Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. recently wrapped up recovery efforts on the wreck of the SS Central America for the year. In last five months, they have recovered more than 15,500 gold and silver coins, 45 gold bars and hundreds of nuggets, jewelry and other artifacts from the wreck, which lies in 7,200 feet of water, 200 miles off the Carolina coast.  After repairs and study of the data collected thus far, Odyssey plans to return to the site in 2015.

Odyssey got the contract to salvage the cargo of the SS Central America from a court appointed receiver representing investors in a venture once lead by Tommy Thompson, which located the wreck in 1988.  Therein hangs a tale of Tommy Thompson and his “plague of gold.”

In September of 1857, the 280′ sidewheel steamer SS Central America sank in a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas.  Over 400 of her 600 passengers and crew drowned and her cargo, estimated to be between 3 and 21 tons of gold from the California gold rush, sank with the ship in deep water. The loss of the what became known as the “Ship of Gold” contributed to the Panic of 1857, as gold intended for overextended New York banks never arrived.

In 1988, after an almost decade long search, the Columbus-America Discovery Group, led by Tommy Thompson,  located the wreck and began retrieving gold bars and coins using a specially designed ROV. In 1989, they returned to port in Norfolk with gold and artifacts estimated to be worth over $100 million.

Thompson and his venture were immediately sued by 39 insurance companies which had paid claims on the ship. In 1996 the lawsuits were resolved and Thompson’s group was awarded 92% of the value of the cargo. in 2000 some of the recovered gold was sold for a reported $50 million.  Unfortunately, the investors  in the project received nothing and Thompson began acting erratically, becoming a recluse in his Vero Beach, FL mansion.

In 2005, Thompson was sued by several of the investors who had provided $12.5 million in financing, and in 2006 by several members of his crew, over a lack of returns for their respective investments.  Thompson went into hiding in 2012 and is currently sought, along with assistant Alison Antekeier, by US Marshals to provide an accounting of the expedition profits. Thompson’s face is now appearing on wanted posters and billboards.

As reported by USA Today:

One of the last times anyone ever saw Tommy Thompson, he was walking on the pool deck of a Florida mansion wearing nothing but eye glasses, leather shoes, black socks and underwear, his brown hair growing wild.

It was a far cry from the conquering hero who, almost two decades before, docked a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, loaded with what’s been described as the greatest lost treasure in American history — thousands of pounds of gold that sat on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for 131 years after the ship carrying it sank during a hurricane.

… As for [Gil] Kirk, Thompson’s friend, the treasure hunter remains an American hero, “like the Wright brothers,” he says. “There’s no telling what he would have done by now.”

The tragedy, as he sees it, is that Thompson’s dream became his doom.

“Tommy used the word, what’s the word?” Kirk says. “Plague of the gold.”