100 Objects #23: Coin From the Ship of Gold

The story of the sinking of the SS Central America and the gold that sparked the first global financial panic, helped fuel the Civil War, and—over a century later—ruined one man’s life.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich isn't about having life all figured out. It's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you, meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be. So no matter where you're starting from, you can move forward with confidence. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 0:30Roman Mars?

  This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. The first school drop-off, the first sweater weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions. Crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider. It's August 20th, 1857, in the port of San Francisco.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  And this particular day is called Steamer Day because there's this massive steamship tied to the dock that has a gangway where passengers are loading on, people are saying goodbye. I sort of picture it like the opening scene of Titanic.

• 1:23Roman Mars?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Everyone is so excited, they're getting on the ship, they're saying goodbye to their loved ones, and there are these first-class passengers. So among them is this newlywed couple. Their names are Ansel and Adeline Easton. They have literally just gotten married. So Adeline is still in her wedding dress. They've like gotten married in the city, they wound their way to the port, and now they're getting on the ship for their honeymoon. And then there are the standard passengers, who are going to be sleeping in what's called steerage, where you sleep in the belly of the ship in like hammocks that are stacked on top of each other. And most of these people in steerage are miners because it's 1857. So we are several years into the California Gold Rush.

• 2:06Roman Mars?

  And this is miners with an ER, not an OR. Like, these are children, these are--

• 2:10Speaker 02

  These are miners with an ER.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  These are adult miners, the sort of classic 49ers, who have made their way to the California Gold Rush across the country, have hopefully amassed a small fortune, and are going to be taking this ship back east to live off the gold that they'd mined. A lot of them are carrying the gold like literally on their body. You know, there's a real fear of like, you don't want to be robbed, you don't want it stolen from you. But also, like, I didn't realize this, that gold is so heavy. It is so dense that like a regular house brick, like a red brick, weighs like four pounds, right? The same size brick that's gold weighs 43 pounds.

• 2:56Roman Mars?

  Wow, I didn't realize it was that heavy either.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  It's so heavy. So they're carrying like 50 pounds of gold, money belts and purses. They're keeping it close to them. It's basically all they have. You know, I got so many of these details from the guy on this topic. This guy's name is Gary Kinder. He spent decades researching the journey that this ship is going to take.

• 3:18Roman Mars?

  And who are you?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  And who am I? I'm your editor, usually.

• 3:22Roman Mars?

  That's right.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  My name is Annie Brown. I normally edit the show, but I came across this story right at the beginning of starting to think about the 100 Objects Project. And I became so obsessed with it that I've had a really hard time giving it to anybody else.

• 3:38Roman Mars?

  Yeah, it's been kind of fun. We've been thinking about like assigning it to people, and you were like, I know this story backwards and forwards, maybe I should just tell it.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  I'm going to tell it.

• 3:48Roman Mars?

  That is executive producer privilege right there.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And here I am doing it.

• 3:54Roman Mars?

  Okay, back to the San Francisco port, late in the summer of 1857, where 600 people are boarding this steamer, and something else is being loaded onto the ship. Thousands of pounds of gold pressed into bars and coins, destined for the vaults of New York City banks.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  The Gold Rush has completely revolutionized the American economy, but at this point in 1857, we're about like eight or nine years into the Gold Rush, it is tapering off. And the banks in New York really need an influx of gold to shore up their coffers. There's a sense that like the economy is overheating. We don't have as much gold as we thought we were going to have. In all, the ship is carrying around three tons of gold, which today would be worth about $400 million.

• 4:44Roman Mars?

  Significant, for sure.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a lot of gold. It gets loaded up, it takes off, it follows this route down to Panama. All the passengers are going to take their gold, they're going to cross the Isthmus, and they're going to get on a different ship on the other side of Panama that's going to take them back to New York.

• 5:00Roman Mars?

  Because this is before the Panama Canal, so you actually have to--

• 5:03Speaker 02

  It's before the Panama Canal, exactly.

• 5:05Roman Mars?

