SS Central America

1857

Ship of Gold, the Panic of 1857 Location: Atlantic Ocean, off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina · Coordinates: 31.50°N 77.10°W · Casualties: 425 · Survivors: 153 · Depth: 2,200 m · Cause: hurricane — Caught by a Category 2 hurricane off the Carolinas on 9 September 1857 during the final leg of her Havana-to-New York run. Her boilers flooded; the pumps failed; she foundered at ~20:00 on 12 September. Three tons of California gold bullion and dust went down with her. · Fate: located 1988 · Tommy Thompson · Type: passenger/mail paddle steamer · Tonnage: 2,141 tons · Crew: 101 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1853 American paddle steamer, Havana to New York with three tons of California gold in her hold. Caught in a hurricane off the Carolinas on 9 September 1857, she foundered on the night of the 12th. 425 dead, 153 rescued. The loss of her gold contributed directly to the Panic of 1857, the first worldwide financial crisis; recovered in 1988 by Tommy Thompson, who later went to federal prison for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of the missing coins. The Vessel The SS Central America was a 272-foot sidewheel steamer built at Webb and Allen's Brooklyn yard in 1852 for the United States Mail Steamship Company's Panama route service. She was 2,141 tons, carried 85 crew and 571 passengers at full capacity, and was one of the principal commercial connections between the California Gold Rush economy of San Francisco and the financial centre of New York. Her specific commercial role in the 1850s was the New York leg of the Gold Rush passenger and bullion trade. California prospectors and merchants travelling east with their accumulated gold boarded a Pacific Mail steamer at San Francisco, crossed the Isthmus of Panama by rail or by horse-drawn mule train, and embarked on a United States Mail vessel at Aspinwall (Colón, Panama) for the Atlantic leg north to New York. Central America was the largest ship on that Atlantic leg. Her cargo on her final voyage of September 1857 included approximately 425 passengers and 101 crew, and an exceptionally large gold shipment. The registered gold cargo of 13.5 tonnes of bullion, bars, and coin (valued at $1.6 million in 1857 dollars, approximately $60 million in modern equivalent) was one of the largest California gold shipments ever loaded on a single Atlantic-leg steamer. The unregistered gold carried in passenger luggage and personal possessions was estimated at another $1 million to $2 million. The combined value of her cargo at current gold prices was approximately $300 million. The Disaster At 20:00 on 12 September 1857 the Central America rolled onto her beam ends and sank in approximately 2,200 metres of water, 300 kilometres east of Charleston. Captain Herndon, in the custom of the American merchant marine of the period, refused to leave his ship; he went down on her bridge in uniform. 425 of her 578 aboard drowned. 153 were saved by the Marine, or, in nine cases, by the passing Norwegian bark Ellen which reached the scene on the afternoon of 13 September and pulled nine men from floating wreckage. The news of the loss reached New York on 19 September 1857, carried by the surviving officers via the Marine's arrival at Norfolk. The immediate economic consequence was severe and widely felt. Her gold cargo, which would have been delivered to New York banks on the expected arrival date of 15 September, was lost at a moment when the New York financial markets were already under severe strain from the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company failure of August 1857. The Central America's loss converted a developing credit crisis into a full-scale financial panic: the New York banks suspended specie payments on 13 October 1857, triggering the Panic of 1857, the worst American financial crisis of the antebellum period. The Panic of 1857 reshaped American regional banking, brought the California Gold Rush economy into a three-year depression, and contributed significantly to the economic conditions that preceded the American Civil War. The loss of the Central America is d