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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 in

by 1-more 5y ago

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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Central_America

edm0nd 5y ago
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.
- mapmap 5y ago
  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."
  - spullara 5y ago
    In this article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/14/tommy-thompson-treasure-jail-ship-of-gold https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/14/tommy-thomps...
    - pilif 5y ago
      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.
      - lakis 5y ago
        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.
41b696ef1113 5y ago
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.

by 1-more 5y ago

edm0nd 5y ago

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.

mapmap 5y ago
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."
- spullara 5y ago
  In this article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/14/tommy-thompson-treasure-jail-ship-of-gold https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/14/tommy-thomps...
  - pilif 5y ago
    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.
    - lakis 5y ago
      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.

41b696ef1113 5y ago

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.