For 132 years the remains of the ill-fated sail-and-sidewheel steamer Central America rested untouched on the Atlantic floor near the western edge of the Gulf Stream, in 800 feet of water off the South Carolina coast. But during the summer of 1989 her grave was disturbed, for contained inside the hulk is a king’s ransom in California gold.
The saga began in September 1857, during the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. But to her experienced captain and crew the trip seemed routine, following their normal coastal route from Nicaragua to New York, with a mail stop at Havana, Cuba. The ship’s manifest listed 592 passengers and crew, cargo, and mail. The passengers included several hundred miners returning from California, many carrying leather pouches and money belts heavy with gold from the newly discovered lodes. In the ship’s strongbox was gold specie consigned to New York banks, worth $40 million in the prices of that era.
Leaving Havana on the morning of 8 September, the Central America moved easily with the Gulf Stream current at 12 knots, her two 24-foot paddle wheels driven by twin Morgan steam engines. There was no sign of an approaching storm.
Four days later, the ship, battered by hurricane-force winds, her wooden hull opened by pounding seas, sank. Her captain, Commander William L. Herndon (whose monument stands today on the U. S. Naval Academy grounds), the gold, and 423 passengers and crew were lost. Only 149 survived, including all the women and children. At that time it was the greatest sea disaster in the nation’s history.
The Central America was one of two such steam- converted sailing ships operated by the U. S. Mails Steamship Company of New York, carrying passengers, cargo, and mail between New York and Caribbean ports on a monthly round-trip basis. The recent gold discoveries in California had created an immediate demand for transportation to the gold fields. The transcontinental railroads were still only a dream. The overland route was long and dangerous; equally so was the ship route around Cape Horn.
Shipowners quickly began carrying passengers from New York to Nicaraguan ports, thence across the Isthmus to the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, where another ship completed the trip to California. They also carried returning miners back to New York.
The Central America was a compromise design built to retain sail capabilities while depending for primary power on her steam engines driving the paddle wheels. With a length of 272 feet, a 40-foot beam, and a 32-foot depth, the ship was primarily designed as a passenger carrier. She usually carried sufficient coal for the entire round trip. Little room remained for ballast—a factor that was to play a major role in the disaster.
Most of the crew were inexperienced messmen and cabin boys, catering to the first-class passengers and untrained at sea duty. Berths were available for 494 passengers and a crew of 52.
The sinking of the Central America, with its staggering loss of life and property, sent shock waves through the shipping industry and across the nation. An immediate investigation was demanded to explore charges of cowardice by some of the crew and the chief engineer—later proved unfounded. How could this disaster have been prevented? The answer lay in the many accounts of those last days by crew members, passengers, and in the official reports made by inspectors assigned to determine the cause of the sinking. We begin with the official account made by surviving Second Mate James Frazer:
“We left Havana September 8 at 8 AM with fine weather, moderate breezes, and head sea. By 4 AM Tuesday it was blowing fresh, the sea running high, with light rain. At 10 AM the Third Officer set the storm spanker and kept it on until the sail blew to pieces. We also spread canvas in the main and mizzen rigging but to no purpose, as the ship was so high out of the water she could not head to the wind, [emphasis added]”
The crew then attempted to rig staysails, Frazer reported, but these sails were also tom to pieces. They started fore and aft bilge pumps. And they devised a drag by rigging the foreyard with a heavy kedge anchor hanging on it, paying it out with 100 fathoms of hawser. That also failed to right the listing ship. Frazer said:
“A larger bow anchor would have been used but the ship was so listed on her beam-ends we could not get the yard up to the bow. The Captain gave orders to cut away the foremast and attached the drag hawser to its stub. The drag had no effect in bringing the ship’s head up. The lee bilge pump hove water all night. The weather pump hove water until the chamber burst.”
The crew now faced extremely serious conditions. The 8 January 1858 report explains the nature of these problems. It states:
“It appears that when the sea had commenced with fury, the ship laid down upon one side, causing her engines to labor heavily from the total immersion of one paddle wheel, and increasing the difficulty of passing the coal and firing. This angle caused the ship to strain heavily at the turn of her bilge, either working the oakum out of her seams or working the timbers apart, causing extraordinary leakage.”
