In September 1857, the side-wheel steamer S.S. Central America, carrying 500 passengers and tons of gold from California, sank in a hurricane 200 miles off the Carolina coast. Lost in legend for more than a century, its tragic story resurfaced in 1989, when Tommy Thompson, an ocean engineer, sailed into Norfolk harbour with over ten tons of pioneer gold. Using oceanography, computer science, and information theory to sift through historical records and penetrate the deep sea, Thompson's team had recovered, as Life Magazine wrote, 'the greatest treasure ever found'. 'Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea' is a copiously researched historical record of the initial disaster, rendered in chilling detail from contemporary accounts. It is a chronicle of the technological breakthrough in which deep-sea robots were developed to perform heavy, delicate and complex work one and a half miles below sea level. And it is an incredibly exciting adventure story of how a team of scientists and engineers, the Columbus-Amercia Discovery Groups, battled massive storms, technological challenges, and intrusive salvagers - to find one of the world's greatest lost treasures.