  You have to take a boat, and you have to walk over Panama, which is the narrowest--

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Exactly. At this point, there is a rail, but there is no, there's no way for a ship to cross. Exactly. They cross with all their belongings and all of this gold across the Isthmus. They get on another ship on the other side, and that ship is going to take them and the gold to New York. But that ship never makes it to New York.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  And when it sinks, it takes all of that gold with it. And it sparks the first global financial panic the world has ever seen.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  And for over a century, the gold will just sit on the bottom of the ocean until one man finds it. And the gold that he's going to bring up from the bottom of the ocean, by all accounts, totally ruins his life.

• 5:56Roman Mars?

  From 99% Invisible and BBC Studios, this is a history of the United States in 100 Objects. I'm Roman Mars. Today, a coin from the ship of gold, and how this coin tells the story of the birth of the American economy, the rise of global financial panics, and how greed can drive people and a whole country mad.

• 6:29Roman Mars?

  So the dramatic story of this ship and its sinking, it really starts with the Gold Rush. So let's back up and talk about the Gold Rush a little bit.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. So let's do the origin story of the Gold Rush. Let's do the classic story. It's January 24th, 1848. That's nine years before Steamer Day that I've just taken you through. We're in Northern California, about 100 miles northeast of San Francisco. It's kind of near present-day Sacramento. It's a cold morning. A guy named James Marshall wakes up early, and he walks down to the portion of the American River where he's been building a sawmill. He turns off the flow of the water to inspect it, and the water lays there still, so he can see down into it, and he sees a little yellow lump on a flat rock. It's the size and shape of his thumbnail. He says it's shiny, without sparkle,

• 7:21Speaker 02

  and it sort of looks like a piece of chewed-up spruce gum. He tries to smash it with another rock, then a hammer. It doesn't shatter, but it flattens.

• 7:31Roman Mars?

  Right, so he kind of knows what it is.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's like, it's not fool's gold. But I sort of imagine he's like not quite letting himself get too excited at this point, right? So he rides back through the snow to his boss, this guy John Sutter, who was building what's called Sutter's Fort. It's kind of like an agriculture and trade colony at the time. So he pulls his boss into a locked room because he knows that if what he found is what he thinks he found, it's going to change everything. So they unwrap the nugget. Sutter pulls an old chemistry book off of the shelf, and they try these tests to see if it's actually gold. They pour nitric acid on it. I don't know why they had nitric acid in this little room with them. It's such a strange thing to have, but it doesn't change color. They weigh it, it weighs far more than silver, it's gold.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  This is the real deal.

• 8:20Roman Mars?

  So people can't help but talk and gossip when it comes to gold, and maybe all things, I suppose.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:26Roman Mars?

  And so the word gets out, and then it becomes what is the Gold Rush?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  That's right. So in 1849 alone, 85,000 men and women flock to California. So at the time, there are under 1,000 people living in San Francisco. And just in 1849 alone, we have 85,000 coming.

• 8:48Roman Mars?

  Amazing.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  So these are called the 49ers, right? Like, this is where we get the term, the 49ers. And California just totally changes in this time. Ships are sailing into the harbor, and every member of every crew would just disappear into the hills. There was an army stationed there, and they couldn't keep soldiers working with the army. One soldier explained it in this amazing quote, "The struggle between right and $6 a month, and wrong and $75 a day is a rather severe one."

• 9:19Roman Mars?

  That's a good point.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that like you could make in a day what it would take to make in a year.

• 9:26Roman Mars?

  Almost a year, yeah. That's crazy.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. So at this point, there isn't a mint in San Francisco, so you just have raw gold that people are kind of carrying around and taking to a sayers that are pressing it into something. But often, you would pay for stuff with gold dust. And there's this incredible fact that Gary told me, that you would go into a saloon after a day mining to get a drink, and you would pay in gold dust. And the bartenders would take a pinch of your gold dust, and that would be like the cost of a drink. So they would hire the bartenders based on the size of their thumbs.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Isn't that amazing?

• 10:05Roman Mars?

  Get the biggest pinch possible with your big meat hooks. Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So in all, between 1848 and 1855, 300,000 people traveled to California.

• 10:19Roman Mars?

  And so like, the idea of people who normally make $6 in a month, all of a sudden making $75 in a day. What does that do to the US economy?

• 10:30Speaker 02

  It revolutionizes the economy.