The ship’s sharp list rendered both paddle wheels ineffective. Water in the engine room splashed against the hot boilers, leaving firemen standing waist deep in scalding water. One by one, the boiler fires were extinguished by the steam and vapor that excluded air. Because of the angle of the hull, suction pipes to the bilge pumps were out of the water, making the pumps useless. The suction pipes to the donkey boiler suffered the same fate.
In one last effort to raise steam for the main engines, the crew burned berth boards and boxes in the fireboxes. Steam and vapor continued to prevent proper combustion, however, and after a few turns of the engines the fires went out, ending all hopes of pumping the water, which now stood waist-deep in some of the cabins.
By early morning of the 12th, the ship lay helpless, shipping water with every roll of the heavy seas. Frantically, the engineers rigged falls and slings to which they attached open barrels for use as bailers. All the crew and many passengers worked for 24 hours at bucket brigades, with little effect. By 0900, the sea water stood ten feet deep in the engine room.
All of the survivors agreed that the crew made every effort to keep the ship afloat until rescue was at hand. Despite certain knowledge of the coming disaster, there appears to have been amazingly little panic. A returning miner, William Chase of Michigan, was asked if anyone seemed disposed to pray. Chase replied:
“Why yes, there was some praying, also some swearing, and some fighting for loose boards and box tops. Some deliberately turned in and went to bed, choosing to meet their fate in that form. The majority did not expect the vessel to go down so soon.”
Mr. Chase was one of the few fortunate miners to save his hard-won treasure.
As the end approached, most of the miners removed their money belts and pouches to lighten their weight, throwing the heavy gold on the deck, and donning a life jacket or appropriating a berth slat. There was little fighting for lifeboat space, preference given immediately to the many women and children on board.
Help arrived at noon on the 12th in the form of the brig Marine. Despite the heavy seas, the Central America’s crew was able to launch three damaged lifeboats—the Marine's boats were too small. Women and children were lowered into the boats by lines from the davits. However, the Marine had also lost sails in the storm and could not maintain a close position; she drifted until she was two miles from the sinking ship—too far to row against the seas and wind.
Without warning, shortly after 2100, a heavy sea rolled the Central America, and she sank immediately, stern first. The captain was on the bridge with Frazer. Frazer was a good swimmer and survived. The captain went down with his ship.
Before dawn the next morning, the bark Ellen approached the area. Hearing cries for help, the crew threw out life jackets attached to ropes, rescuing 49 more men from the warm water. Another schooner later picked up three more. All three rescue vessels returned to the nearest port with their survivors. For several days afterward debris from the wreck was sighted along the Gulf Stream.
While the nation mourned the disaster and raised funds to aid the families of those lost, the American and English insurance companies made good most of the covered losses, including the gold. The official inspection report concluded that the design of the ship, together with the practice of carrying only coal as ballast, caused the disaster. The crew’s statements agreed with this assessment. Experienced seamen called for better ship designs to be implemented at once.
When the bones of the luckless ship were discovered last summer, it ended a search of more than 15 years. A group of researchers and businessmen followed rumors that a much larger gold shipment had been secretly included on that fatal voyage, in a specially constructed section of the hold. They claim to have found a document certifying this shipment by the U. S. military, with a current value in excess of $300 million in specie.
Finding the Treasure
Years of painstaking research finally paid off in September 1989 when members of a Columbus, Ohio, salvage team brought up the first gold bars and coins from the remains of the ill-fated Central America.
The Columbia-America Discovery Group of 100-plus limited partners under the direction of founder Thomas Thompson, located the wreck with the aid of a computer program that analyzed data from the hundreds of contemporary news articles after the sinking. It also analyzed all available tides and current information over the past 132 years.
The groups’ research led them to discount the commonly accepted site off North Carolina, and to concentrate on an area about 200 miles off the South Carolina coast in 800 feet of water. Preliminary salvage operations recovered a ship’s bell, which positively identified the wreck.
