This ship is the subject of the book "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea" by Gary Kinder. The recovery crew was subjected to a legal battle where the original insurers claimed ownership of the gold since they paid out for its loss. The head of the recovery team reportedly welched on his investors and went into hiding. It's got twists and turns! Summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Central_America
Investors paid that guy 12M to recover 2-4M worth of gold. Seems like a bad investment and then he "forgot" where he put it and has been in jail ever since. Sucks for all investors involved for sure.
Maybe I missed it, where did you see the $2-4 million? The wiki article says "the total value of the recovered gold was estimated at $100–150 million."
according to the wikipedia article, the ship had 13 metric tons of gold loaded. One kg is currently worth about USD 62K, so the whole load of the ship must have been worth way more than 4m (~USD 800M in todays USD, so about half back when this happened).
So what I believe happened given both sources is that the investors paid 12M to get the 13 tons of gold (worth 800M) and then 4M worth of gold (0.5%) went "missing".
The investors wanted all of their 13 tons including the missing 64kg.
And so now that person is in jail without a sentence until he tells them where those 0.5% have gone.
From the wikipedia article
"The original expedition had only excavated "5 percent" of the ship"
So the majority of the gold has not been recovered yet.
It seems that some small part of the gold was recovered, some of it was sold/auctioned. 92% of the gold was awarded to the discovery team.
But the instead of divining the god he had (500 gold coins), he went into hiding.
The value of the 500 gold coins seems to be about $19.4 millions.
I have no doubt that recovering a ship wreck is hard work, but I would think there is a more potential profit in skimming gold from the digs than becoming a permanent fugitive.
Can someone explain for me why the ship was sailing from Panama?
My best guess is that it was easiest to sail down the west coast, cross the land at Panama where it is relatively narrow, then take another ship north up the east coast.
I wasn't aware that was a common route, had just assumed that people crossed the continent.
I wasn't aware either, but your guess appears to be correct: "Between 1848 and the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the principal mode of transportation between California and the east coast of the United States was to travel by steamer from San Francisco to the west coast of Panama, cross the isthmus by train, and take a steamship to New York."
Amazing that all that time under the ocean and the surface of these plates has survived almost undamaged. These are very early photographs too, pre-U.S. Civil War.
>A federal law addresses individuals like Thompson, known as “recalcitrant witnesses”. The law holds that 18 months is generally the limit for jail time for contempt of court orders. But a federal appeals court last year rejected Thompson’s argument that that law applies to him.
>Thompson hasn’t just refused to answer questions, the court ruled: he’s also violated the requirement that he “assist” the parties by refusing to execute a limited power of attorney to allow that Belizean trust to be examined, as required under his plea deal.
>“The order isn’t intended to solely seek information, it’s to seek information for the purposes of recovering these unique assets,” said Andrew Geronimo, a law professor and legal analyst, and director of Case Western University’s First Amendment Clinic.
Sounds like he is in there for good. Anyone from the US heard of anything similar? Its really hard to wrap your head around that not complying with a plea deal can get you thrown away in definitively. Plus a thousand dollar a day in costs. As far as i can tell even grand juries can only get you for 18 months
On a lighter note, had a laugh at the pictures subtitle and the later text
>A daguerreotype of a young woman found on the wreck. ‘She’s the Mona Lisa of the depths. This beautiful 18-year-old with her shoulders bare with jewellery and lace.’
>He pointed to a photograph of a young woman whose beauty captivated the men who recovered it: “She’s the Mona Lisa of the depths. This beautiful 18-year-old person, or however old she is, with her shoulders bare with jewellery and lace
"or how ever old she is". Framing is sometimes really important.