• 10:33Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  So at this point, the US has relied on gold and silver to stabilize the economy. But we basically have no great source of gold before it's found in the California hills. So the supply of money just shoots up and whole industries crop up around it. So this is like a massive uptick in industrial production. The railroad building kicks into high gear. The banks and like financial institutions just multiply. Basically, all of this stuff goes up in response to supporting the gold rush, but also just because people have money.

• 11:06Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  There's money in the banks to loan out. There's money in people's pockets to pay for things. So things just are birthed in response to it.

• 11:16Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  And the fastest way that that gold gets back to the East Coast, because the East Coast is still the banking capital. You know, New York is still where the big banks are. The fastest way for that gold to get back east is via steamship. So every two weeks, a steamer would carry tons of commercial gold from San Francisco down to Panama, like we talked about, cross over and then back to New York City. But the thing about this huge influx of gold is that no one is really keeping a lid on how it's affecting the economy. Because at the time, the banking system in the 1850s is incredibly unstable. So Andrew Jackson had killed the central bank at this point.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  There's no federal regulation of banks. There's no like setting of interest rates to stave off recessions or depressions. And so by 1857, you know, the year of our steamer, the gold rush is kind of winding down. And that summer, investors are worried that the US economy might be overheated and overly reliant on this gold rush bounty that has stopped coming. So at this point, banks are sort of independent institutions where you can go in and put your gold in the bank and they'll give you these banknotes that represent the gold in the bank. But the problem is, the banks don't have enough gold in their coffers to give people back the money that they've given them. So people are coming in with their banknotes, trying to get their gold back,

• 12:45Speaker 02

  and there's not enough there. So they're really dependent on these steady influxes of actual gold from California coming in these steamships.

• 12:53Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  It's getting less and less, and so each one matters more and more.

• 12:58Roman Mars?

  So this takes us to the steamer that we met at the very beginning of the story, the one that does not make it to New York.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Exactly. So that steamer has left the San Francisco port. It has made its way to Panama. The passengers and their gold have crossed over and they have boarded another ship. This ship is called the SS Central America.

• 13:19Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  And this ship has been a workhorse of the gold rush. So it has been ferrying a third of all gold on this route since like 1852.

• 13:28Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  It's a big steam engine, so like you can imagine there are like wheels on the side that are actually pushing the ship forward. So it's powered by like coal furnaces that are creating steam and then the actual wheels are pushing the boat forward. And on this particular voyage, we have around 500 passengers, 100 crew, and as we said, just a huge amount of gold. So they stop in Cuba for a night and then they take off the next morning for New York City.

• 13:56Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  And for many passengers, this is the last leg of an extremely long journey home.

• 14:01Roman Mars?

  Right.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  So like, they were away for years. They left their families behind to make enough of a fortune that they could live on for the rest of their lives. Now they are getting back to New York.

• 14:13Roman Mars?

  Yeah, things couldn't be more exciting, like they're hyped.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  It's so exciting. And we have these really incredible accounts from what it was actually like on the ship. So that first night out from Havana, the newlyweds, we talked about, Ansel and Addie Easton, are sitting in the dining saloon next to the captain. The captain is this guy named William Herndon. He has spent 29 years at sea. He is like an absolute pro. Apparently, he looks more like a professor than a sea captain. He tells these incredible stories of of being at sea. And the conversation turns to shipwrecks. Because there was this scandal three years earlier where a ship was going down and the captain and the crew saved themselves first and let the rest of the passengers die.

• 14:53Roman Mars?

  Terrible.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  And apparently, Herndon says, the captain says, "I'll never survive my ship. If she goes down, I'll go under her keel. But let us talk of something more cheerful." They play cards, they drink claret, they smoke Cuban cigars they just got in Havana. Everyone stays up late until they excuse themselves and go to bed. And around midnight that night, the wind starts to pick up.

• 15:21Roman Mars?

  Oh, no.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  It blows hard through the night. The next afternoon, there's an even more dramatic change. One of the passengers describes that the waves are turning into mountains. And it's making the ship's bow rise and fall in these dramatic motions. And more immediate than the fear of the storm is seasickness.

