More than $50 million worth of gold is about to make its debut after sitting at the bottom of the ocean for more than 150 years.
The 3,100 gold coins, 45 bars, and more than 80 pounds of dust recovered from the wreckage of the S.S. Central America steamship.
The gold will be on display Feb. 22-24 at the Long Beach Convention Center.
Chief scientist Bob Evans looks at gold bars recovered from the S.S. Central America steamship that went down in a hurricane in 1857 in a laboratory Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018, in Santa Ana, Calif. More than $50 million worth of gold bars, coins and dust described as the greatest lost treasure in U.S. history is about to make its public debut in California.Jae C. Hong | AP
More than $50 million worth of gold bars, coins, and dust that’s been described as the greatest lost treasure in U.S. history is about to make its public debut in California after sitting at the bottom of the ocean for more than 150 years.
The 3,100 gold coins, 45 gold bars and more than 80 pounds (36 kilograms) of gold dust recovered from the wreckage of the S.S. Central America steamship are now sitting in a makeshift laboratory just south of Los Angeles.
Bob Evans, the chief scientist on the original voyage that discovered the shipwreck and its treasure in 1988, is now painstakingly cleaning each piece of gold by hand, soaking it in a solution and brushing off rust and grime that accumulated as the treasure sat 7,000 feet (2,134 meters) below sea level.
“This is a whole new season of discovery,” Evans told The Associated Press this week from the laboratory in Santa Ana. “We are now peering beneath the grime and the rust that is on the coins, removing those objects and those substances and getting to look at the treasure as it was in 1857.”
Central America was laden with booty from the California Gold Rush when it sank in a hurricane off the coast of South Carolina in 1857. Four hundred and twenty-five people drowned and thousands of pounds of California gold were lost, contributing to an economic panic.
Using sable paintbrushes and a cleaning solution, Evans has been restoring the gold —some of which is completely caked over in black gunk — to its original luster for the past two weeks. He will continue that work through February, when the treasure will go on public display at the Long Beach Convention Center, just south of Los Angeles.
The gold is all for sale. Just one tiny coin alone could go for $1 million because of its combination of rarity and the history behind it, said Dwight Manley, managing partner of the California Gold Marketing Group, which is displaying and selling the gold.
“This is something that in hundreds of years people will still be talking about, reading about, looking back on and collecting things from,” Manley said. “There’s no other ships that sank that haven’t been recovered that rival this or are similar to this, so it’s really a once-in-a-lifetime situation.”
Meanwhile, the deep-sea treasure hunter responsible for finding the gold in the first place continues to sit in an Ohio jail over his handling of the original treasure recovered from Central America.
Treasure hunter and Ohio native Tommy Thompson found the ship in 1988 after convincing 161 local investors to fund the voyage for nearly $13 million.
A lengthy battle ensued over who owned the gold, with Thompson and his investors eventually emerging as the victors over a group of insurance companies. Thompson’s company sold 532 gold bars and thousands of coins to the California Gold Marketing Group for about $50 million in 2000.
Investors never saw any of those proceeds. In 2005, they sued Thompson, who then went into seclusion in Florida and later became a fugitive after an Ohio judge issued a warrant for his arrest in 2012.
Authorities tracked Thompson to a Florida hotel room in 2015. A judge has held Thompson in contempt since December 2015 for violating terms of a plea deal by refusing to answer questions about the location of 500 missing gold coins. He’s been jailed ever since.
Thompson has previously said the coins were turned over to a trust in Belize. He has also said that the $50 million from the sale of the gold mostly went toward legal fees and bank loans.
Recovered in 2014, the gold going on display in California next month is only the second round of treasure brought up from the Central America.
Manley, of the California Gold Marketing Group, bought the gold from investors this month. It was the first time investors saw returns since their initial investment in the 1980s, though some of them died waiting to see such a day.
A US deep-sea exploration company says it has recovered about 48 tons of silver from a British cargo ship that was sunk by a torpedo during World War II.
The haul comes from the SS Gairsoppa, which was hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat about 300 miles off Ireland’s coast in 1941. It now sits 15,420ft deep.
Salvage firm Odyssey Marine Exploration said it is the heaviest and deepest recovery of precious metals from a shipwreck ever made.
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Booty: Salvage workers inspect silver bars as they are recovered from the wreck of the SS Gairsoppa torpedoed in a German U-boat attack 300 miles off the south-west coast of Ireland
Doomed: On February 17, 1941, a single torpedo sank the SS Gairsoppa. All but one of her 85 crewmen were lost
Haul: Forty-eight tons of silver bullion has been recovered from the SS Gairsoppa and returned to the British Government but salvage firm Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc will keep 80% after expenses
The company is under contract with the British Government and will get to keep 80 per cent of the haul after expenses. The remaining 20 per cent will go to the Treasury
So far, workers have brought up more than 1,200 silver bars, or about 1.8 million troy ounces, worth about £23.7 million (about $37 million).
The company is under contract with the British Government and will get to keep 80 per cent of the haul after expenses. The remaining 20 per cent will go to the Treasury.
SS Gairsoppa was steaming home from India in 1941 while in the service of the Ministry of War Transport when she was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat.
She sank in British waters about 300 miles off the south west coast of Ireland. Only one of her 84 crew members survived.
The 412-ft steamship has remained sitting upright on the seabed with its holds open, nearly three miles under water.
Raised from the depths: A sonar image of the SS Gairsoppa on the bottom of the sea
Eerie: A ladder leads down to the cargo hold on the SS Gairsoppa as it lies on the sea bed 300 miles south of Galway
Uncovered: An intact toilet sits on the bridge deck of the SS Gairsoppa
Treasure hunter: The RV Odyssey Explorer, bristling with high-tech equipment, which went looking for and found the wreck of the Gairsoppa
Pick-up: Odyssey crew used remotely operated vehicles to get to the wreck and unload its precious cargo
The ship, recognisable by the red-and-black paintwork of the British-India Steam Navigation Company and the torpedo hole in its side, was sailing in a convoy from Calcutta in 1941.
Buffeted by high winds and running low on coal, the captain decided he would not make it to Liverpool and broke from the convoy to head for Galway.
A single torpedo from U-101 sank her in 20 minutes, on February 17, 1941. Three lifeboats were launched, but only Second Officer Richard Ayres made it to land, reaching the Cornish coast after 13 days.
Well preserved: A brass part of the Gairsoppa is in remarkably good condition
In an earlier statement Odyssey said the UK government was ‘desperately looking for new sources of income’ and was urging it to find more British wrecks.
It was also investigating HMS Sussex, lost off Gibraltar with 10 tons of gold in 1694, and HMS Victory, a precursor to Nelson’s flagship.
In 2008 a US judge ordered the firm to hand back gold and silver coins worth £300million to Spain, which said the treasure was taken from a frigate that sank in 1804.
Odyssey said the wreck’s identity was unclear and had been found in international waters.