"Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea" by Gary Kinder (ISBN: 0871134640)
The story of a 140 year old ship wreck and a modern treasure hunt.
Gary Kinder has written a thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating book about the sinking of a wooden paddle wheel steamer in 1857 and its discovery in 1989 by modern day treasure hunters from Ohio. Kinder interweaves chapters on the history of the ship, it's passengers and cargo with the story of the wreck's rediscovery and salvage. The salvage is well worth the effort since the SS Central America's final cargo was 21 tons of gold from the new California gold fields.
The stories of the passengers, crew, ship and cargo as well as the gold fields that produced them all, are well researched and engagingly presented. By presenting us with a detailed history of the final voyage of the ship, Kinder provides the context and perspective for us to appreciate this story in terms other than the gross weight of gold recovered. The description of the SS Central America's battle with a hurricane and the final sinking of the ship is vivid and heartrending. After reading this I will never take a weather forecast or the crew of any means of transport for granted. I think we have been spoiled to the point where, today, a lost piece of baggage "ruins" a vacation.
The modern side of the story revolves around the engineer, Tommy Thompson and the group he puts together to locate and recover the treasure. This is a fine portrait of an engineer's formative early life as well as a description of his current working life. It gives a good sense of what it is like to be the person in charge and responsible for everything from deciding strategy to scheduling crew changes. Kinder follows Thompson through the complex and difficult task of assembling the people, knowledge, equipment, and money, to do what he really wants to do. Thompson is motivated by the idea of being able to do useful work, at greater depth in the oceans, than anyone has ever done before. The SS central America's gold makes it possible for him to develop techniques to do this, but I get the sense that anything that helped him finance this would have served.
You also get to see just how difficult and complicated some of this can be. Modern day treasure hunting is a long way from a couple of shovels and a map. The effort involves a wide array of talented and dedicated people in fields ranging from sonar, ship overhaul and purchasing to finance, public relations and the niceties of maritime law. Kinder lets us see all of them at work and lets us, to some degree, into their special worlds.
The book is a bit long and could have stood some trimming in places, two thirds of the way through you start wishing for some gold to show up. This may be a reflection of the truly frustrating business of hunting treasure. In the end, of course, there IS gold, LOTS of gold. But by this point I was convinced that in addition to the monetary value of the gold, it also served as proof that Tommy Thompson had achieved what he set out to do.
JGD
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