• 15:42Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  So now, everybody is sick. The ship doctor takes sick, apparently. And the dining saloon is completely deserted. There's just a few passengers in there who apparently are eating with their legs wide, bracing themselves with their elbows pinning to their plates to keep their plates down.

• 16:01Roman Mars?

  That's amazing.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  The storm grows and grows over the next two days. And then the ship's engineer discovers that the ship has sprung a leak.

• 16:09Roman Mars?

  Oh, no. That's the last thing you want right now.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  It's the last thing you want right now. The crew finds that there's basically too much water in the bilge, the part of the ship that like gathers excess water and pumps it out. They search the hold, they find the leak. It's on the starboard side, the right side of the ship. And so they stuff it with like blankets and old sails. They're just trying to stop the the leak. But every time the ship turns to the right, the water pushes out the the sails. They push it back in, the water pushes it out.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  But the leak is not their only problem.

• 16:41Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  The problem with these steamships is that they're anchored in the water by the weight of the coal.

• 16:48Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  In the ship. So the coal is actually acting as ballast. It's weighing the ship down in the water so that those wheels on the side are getting traction in the water. But they've been fighting a headwind and the sea for days. So they're burning coal at a rate that they were not planning to burn the coal. So the ship is getting lighter and lighter. It's riding higher in the water, which means they have less purchase with the wheels of the steamship, and they just have less control of the ship.

• 17:19Roman Mars?

  Right.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  So it's being pushed off course. It's heaving to the right at all times, which means that leak is just pouring water into the bilge. The pumps are running, but the water is rising faster than the pumps can pump it out. And the danger here is if the water reaches the furnaces, everything falls apart.

• 17:41Roman Mars?

  Right.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  So the water will cool the fires, the steam will drop, and the engines stop.

• 17:48Roman Mars?

  Oh, that is terrifying.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  So they're in this vicious cycle. They have to burn more coal to keep the ship going in the direction they want. But the more coal they burn, the lighter the ship gets and less control they have over it.

• 17:59Roman Mars?

  Oh, oh, my God. This is a nightmare.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  It's a total nightmare.

• 18:03Roman Mars?

  And it's a nightmare lasting days.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Days.

• 18:06Roman Mars?

  I don't know if like most people, I certainly don't, picture like a sinking ship lasting days and days. When you say a thing like, "The seas are so rough, people don't eat." You're like, "Oh, who cares? I can skip a mile." But it's, you can't.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  How hard could that be?

• 18:21Roman Mars?

  It's three days.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  It's three days of puking.

• 18:24Roman Mars?

  And then you're fighting this thing and it isn't just like you have to stave it off for a couple hours while the storm blows over. This is days of storm that's happening.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:32Roman Mars?

  And people getting more and more resigned to the fact that this is going one direction and it's not going the way that they want it to.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 18:40Roman Mars?

  And that is a different kind of nightmare scenario.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  It's horrific. So noon on Friday, it happens. They lose the battle. Water overflows the coal. You can hear it hiss when it hits the furnace. And the hold fills with steam.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  The captain comes in, Herndon, to make an announcement. He says, "The ship has been leaking for hours. There are eight to 10 feet of water in the hold. And now we're going to bail the ship out, bucket by bucket." So all men, follow me. We are creating bailing lines. Because the pumps aren't working fast enough, we're going to do it by hand.

• 19:22Roman Mars?

  In a bailing line, this is like a line of people with buckets and they pass the bucket along and just one bucket at a time, they try to empty that bilge hole.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. They're described as like 500 men in these long lines coiling through the ship, up every gangway. And basically like the arms of like a centipede's legs, just passing these buckets. But the ship is heaving and men are slamming into each other. The buckets are slipping and spilling. The waves are crashing over the side of the ship. So they do it all night. This is like terribly grueling work. They're not eating. And at some point, Addie Easton takes their like newlywed baskets and starts feeding the men and giving them wine. And the women are trying to help, they won't let them. But everyone knows that this is really their only chance.

• 20:09Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  So at some point, the captain acknowledges that the ship is going down, that basically we are just trying to stave it off so that we can get rescued.

• 20:23Roman Mars?

  And the fact that you're telling me any of this detail means that some people did survive, like there was some kind of rescue. What ended up happening?

