Tweet
"Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea", by Gary Kinder
A Treasure Tale Tempered by Science
New York Times / Books
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
6/22/1998
Excerpt:
The moment you start reading Gary Kinder's spellbinding story of a suboceanic treasure hunt, "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea," you know that the searchers are eventually going to hit it very big. The narrative begins with the discovery in January 1848 of the gold nugget at John Sutter's sawmill that brought on the California Gold Rush.
From there the story jumps to September 1857 and the journey from Panama to New York of the Central America, a side-wheel steamer carrying nearly 600 passengers returning from the Gold Rush and some 21 tons of California gold worth at the time more than $13 million. Two days after a stopover in Havana, the ship ran into what was described at the time as a storm "of almost unprecedented fury and violence" and eventually sank.
Drawing on the extensive testimony of eyewitnesses and survivors, Kinder ("Victim: The Other Side of Murder" and "Light Years: An Investigation of the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier") has reconstructed the sinking of the Central America in harrowing and often poignant detail. But you read these chapters a little impatiently. You itch to get on with the treasure hunt. There's been enough of sinking ships and killer vortexes and floating corpses in this season of Leonardo DiCaprio.
In any case, the narrative picks up pace as the scene shifts to the town of Defiance, Ohio, in the 1960s, and you meet Tommy Thompson, a young genius who wants to know how everything works and who once drove his car cross-country powered with used french-fry oil.
Following wherever his insatiable curiosity takes him, Thompson ends up in the business of salvaging sunken treasure ships, not so much for the sake of fortune hunting as a way of financing the scientific exploration of the ocean floor. Breaking down the problems of deep-sea salvage systematically, he determines the best approach to be the use of an unmanned, remote-control vehicle. Rating the most feasible wrecks on a scale of risks, he and his team arrive at the Central America as their target.
As Kinder writes: "It had sunk in an era of accurate record keeping and reliable navigation instruments. Dozens of witnesses had testified to the sinking, and five ship captains had given coordinates that placed the ship in an area where sediment collected no faster than a centimeter every thousand years. The extrinsic risks looked as favorable: she had a wooden hull, which would be easier to get into, and massive ironworks in her steam engine and boilers that would provide a good target for sonar, even if much of the iron had corroded and disappeared. And it was off the coast of the United States, so they wouldn't have to negotiate with a foreign government and they could more easily provide site security."
Finally, if they could find the wreck, "they would open a time capsule representing an entire nation during a crucial period in its formation."
..............................
View the complete article at:
https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/...ok-review.html
A Treasure Tale Tempered by Science
New York Times / Books
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
6/22/1998
Excerpt:
The moment you start reading Gary Kinder's spellbinding story of a suboceanic treasure hunt, "Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea," you know that the searchers are eventually going to hit it very big. The narrative begins with the discovery in January 1848 of the gold nugget at John Sutter's sawmill that brought on the California Gold Rush.
From there the story jumps to September 1857 and the journey from Panama to New York of the Central America, a side-wheel steamer carrying nearly 600 passengers returning from the Gold Rush and some 21 tons of California gold worth at the time more than $13 million. Two days after a stopover in Havana, the ship ran into what was described at the time as a storm "of almost unprecedented fury and violence" and eventually sank.
Drawing on the extensive testimony of eyewitnesses and survivors, Kinder ("Victim: The Other Side of Murder" and "Light Years: An Investigation of the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier") has reconstructed the sinking of the Central America in harrowing and often poignant detail. But you read these chapters a little impatiently. You itch to get on with the treasure hunt. There's been enough of sinking ships and killer vortexes and floating corpses in this season of Leonardo DiCaprio.
In any case, the narrative picks up pace as the scene shifts to the town of Defiance, Ohio, in the 1960s, and you meet Tommy Thompson, a young genius who wants to know how everything works and who once drove his car cross-country powered with used french-fry oil.
Following wherever his insatiable curiosity takes him, Thompson ends up in the business of salvaging sunken treasure ships, not so much for the sake of fortune hunting as a way of financing the scientific exploration of the ocean floor. Breaking down the problems of deep-sea salvage systematically, he determines the best approach to be the use of an unmanned, remote-control vehicle. Rating the most feasible wrecks on a scale of risks, he and his team arrive at the Central America as their target.
As Kinder writes: "It had sunk in an era of accurate record keeping and reliable navigation instruments. Dozens of witnesses had testified to the sinking, and five ship captains had given coordinates that placed the ship in an area where sediment collected no faster than a centimeter every thousand years. The extrinsic risks looked as favorable: she had a wooden hull, which would be easier to get into, and massive ironworks in her steam engine and boilers that would provide a good target for sonar, even if much of the iron had corroded and disappeared. And it was off the coast of the United States, so they wouldn't have to negotiate with a foreign government and they could more easily provide site security."
Finally, if they could find the wreck, "they would open a time capsule representing an entire nation during a crucial period in its formation."
..............................
View the complete article at:
https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/...ok-review.html