150-year wait almost over for gold-laden shipwreck to be salvaged

These five gold bars worth about $1.4 million were recovered from the SS Central America during a mission to photograph the wreck. Photo / AP

A sunken treasure of gold coins, bars and nuggets from a ship that sank in a hurricane off the coast of South Carolina more than 150 years ago is finally due to be salvaged.

The recovery of gold thought to be worth tens of millions of dollars from the SS Central America has been delayed for 25 years after the man who first found the wreck went on the run and the operation became bogged down by dozens of lawsuits. But the case has now been settled and initial deep-sea forays appear to confirm that tales of the ship's riches have not been exaggerated.

Photographs taken by a robot sent to the sea bed appear to show the rotting timbers of the Central America, which went down in 1857 while sailing from Panama to New York with 425 people on board.

The robot mission, carried out by a company appointed by the court to resume the salvage, was the first time that the wreck had been viewed for a quarter of a century.

The 85m ship, captained by William Lewis Herndon, was carrying an estimated three to four tonnes of gold from California intended to prop up the banks of New York, when it went down in a two-day storm. The loss contributed to the Panic of 1857, considered the world's first financial crisis.

The ship was first located in 1988 by a young marine expert called Thomas Thompson, who secured investors and put together an operation that went on to recover two tonnes of gold, worth about US$76 million ($87 million) in today's money. He is on the run amid a mystery over the whereabouts of 500 gold coins, worth about US$26,500 each, and complaints by investors in his Columbus America Discovery Group, which carried out the initial recovery operation, that they never received their share of the hoard. As the years went by, further claims flooded in from those whose antecedents lost the treasure in the first place, including an order of Catholic monks, a Texas oil millionaire and a university, as well as the dozen or more insurers that had paid out over the sinking.

After their complicated claims were untangled this year, Judge Patrick Sheeran appointed a receiver, who in turn hired the company Odyssey Marine Exploration to bring up the remaining treasure. During its robot dive last month, Odyssey recovered five gold bars weighing 30kg, worth about US$1.2 million. More gold, worth an estimated US$85 million, remains in the wreck.