• 20:30Speaker 02

  That's right. So around 2:00 PM, after like 24 hours of bailing the ship, there's a miracle. Somebody sees another ship on the horizon, shouts sail ho, and that ship makes its way to them. It's also been battered in the storm. It's called the Marine. It's been carrying molasses from Cuba up to Boston. It finally gets the ship and it gets close enough that the captain is able to yell over to the other ship, which is basically like, we are in sinking condition. Can you stay close by me until morning? And he promises to try and stay as close as possible. But there are a few problems with this rescue plan.

• 21:10Roman Mars?

  There's more problems.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  As you can imagine. So at this point, there are only three lifeboats left. The lifeboats have been flying off of the ship because it's been a hurricane. And then there's all the gold.

• 21:23Roman Mars?

  Oh, the gold. I almost forgot about the gold.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Did you really?

• 21:27Roman Mars?

  I did. I mean, you know, this is like, I'm more concerned about the human tragedy that's unfolding. But what is going on with the gold? I mean, that's the whole reason why this boat kind of exists is to ferry that gold.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. So this is the question. At this point, people realize ship's going down. How much gold can I take with me?

• 21:46Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Do I take the gold? Do I leave it behind? Most of the passengers are these returning miners. You know, they've tried to accumulate at least a few thousand dollars. And this is all they have, right? They've been carrying it on their bodies. They've suffered so much to get this gold, but it's heavy.

• 22:04Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  You know, we talked about it's like, it is heavier than you can imagine. These money belts are 10 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds. And they're advised to only carry two $20 gold pieces with them off of the ship. And at this point, the captain's only letting women and children into the lifeboats. So if you're a miner, and you have 100 pounds of gold, you're basically deciding, am I going into the water with this 100 pounds of gold?

• 22:31Roman Mars?

  Right, right.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Because you're gonna drown.

• 22:33Roman Mars?

  Right. Yeah, you are going to be swimming with 50 pounds of gold, and you're not going to make it a couple of miles with 50 pounds of gold.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  And after, you know, hoarding this gold, protecting it, keeping it safe to their bodies, it's fascinating what people do in response to this information that they can't take it with them. They just start spraying the gold into the oncoming waves.

• 22:57Roman Mars?

  Like throwing it?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Throwing it. There are these images of like, women shaking $11,000 of gold onto the floor, weeping. You know, 11,000 in 1857 is $400,000 today. Can you imagine just like shaking $400,000 onto the floor, knowing that like, if you survive, you will be penniless? One man apparently ripped open a bag of gold dust and just like sprayed it into the air like fairy dust.

• 23:27Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  I just think it's such an interesting instinct of like, I cannot have it anymore, and I want to just like, experience its abundance? I don't know. What do you think it is?

• 23:40Roman Mars?

  That feels resonant to me. The other part is that they've gone through so much effort for this gold at this point. There has to be some kind of ceremony to it's like, it leaving you. Like, it can't just sink. It can't just be in a corner, in a little

• 23:53Speaker 02

  In a trunk.

• 23:54Roman Mars?

  In a trunk and just go down. Like, you have to acknowledge, like, there's a catalog of it. You have to acknowledge it. And then, and then it can go down. Like, they're letting go of a, of a dream, or a life, or a life that was maybe theirs to come, but is not going to happen anymore.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  So they are actually able to save more than 100 passengers. All of the women and children make it off the ship, and some men. Addie gets off the ship, but Ansel doesn't. And everyone else ends up in the water.

• 24:30Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Ansel describes these, like, the last moments on the ship. He's on the hurricane deck next to Captain Herndon and a few other men. They're just watching the storm. And one final wave engulfs the ship, and he gets pulled into a whirlpool. I didn't know this, but as a ship goes down, it creates this vortex in the water that pulls you down. Ansel is pulled into the whirlpool. It's chaos. He struggles out of his coat. He somehow surfaces and pops up surrounded by men. And he gets on some kind of wooden plank.

• 25:09Roman Mars?

  And he survives.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  So another ship shows up. The Ellen sails through the wreckage and picks him up along with 48 other men. There's actually a third boat that then rescues three more men. And that's it. And there's an incredible account of Ansel and Addie reuniting at the end of this, you know, not knowing that the other had made it. And it's because of Addie's diaries, her memoirs, that we know so much of this detail.

