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 down 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 harbor at Norfolk, Virginia, fat with salvaged gold coins and bullion estimated to be worth one billion dollars.

Author Gary Kinder wisely lets the story of the Columbus-America Discovery 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, and his progress to adulthood as a young man who always had "7 to 14" projects on the table or spinning in his head at any given moment. One of those projects would become the preposterous recovery of the stricken steamer, and the resourcefulness and later urgency with which the project would proceed is contrasted poignantly with the Central America's doomed battle in 1857 to stay afloat.

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 isn't synonymous with shipwreck in this Titanic-happy age. --Tjames Madison


From Publishers Weekly
Enormous publicity surrounded the 1989 recovery of an estimated billion dollars worth of gold?one of the greatest sunken treasures ever found?from the 1857 wreck of the SS Central America. Most of the publicity, however, came from media that, according to the author, "didn't have a clue what it was all about" and centered on the sensational aspects of the find off the Carolina coast. The story of the wreck itself, and the staggering effort it took to locate and recover the treasure, is the subject of Kinder's involving, fully realized history of the ship that amounts to a treasure in itself. He begins with a vivid account of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in California, then seamlessly moves into discussions of everything from the ship's departure from San Francisco to nuclear submarine technology to the modern legal mechanics of securing offshore salvage projects. Along the way, Kinder (Victim) introduces the reader to a genuine American archetype?the eccentric Tommy Thompson. The inventor/scientist/adventurer, who led the decade-long "treasure hunt" (a term he despised) from start to finish, is constantly at the center of activity that involves not just finding a wreck 200 miles offshore but the juggling of investors, competitors, lawyers, scientists, a sea captain and an endless cast of cantankerous characters. The reader is thrilled by the thoroughness and intelligence of Thompson's planning and execution, as well as by Kinder's research and writing. This account of discovery, greed, technology and the elements makes for a splendid sea adventure. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
YA-There's a lot of deep blue sea out there and the Titanic isn't the only ship it has claimed. In 1857, the SS Central America, carrying over 400 people and 21 tons of gold from the California gold fields to New York, foundered and sank during a hurricane 200 miles off the coast of North Carolina. There it lay for 132 years until Tommy Thompson, an ever-questioning, enterprising young engineer from Columbus, OH, thought to find it and salvage its cargo. This account of Thompson's indefatigable quest describes how he put together a research team, got funding to establish a company, and ultimately came up with the technology to conquer depths never before explored. An engrossing story.Pamela B. Rearden, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax County, VACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
On September 12, 1857, the steamship Central America sank in a great storm off the coast of South Carolina and settled a mile and a half beneath the waves. Most of the 423 souls on board perished. Lost, too, was $2,189,000 (now worth $1 billion) in California gold. The Central America worked the Panama-New York route, bringing gold seekers to Panama and returning ex-miners and their gold to New York. In 1989, a group of investors and treasure salvagers equipped with the latest underwater equipment was able to bring back much of the cargo, including the largest treasure ever recorded. The discovery of this vessel and its riches led to protracted litigation between various claimants, and the case is still in the courts. Kinder (Light Years, 1987) has followed the story from its beginning. His account should make an exciting addition to libraries with collections of sea history and ship salvage.-AStanley Itkin, Hillside P.L., New Hyde Park, NYCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, John Maxtone-Graham
The author writes beautifully--historical and technological reporting of a high order, as suspenseful and deft about the doomed ship as the salvage vessels.... a 24-carat sea classic.


The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams
Every scrap of information that could be extracted from the few survivors was recorded somewhere, enabling Mr. Kinder to reconstruct the disaster, and many of the people involved, with hair-raising precision. The people were interesting. One really cares about the literary captain, the honeymooners, the young poet--even the canary. Mr. Kinder makes the shipwreck so enthralling that it seems any later events are doomed to anticlimax. Not so.... Even readers familiar with Mr. Thompson's salvage operation are likely to find new information in Mr. Kinder's text, and for those with no previous acquaintance, it is a truly great tale, cleverly organized and expertly written.


Entertainment Weekly, Mark Harris
...[an] engaging, magnificently researched account ... a complex, bittersweet history...


Wall Street Journal, Doug Sease
The author casts Mr. Thompson's story as one of a scientist interested more in the process of deep-sea discovery than the end result. But make no mistake about it: The attraction of the Central America was the estimated 21 tons--that's right, tons--of gold bars and coins, the product of the California gold rush, that the ship was carrying to New York.


New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Drawing on the extensive testimony of eyewitnesses and survivors, Kinder has reconstructed the sinking of the Central America in harrowing and often poignant detail. But you read these chapters a little impatiently.... Succumbing like Thompson's subordinates to treasure-hunt fever, what you hunger for is the glitter of the payoff, which you get not only as information but also in the author's striking word-portrait of a scene glimpsed through a camera eye two miles below the sea's surface.


