1857 SS CENTRAL AMERICA GOLD DUST SSCA 49er Gold Rush Gold Package Global

Bob Evans – Co-Discoverer, S.S. Central America

“We are going to find gold dust.”

I made the statement with confidence.

Tommy Thompson looked at me skeptically.

“Nah… what? Gold dust? We’re not looking for gold dust. We’re looking for specie — coins and gold bars.”

I smiled.

“Yes, we are. And we’re also going to find gold dust.”

It was the autumn of 1983 when Tommy, my neighbor, recruited me to assist in the historical research for what would become one of the most extraordinary treasure recoveries of all time — the S.S. Central America. In those early months, I spent countless hours poring over fuzzy microfilm and early white-on-black xeroxes of 19th-century newspapers.

As I read through the survivors’ accounts, I began to envision it — a shower of golden particles falling through the depths, a cloud of treasure descending with the ship more than a mile into the Atlantic abyss. I wondered what forensic science might someday reveal about that glittering, scattered legacy.

Eyewitnesses described gold dust and coins spread across the decks as the ship met her fate. One particularly powerful passage from the New York Tribune, dated September 21, 1857, captured the haunting transformation of wealth to insignificance in the face of disaster:

“But as the storm continued to rage, less and less of gold was thought of, and when, on Saturday, it became evident that they were likely at any moment to be buried beneath the waves, wealthy men divested themselves of their treasure belts and scattered the gold upon the cabin floors, telling those to take it who would…

One of the passengers, who has fortunately been rescued, opened a bag and dashed about the cabin about $20,000 in gold dust and told him who wanted it to satisfy his greed for gold to take it. But it was passed by untouched as the veriest dross. A few hours earlier he would have struck down the man who would attempt to take a grain of that which he now spurned from him.”

That image — gold dust drifting into the deep — stayed with me. And, in time, we did indeed find it.

SS Central America Gold Dust signed by Bob Evans

SSCA Red Book and Treasure Catalog with purchase

** One Package Per Household **