At this extreme depth, the team must employ a computer- based imaging system for under water viewing at considerable depths. To recover the treasure, a submersible vehicle equipped with video cameras and a high- precision robotic arm pinpoints the treasure and picks it up.
By 14 September, the team had recovered gold bars weighing up to 62 pounds each, “double eagle” gold coins valued at $20,000 apiece, and stacks of gold coins produced by private California mints valued at up to $15,000 each—a total of 500 pounds of the precious metal.
While the group estimates it has spent seven million dollars in its search and recovery operations, the total possible return based on the current market value of the bullion would be many times that investment. The numismatic value to collectors of the hundreds of rare gold coins could add many millions more; some estimates run as high as $400 million.
The team operates out of Wilmington, North Carolina, where autumn hurricane activity slowed operations, which are expected to resume in 1990. Further exploration of the wreck will determine the time and effort required to recover the remaining treasure fully, and perhaps furnish the answers to other questions about the demise of the luckless vessel.
R. J. Duhse
Critiquing the Critique
I was gunnery officer in the Utah (AG-16) when she was involved in an amphibious exercise around 1937 at San Clemente Island. There was a strong surf running, so we sent in the first troops in whaleboats. Succeeding troops were to go in larger boats.
In perfect line abreast, the whaleboats hit the surf together and just like an act they all turned over in unison. We had a bunch of wet men. The rest of the landing was called off; we simulated everything.
Afterward we had a critique on board the Pennsylvania (BB-38), flagship of Admiral Arthur J. Hepburn, Commander-in-Chief U. S. Fleet. Hepburn ran one of the best conferences I’ve ever heard. He got to the point, and summed up what he wanted to say. Then he had reports from each commander of a major grouping of units, like the battleships, the gunfire support, the boat group commanders, and such. Everybody followed the admiral’s pattern—maybe not as well spoken, but concise.
All heads of departments were present. Lieutenant Harold Bye—a mustang, and the Utah’s first lieutenant—was sitting with me. He was hard-bitten, efficient, and none too congenial. Up to this point, everybody was quite pleased with the conference. It had gone right on schedule and was just about finished. The last man to report was a Marine aviator who had had two close fire support planes, simulating several squadrons. He recounted some of the problems and made a fairly nice talk, covering everything in three or four minutes. Then he got caught up in his subject and was eager to get everybody knowledgeable about the problems that can arise. He started backtracking, and going into every little detail he could think of about how the planes had erred—went too low, didn’t get the right timing, problems with guns, whatever. All were insignificant items except to the plane crews actually involved. And this went on for more than 20 minutes. Bye, who was very short on words and had little tolerance for long-winded people, was getting more and more impatient—all of us were. Finally Admiral Hepburn very courteously said, “This is a lot of detail and very interesting,” and then summed up the whole conference and we went home. By the time we left. Bye was scarlet red in the face. Finally he burst out, “The goddamned aviator!” He couldn’t get over it. “Made us late for lunch. I’ve got work to do.”
For months afterward, whenever we wanted to get a rise out of him, we’d bring up this landing exercise to visitors, and inevitably Bye would break in to tell how this “damned aviator” talked and talked and talked. He’d get mad all over again.
A year passed, and my last amphibious exercise in the Utah was at Lahaina Roads in Hawaii. The fleet as a whole stayed in Pearl Harbor for a short liberty, but we had to go straight to San Diego after the critique. We sailed back carrying a number of passengers, including a group of Marine officers.
At lunch the first day, one of the Marines remarked, “Well, the critique went pretty well, didn’t it? How did it go last year?”
Then Bye broke in and told his story. He got madder as he told it. Finally, red in the face, he looked across at our passenger and said, “You know who that jerk was?”
“Yes,” said the Marine. “I was he.”
Bye sputtered; he choked. He didn’t know what to do. Finally he jumped up and left the table.
From the Naval Institute oral history of Rear Admiral Ernest M. Eller, U. S. Navy (Retired)