The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Richard Ellis
...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.


The Boston Globe, Robert Taylor
Kinder merges a saltwater thriller and a study of marine research successfully....


From AudioFile
In 1857 the S.S. Central America, carrying gold, ex-prospectors and a couple of honeymooners, was lost in a storm off the coast of the Carolinas. Salvage operations seemed unthinkable so far out to sea until the 1980's, when two young men from the Midwest began inventing new tools for an old dream. Davidson's enthusiastic, boyish tone seems ill at ease with the opening narrative and even the descriptions of the disaster. His expostulatory style works better with the dramatic tensions that take place during the recovery efforts, and he delivers all the excitement of the operations as its participants run into more and more difficulties with competitors, the law, backers and weather conditions. S.B.S. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
The truly fascinating tale of the first successful deep-water ocean salvage operation is a tribute to good, old-fashioned American ingenuity and gritwith a big dose of Titanic-like adventure to boot. In 1857, the SS Central America sank in 9,000 feet of water off the Carolina coast. Lost were nearly 500 California miners and their gold. It was the biggest maritime disaster in US history at that time, and the huge gold loss contributed to the financial panic of 1857. Because ocean explorers lacked the technology to work in blue water, the wreck lay undisturbed for 130 years. Then came Tommy ``Harvey'' Thompson, an innovative engineer and maverick thinker from Columbus, Ohio. Using sophisticated search theory and historical research to locate the wreck, Thompson and his talented helpers then designed and built a pathbreaking recovery robot (something the US government had failed to do, despite a huge expenditure of research dollars) in only months, using off-the-shelf components, on a shoestring budget, and in top secrecy. Kinder (Light Years: An Investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier, 1987) alternates between Thompson's decade-long quest to gather the necessary investors and technicians and a gripping re-creation of the doomed ships voyage based on survivors' accounts. (Unlike the Titanic, the Central America tragedy occasioned great heroism; male passengers bailed relentlessly for hours and other ship crews risked their lives to evacuate women and children.) The driven genius Thompson and his crew brought a scientific approach to ocean salvage sorely missing in the operations of the typical hit-and-run treasure hunters who plunder shallow water wrecks. Greater than average scientific, financial, and archaeological dividends are their rewards. Kinder's well-told tale of the Central America recovery (which represents nothing less than the opening of a new frontier in the deep ocean) is one of the great scientific adventure stories of our times. (First printing of 150,000; $250,000 ad/promo; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club main selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
June 1998

"The bailing was continued vigorously all night, my own dear husband taking his turn and when exhausted returning to my side; and when a little rested again resuming his place.... All that fearful night we watched and prayed, not knowing but that every hour might be the last.... We resolved that when the moment came we would tie ourselves together and the same wave would engulf us both." — From the journal of Adeline Mills Easton, survivor of the Central America

In 1857, the SS Central America, a side-wheel steamer laden with 21 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush and carrying 600 passengers and crew, sank 200 miles off the Carolina coast. It was the worst peacetime disaster at sea in American history, and a wreck that remained lost for more than a century.

In the early 1980s, a young engineer from Ohio was determined to do what no one — including 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. As bestselling author Gary Kinder explains in the book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, the sinking and recovery of the Central America has advanced science, marine technology, maritime law, and our understanding of history. After years of intensive efforts, Tommy Thompson and the Columbus-American Discovery Group invented a deep-sea research robot, found the Central America in 8,000 feet of water, and, in October 1989, sailed into Norfolk with her recovered treasure: gold coins, bars,andnuggets, plus steamer trunks filled with period clothes, newspapers, books, journals, and even an intact cigar, which had been underwater for 130 years. Life magazine called this discovery "the greatest treasure ever found."

A human drama on two levels, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea alternates between the tale of Thompson's decade-long pursuit of the wreck and a powerful re-creation of the ship's downfall, based on survivors' accounts. Kinder chronicles the events of September 1857, during which the passengers and the cargo of the Sonora were transferred to the Atlantic steamer Central America for the nine-day final leg of the trip, from Panama to New York. It was during this voyage that the Central America met a hurricane described by the Charleston Daily Courier as a storm of "almost unprecedented fury and violence." The ship battled strong winds and 35-foot seas, which eventually leaked into the steam engines. As the 60 women and children onboard huddled in fear, 500 men bailed water. Eventually the women and children were led into lifeboats manned by crewmen and were saved by a crippled bark. But at nightfall, with Captain Herndon standing on the bridge, the Central America sank, taking 300 men with it.

