A marine salvage group said Thursday it is recovering the largest treasure trove in American history, a 3-ton cache of gold bars and coins from a ship that went down in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina.
A member of the group said a value of $1 billion "isn't out of the realm of possibility."Gold bars weighing as much as 62 pounds and piles of gold coins of a type rarely seen since the California Gold Rush days were pulled this week from the wreckage of the SS Central America by members of the Columbus America Discovery Group, which said two years ago it had found the richest shipwreck in U.S. history.
"We collected and computer-analyzed scores of eyewitness accounts of the SS Central America's last hours, made by survivors and observers of the sinking, to discover the probable location of the ship," said Thomas Thompson, one of the directors of the group. "Then we used advanced sonar equipment to scan the ocean floor to find the wreck."
What Columbus America uncovered with the help of a robot vehicle named Nemo was beyond the treasure hunters' wildest dreams.
Most of the coins are known to be part of a registered commercial shipment of "specie" from San Francisco lost when the SS Central America went down Sept. 12, 1857, in a hurricane about 200 miles off the coast of Charleston, claiming the lives of 423 people aboard.
The value of the shipment has been estimated from $28 million and $450 million, based on today's bullion prices, but the amount and variety of the gold bars and bricks recovered surprised the salvage experts.
"These appear to have belonged to passengers returning to the East after making their fortunes in California," said Barry Schatz, another Columbus America director who said their value could easily double previous estimates of the treasure's wealth.