• 25:39Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Which then journalists like Gary Kinder drew on. But Captain Herndon does go down with the ship, true to his word, along with 400 other people. It is the worst commercial maritime disaster in the country's history at that point.

• 25:59Roman Mars?

  So all those souls were lost. Few people were rescued. And this is where the story goes beyond the immediate tragedy of the shipwreck. Because all that gold, that all goes to the bottom of the ocean.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  That's right. All of this gold that the New York banks are waiting for does not make it. And remember, the banks are in bad shape. They need that gold. They're really running on fumes. The railroad stocks are slipping. Land speculation bubble is starting to deflate. They have given out way too many loans that are not going to be repaid. And then in August, just a few weeks before the ship goes down, a big financial institution in Ohio collapses. New York investors start pulling their money out of the banks, but there's not enough gold and silver in reserve for them. So they're waiting on that gold from the ship. The ship goes down, the gold doesn't arrive, and the banks can hold on

• 26:56Speaker 02

  for a few weeks. But news of the shipwreck, this like massive loss of life, massive loss of gold, it helps push along the thing that's already happening. And a few weeks after, there's a run on the banks in New York. And then the banks stop altogether paying out the gold. A huge panic follows. This is called the Panic of 1857. It goes fast because of the telegraph at this point. It's the first global financial panic. Because we can communicate our fear.

• 27:30Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  And because we can communicate our fear, we are afraid everywhere.

• 27:35Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah. This is no longer a regional bank not having enough gold. This is like, everyone knows it. Every banking institution around the world knows it.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  And everyone is trying to get their money out of the bank. So the banks get suspended. Some of them shut down entirely. And the railroads go under, grain prices crater, it hits farmers hard, foreclosures everywhere, land sales are drying up, Western expansion basically stops until the panic is over. And it even makes its way to Europe. So there are reverberations of this globally. But there's another part of the story that is not even about the money, that I think is really important. So this panic hammered the North. It's factories, it's banks, it's railroad. But the South barely feels it. Part of that structural, there are fewer railroads there, fewer financial institutions, but it's also because of cotton.

• 28:26Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  So cotton prices only dip a little bit, and they recover fast. So Southern planters come through the Panic of 1857 feeling invincible.

• 28:36Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  And they feel like the institution of slavery has saved them and has proved to the virtue signaling North that the slave-based economy is better. And in response to the Panic of 1857, we get this very famous speech in the Senate by this guy, James Henry Hammond. It's called the Cotton is King speech. And it reflects the sentiment in the South at the time. This is the eve of the Civil War. The South is about to secede.

• 29:07Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  So they're debating whether to let Kansas in as a free or slave state. But really, he's talking about the Panic of 1857. He says, no, you dare not make a war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king. Who can doubt that has looked at recent events? When thousands of the strongest commercial houses in the world were coming down, and hundreds of millions of dollars of supposed property evaporating into thin air? When you came to a deadlock and revolutions were threatened, what brought you up? Fortunately for you, it was the commencement of the cotton season.

• 29:44Roman Mars?

  Oh, my God.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  So this false sense of confidence is part of what leads Southern leaders to think that they can secede and the North won't fight. This ideology is like, the psychological catalyst for the Civil War.

• 29:58Roman Mars?

  Amazing. Amazing.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  So this is kind of a big swing, incredibly simplified. Obviously, all these things are multifaceted, and they're being fed in every direction. But you can trace, the ship sinks, the gold doesn't make it to the banks, the banks fail, the North crumbles, the South saves it, and the South starts the Civil War.

• 30:19Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Things were moving in this direction, and it in many ways was kind of an emotional coup de grâce. Something else might have been the tipping point, but that ship of gold just disappearing really didn't help.

• 30:42Roman Mars?

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• 31:26Roman Mars?

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• 32:12Roman Mars?

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• 32:56Roman Mars?

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• 33:15Roman Mars?