Interwoven with this story is Kinder's account of the efforts of Tommy Thompson to make the deep ocean accessible to scientists. In 1973 the dean of the School of Mechanical Engineering at Ohio State, asked his students a simple question: How are we going to work in the deep ocean? For the next ten years, Thompson pondered his mentor's question. In the early 1980s, while working as an engineer, Thompson began to research historic ships lost at sea, eventually focusing on the Central America. With help from his two friends, geologist Bob Evans and journalist Barry Schatz, Thompson had financial backing for his project by the summer of 1985. He led a group of engineers in creating a robot — the first of its kind — that could perform intricate tasks under thousands of feet of deep water, and in 1986 Thompson and his team set off to sea to find the Central America with sonar. Delays came about when competitors who had mounted their own expeditions to find the Central America appeared at the wreck site and tried to force Thompson off. It wasn't until 1988 that Thompson and his group first saw what few people could imagine: "The bottom was carpeted with gold. Gold everywhere, like a garden. The more you looked, the more you saw gold growing out of everywhere."

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea is a testament to the human will to triumph over adversity. Since the implementation of this underwater project, and the technology that evolved from it, scientists have observed, among other discoveries, 13 previously unknown life-forms, some of which may prove beneficial to mankind.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In September 1857, the SS Central America, a side-wheel steamer carrying nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California Gold Rush, foundered in a hurricane and sank two hundred miles off the Carolina coast. 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 United States 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. Now Gary Kinder tells for the first time this extraordinary tale of history, human drama, heroic rescue, scientific ingenuity, and individual courage.

SYNOPSIS

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea is, at its core, a classic adventure story. In the early 1980s, a landlocked, dreaming engineer from Columbus, Ohio, set out to find and recover the gold lost 130 years earlier when the SS Central America went down in deep water off the North Carolina coast. On the morning of October 5, 1989, Tommy Thompson and his salvage ship, the Arctic Discover, sailed into Norfolk harbor to international fanfare—and with a billion-dollar cargo. A fascinating modern-day adventure story of a self-made explorer's hunt for the world's richest shipwreck.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jonathan Miles

The pleasures of this big book are bittersweet. Great books seduce: They allure, bewitch, provoke and, with a smooth coup de grâce, deliver on their promise. Gary Kinder, a Seattle writer of two previous works of journalism, certainly delivers here -- having lucked into a story this compelling, it would have taken an act of malicious incompetence to have done otherwise. But his seduction is so flat-footed and drab -- Kinder writes like a bricklayer, one brick after the other, slow and methodical -- that this particular seductee nearly screamed aloud for him to get on with it. But despite Kinder's detail-obsessed long-windedness, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea nudged more than one evening's reading into the dark morning hours. Whatever flaws Kinder has as a storyteller are more than offset by the sheer might of his tale.

Which, more or less, is this: In September 1857, a side-wheel steamer christened the S.S. Central America, en route from Panama to New York City and laden with California miners and their gold, as well as a 30,000-pound government gold shipment destined to shore up the floundering northern industrial economy, sank in a storm 200 miles off the Carolina coast. It was a nautical nightmare, the Titanic of its age. More than 450 people sank with the ship, which came to a dismal rest a mile and a half down on the ocean floor. But this is merely half of Kinder's tale, interwoven throughout the book. The remaining half occurs 132 years later, in 1989, when a brilliant, iconoclastic engineer named Tommy Thompson led an expedition to salvage what amounted to more than $1 billion worth of gold coins and bullion from the wreckage, in the process all but reinventing deep-sea technology.

It was an accomplishment that inspired a federal appeals court to gush: "Their story is a paradigm of American initiative, ingenuity, and determination." Kinder puts it this way: "Tommy Thompson and about a dozen colleagues committed to developing a working presence on the bottom of the deep ocean. No one had done it; no one knowledgeable thought it could be done without the full force of the United States government and unlimited resources. Even then, some were skeptical, because the government had already spent hundreds of millions trying." With $12 million in private investments and a three-year time frame, Thompson and his group proved nearly everyone wrong -- and yanked up a tremendous amount of gold.

It is by all means a remarkable story, an action-packed maritime tale that might easily have caught the eye of a latter-day Melville. It would be egregiously unfair, of course, to suggest that Kinder aspire to such lofty heights, but not so unfair to wish that his Micheneresque exhaustiveness had been curbed just a smidgen. It's an extraordinary story of scientific adventure, one that might have been, were it a little more taut, an extraordinary narrative as well. -- Salon

Sailing

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea is non-fiction 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.

Ocean Navigator

Kinder's book is an incredible minute-by-minute account of the ill-fated steamship, [the] Central America....Ship of Gold is a fresh adventure story and exciting history.

Dallas Morning News

Page-turning reportage. . .Vivid and immediate.

New York Times