 13,607 kilograms
- ↑ http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=4th&navby=case&no=982120ORP
- ↑ 27 kilograms of gold recovered from the shipwreck ( Memento of the original from December 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The standard , online
- ↑ Feds chase treasure hunter turned fugitive ( September 17, 2014 memento in the Internet Archive ), The Washington Post, September 14, 2014
- ^ Treasure-hunter Tommy Thompson, girlfriend plead guilty to contempt charges , The Columbus Dispatch of April 9, 2015
- ↑ Charles E. stove Village, Tim M. Berra: A Greenland Shark from the Wreck of the SS Central America at 2,200 meters . In: Transactions of the American Fisheries Society . tape 124 , no. 6 , January 9, 2011, ISSN 0002-8487 , p. 950-953 , doi : 10.1577 / 1548-8659 (1995) 124 <0950: AGSFTW> 2.3.CO; 2 ( tandfonline.com [accessed August 15, 2016]).
