Binding: Audio Cassette
EAN: 9780001055742
Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 0001055747
Label: HarperCollins Audio
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Audio
Number Of Items: 2
Publication Date: October 18, 1999
Publisher: HarperCollins Audio
Release Date: December 06, 1999
Studio: HarperCollins Audio

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
The facts speak for themselves. In 1857, the Central America, a sidewheel steamer ferrying passengers fresh from the gold rush of California to New York and laden with 21 tons of California gold, encountered a severe storm off the Carolina coast and sank, carrying more than 400 passengers and all her cargo with her. She then sat for 132 years, 200 miles offshore and almost two miles below the ocean's surface--a depth at which she was assumed to be unrecoverable--until 1989, when a deep-water research vessel sailed into the harbour at Norfolk, Virginia, fat with salvaged gold coins and bullion estimated to be worth $1 billion.

Author Gary Kinder wisely lets the story of the Columbus-America Dicovery Group, led by maverick scientist and entrepreneur Tommy Thompson, unfold without hyperbole. Kinder interweaves the tale of the Central America and her passengers and crew with Thompson's own story of growing up landlocked in Ohio. An irrepressible tinkerer and explorer even in his childhood days, his progress to adulthood as a young man who always had "7 to 14" projects on the table or spinning in his head adds fascinating texture and depth to the story. One of those projects would become the unlikely recovery of the stricken steamer, and the resourcefulness and drive with which the project proceeds is contrasted poignantly in the narrative with the Central America's doomed battle to stay afloat in 1857.

Thompson, who spent nearly a decade planning and organizing his recovery effort, emerges as one of the great unsung adventurers of these times (the technical innovations alone required for such a task produced a windfall for the scientific community and defined a new state of the art for deep-sea explorers and treasure hunters), and the story of the steamer's sinking is compelling enough to make any reader wonder why the Central America sinking hasn't achieved greater notoriety in this Titanic-dominated area.




Rating: - Payoff from persistence
Ship of Gold may be the ultimate Horatio Alger story. Kinder's account of the bizarre Tommy Thompson's quest to locate a 19th Century shipwreck is a delightful rags to riches story. Kinder weaves historical and contemporary events together seamlessly. He takes us back and forth in time, showing how a clear modern knowledge of each stage of the shipwreck led to the S.S. Central America's location at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Kinder is adept at the difficult task of maintaining ... Read More

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Rating: - "The greatest treasure ever found"--$1 billion in gold!
Gary Kinder tells three spell-binding narratives as he describes the search for the SS Central America, a sidewheel steamer which left Panama in 1857 and went down in the Atlantic while carrying gold from California (then valued at over $2 million). First person accounts by some of the survivors tell of the ship's journey, the hurricane which suddenly arose in the Atlantic, and the frantic efforts of crew and passengers to keep the engines fired and the ship afloat. Touching love stories revealed in these ... Read More

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Rating: - best book of it's type
A gripping story and well infused with a description of the technology used. As a sea story or a story of exploration I well recommend it.

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Rating: - 3 books in one
Really three books in one; the harrowing, white- knuckle, real-life adventure of a prolonged shipwreck; the agonisingly meticulous search for the remains; the multi-million dollar rescue ... each one different, but inextricably entwined with the others. Without the clues from the diaries and memoirs of survivors, plus ships' logs, and the tenacious convictions of the salvor, this story would never have unfolded. As it is, the first third of the book had me on the edge of my seat for hours - what ... Read More

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Rating: - Fabulous. Inspiring. A true entrepreneur!
This is an amazing story. And it's true! The hero of the story, Tommy, is the epitomy of the American entrepreneur (or what an entrepreneur should be)! It is inspiring to read about someone who pushes all of the limits far beyond anyone's imagination, not because of greed but because of true curiosity and entrepreneurial vision. The heroes of this story are heroes for all the right reasons. If you like adventure, action, suspense, and truly original people, this is it. If you liked the adventure stories ... Read More

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