The Ship of Gold, S.S. Central America Reveals Its Treasure in 2022

Having sunk during a hurricane to the bottom at 7200 feet, the SS Central America went down on September 12, 1857. Travelling from Panama to New York it carried California Gold Rush coins. Also, it found itself transporting ingots, gold dust, passengers and mail from Northern California.

Fabled as the ship of gold, its contents have been stored for over30 years. Check out a list of items discovered and inventoried from the famous ship:

1.  Photographs

2.  Gem quality gold specimens

3.  Very old denim pants manufactured by Levi Strauss.

4.  Keys with a brass identification

5.  Old wine bottles

6.  Eyeglasses, ticket receipts, and chewing tobacco

7.  A Wells Fargo shipment box

8.  86 gold ingots

9.  50 dollar octagonal pioneer gold piece

10. A total of 2 tons of gold recovered

11. Trunks full of dated clothes

425 out of 578 passengers and crewmembers died. Coincidently, the loss of so much gold is said by some to have contributed to the U.S. Panic of 1857. Knowledge of this shipwreck didn't garner much attention originally due to the fact that the Civil War would soon break out.

The Panic of 1857 was a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Because of the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F. Morse in 1844, the Panic of 1857 was the first financial crisis to spread rapidly throughout the United States.

Scandal has plagued the discovery of America's greatest treasure. One of the discoverers (Tommy Thompson) claimed 500 gold coins valued at 2.5 million dollars (that disappeared) were reputedly sent to Belize. 

In total, $52,000,000 worth of gold from the treasure was sold. Tommy Gregory Thompson is an American treasure hunter known for his leading role in the discovery of the wreck of the SS Central America on September 11, 1988. He is also the author of a book about the discovery, America's Lost Treasure, published in 1998, and is a main character in the best-selling 1998 non-fiction book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder.

In 2000, Thompson sold gold recovered from the Central America for $52 million. In 2009 he had an offshore account in the Cook Islands valued at $4.16 million. In 2013, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio issued an arrest warrant for Thompson for civil contempt for his failure to appear as directed. In 2014, the same court issued an additional arrest warrant for Thompson for criminal contempt. The investigation was assigned to Deputy United States Marshal Mark Stroh of the Southern District of Ohio. Thompson was a fugitive for several years before U.S. Marshals arrested him in 2015 at a West Palm Beach, Florida hotel, together with fellow fugitive Alison Louise Antekeier.

In November 2018, Thompson agreed to surrender 500 gold coins salvaged from the wreck of the Central America, but then claimed he did not have access to the missing coins. On 28 November 2018, a jury awarded investors $19.4 million in compensatory damages: $3.2 million to the Dispatch Printing Company (which had put up $1 million of a total of $22 million invested) and $16.2 million to the court-appointed receiver of the other investors. - -------from Wikipedia

In January 2022, one of the largest S.S. Central America ingots ever offered at auction, an 866.19-ounce find known as a Justh & Hunter ingot, sold for $2.16 million through Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. 

In 2001, an 80-pound ingot was purchased by a private collector for a $8 million.