Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea

In 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 off the Carolina coast. Over four hundred lives and twenty-one tons of gold were lost.

In the 1980s, a young engineer from Ohio set out to do what no one, not even the U.S. Navy, had been able to do: establish a working presence on the deep-ocean floor and open it to scientific discovery. After years of intensive effort, Tommy Thompson and the Columbus-America Discovery Group found the "Central-America" in eight thousand feet of water, and in October of 1989 they sailed into Norfolk with her recovered treasure.

Here is the story of both the victims and heroes of the disaster, and the visionary team that opened Earth's last frontier.