  When the SS Central America sank in 1857, taking the dreams of its passengers and the last hope of the American economy with it, it also became one of the country's biggest maritime mysteries. Where was the ship and all those tons of gold? It was common knowledge that the ship had gone down somewhere off the coast of the Carolinas, but no one knew the exact location of the wreck.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  The captain didn't know where he was. They had been pushed off course for days. So no one on the ship knew where they were. No one on land knows where the ship is. All they know is that it's sitting at the bottom of the ocean, probably like 7,500 feet down. People definitely want to find it. They just don't know how. And it sits there for over 100 years. 130 years before someone has figured out a way to find it. So in the early 1980s, this guy named Tommy Thompson starts working on this problem. He's a 31-year-old oceanic engineer at this respected research institute in Columbus, Ohio. And by all accounts, he's a genius.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  He convinces 161 investors to fund this process. It's like 12 and a half million dollars. He takes on huge amounts of debt, but he's convinced that he can find it.

• 34:33Roman Mars?

  So what has Tommy Thompson figured out that people want to invest in him? Like, what is he doing differently to find it?

• 34:39Speaker 02

  So I think that there's basically two things that he innovates. One of them is how he's looking for the ship. So he and his crew are using historical accounts. So they're using like survivors' diaries. They're using maritime documents. They're using historical weather data to create this kind of probability map of the wreck site. And they map out basically like competing historical scenarios and weigh the likelihood of them. But the other innovation is the machine that he built. So he built this remote operated vehicle called the Nemo that could not only survive at that crushing depth, but it could manipulate items. It could move things around, and it could bring things up with them. That's completely new.

• 35:22Roman Mars?

  So does he find it?

• 35:23Speaker 02

  He finds it. October 1988, they send down their remote operated vehicle to explore where they... You know, this is like the 59th place they've looked. They've been looking for this thing for years. And boom, they get a hit.

• 35:38Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Thompson says the floor was carpeted in it. Gold was everywhere, like a garden. And the images from this are like from a fairy tale. It's like X marks the spot, sunken treasure stuff. It's like open the chest and it's overflowing with gold.

• 35:57Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  And what's really amazing is that that far down, there are so few currents and the water is so cold that things are kind of in pristine condition. So the mountains of gold coins, these like what are called eagles, the $10 coins and double eagles, the $20 coins, still have their ridges intact. You can see what was stamped into them. You can see the date. You can see the eye on the Lady Liberty that's stamped into the coins. There are these early photographs, daguerreotypes, that people were bringing back with them. And you can see the pictures of these people who were on the ship staring back at you. There are jars of shaving cream and beauty products.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  There's a cup with the inscription "To My Mother." They find the oldest known pair of jeans. And they find the steamer trunk that Ansel and Addie were taking with them on their honeymoon that's still filled with their fine clothes. And they're still wrapped in an edition of the New York News dated from 1857, and you can still read the newsprint.

• 37:08Roman Mars?

  That is unbelievable.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  It's crazy. It's crazy what they're able to find. And what's really cool about the thing that they built, the machine, is that it does this thing where it like puts a frame around the gold on the floor, and then it shoots silicone out. And the silicone hardens around the gold, and they bring up this brick of silicone filled with gold coins.

• 37:28Roman Mars?

  Wow, that is genius.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  It's cool. It's really cool. So on October 4th, 1989, Thompson sails into Norfolk, Virginia with the gold in hand. And he really gets a hero's welcome. You know, there's like a high school marching band there playing "When You Wish Upon a Star." People are cheering. This is like, like everyone's been looking for this ship for forever. This guy found it. He's a total hero. But this very same day, 39 insurance companies sue him in federal court, claiming that they had insured the original cargo back in 1857, and they deserve the money.

• 38:07Roman Mars?

  Oh my God. What a nightmare.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  And it takes years to resolve these legal battles. Millions of dollars in legal fees. And the judge eventually rules in his favor that the law of fines, it's called, that basically like it belongs to him because he found it and the discovery team, that 92% of the gold is going to belong to him. But that's after years of these lawsuits. Then he sells a bunch of the gold for like $50 million. He says he used that money to pay off his legal debts, to pay off the debts for the discovery, but his investors are upset. They think they should have gotten some of that money. And at this point, it's not just about the money. They feel like they were misled at various steps along the process,

• 38:54Speaker 02

  strung along through multiple rounds of promises that weren't fulfilled. Tommy says the money's gone at this point, that he doesn't actually have any. But the investors are so fed up with him that they sue him.

• 39:07Roman Mars?

  Oh my God.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  And in particular, there are these last 500 coins that people know about, that he made it known that he was taking some of the gold and minting 500 coins out of it. They weren't even worth that much comparatively. They're like $2.5 million. But the few of them that start suing him in like the mid 2000s, they want these coins. And a whole new round of legal battles start to begin. And his friends say that like around this time, Tommy Thompson starts to decompensate. A judge orders him to reveal the location of the 500 coins. He doesn't. The court kind of fixates on them. They're like this physical thing that they can chase. And instead of showing up in court, he goes on the run.

• 39:50Roman Mars?

  Oh no.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Now he's a fugitive. He lives on the run underground for three years in Florida in a Hilton. He's hiding out there with like, you know, his, his female companion. They have a book called like "Living in Hiding."

• 40:05Roman Mars?

  Like a how-to book?

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, a how-to book. They like wear floppy hats when they leave the hotel. But they're good at it in the sense that authorities don't find him and are looking for him for three years. So eventually they find him, they take him in. Even then, he won't tell them where the coins are. He says he can't remember. He says, "Now I have chronic fatigue and I have amnesia." The judge doesn't buy it. He holds him in contempt of court, puts him in jail. He says, "You're going to stay in jail every day that you don't tell us where the coins are. And every day that you don't tell us where the coins are, we're going to charge you $1,000." And you know what Tommy Thompson does? He stays in jail for 10 years.

• 40:46Roman Mars?

  Oh my God. Tommy.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  I mean, maybe he forgot where the gold is. You know, maybe he's right that he doesn't remember. But at some point, a few years ago, the judge is like, "Okay, it looks like holding him in contempt is not going to get him to do what we want him to do."

• 41:01Roman Mars?

  Clearly not. 10 years.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  He's also racked up millions of dollars in fees because of this $1,000 a day fee that is far higher than what the coins are worth. He was released in March of this year, and still, nobody knows where those 500 coins are.

• 41:21Roman Mars?

  Wow. It really is like gold driving people mad.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  This is the thing that I'm so obsessed with, with this story, is like the curse of the gold. But I think what's so interesting about the curse of the gold is that the gold always gives before it takes. The promise of the gold is followed by rumen.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  So in 1849, like its promise drives all these men to drop everything and move across the continent. Some of them find riches, but most of them find like deep disappointment. It creates the American economy, but then it overheats it.

• 41:59Roman Mars?

  Right, right.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  When it sinks off the coast, it drags the country's confidence with it. It convinces half of the country they're invincible, only to send us to civil war. And then 100 years later, it gives meaning to this one man's life before arguably driving him mad. That's the cycle, that the gold saves you before it ruins you.

• 42:28Roman Mars?

  Annie Brown, thank you for taking some time out of your normal, very, very demanding job of executive producing this show to bring us this story. It was a real pleasure.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Thanks very much.

• 42:39Roman Mars?

  If you want to learn more about the story of the SS Central America and how Tommy Thompson discovered its long-lost treasure, check out the book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder.

• 42:51Roman Mars?

  A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios. It's hosted and curated by me, Roman Mars. This episode was produced by Annie Brown and Isabel Angel. Our series producers are Priscilla Alabie, Brenna Dahlendorf, and Ellie Lightfoot. Our associate producer is Isaac Fisher. This series was edited by Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Mixing by Charlie Brandon King. Fact checking by Amy Bracken. Our theme song is by Swan Real. From 99% Invisible, our executive producer is Cathy Too. From BBC Studios, our executive producers are Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Our production coordinator is Shan Pelé, and the production manager is Mabel Finnegan

• 43:35Roman Mars?

  Wright. Artwork by Stefan Lawrence. 99% Invisible is part of the SiriusXM Podcast family headquartered in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California. And BBC Studios is headquartered in beautiful White City, West London. If you want to get in touch or have an object for us to consider, email us at [email protected].

• 44:09Speaker 03

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• 44:39Speaker 04

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• 45:08Speaker 05

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