TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 13

 

Anyone who has experienced rough weather at sea knows it can be hard to keep the dishes on the table. Gravity and "which-way-is-up" is variable at sea. Throughout the S.S. Central America shipwreck site we found broken plates, saucers, and other ceramics, testimony to the violence of the hurricane and the waves that battered the steamer.

Passenger Almira Kittredge heard a story about the tumbling dishes, "The tables were set on Friday, and some of the passengers – mostly second cabin passengers – had taken dinner, when the captain called up all hands to help in bailing. Two little girls, Miss Lockwood and Miss Pahud, got their dinner, nevertheless, and had a very merry time over it. The sea tossed the steamer about very violently, but the girls laughingly told us how they had braced themselves, to the table and ate away. When the dishes flew about smashing and crashing as they fell to the floor, the girls laughed merrily, thinking it was rare sport. They were decidedly jolly, little realizing the danger in which they stood."

New York Herald, Sept. 27, 1857

This broken wash basin, once used by cabin passengers to refresh and clean up, settled right next to the commercial shipment as the shipwreck collapsed. It achieved "celebrity status" by appearing in many photographs of the gold.

 

In several spots around the shipwreck, we encountered clusters of bottles, obvious vestiges of drink stored and ready for the passengers on this prestigious and well-stocked steamship. Here is what remains of one such case, a group of nine bottles fanned across a spot in the debris field of the shipwreck. From the shape of the bottles, it is likely that this was a case of whiskey. We see only nine out of a normal case of a dozen, so three had probably been consumed.

 

Other artifacts provide the historical record and context for the boxes of whiskey, wine and beer that now populate the debris. Purser William Hull of the S.S. Central America kept a stack of passenger ticket receipts bundle up in his safe. We opened the safe and recovered the contents during the 2014 expedition.

The passenger ticket receipts show "fine print" in the lower left corner, describing certain onboard rules, offerings and financial expectations.

 

It seems that the whiskey we saw in 2014, guarded by its starfish Steward, was once available "at a moderate price."

Remember, it gets dark after 11.

 

This tight grouping of coins appeared in September of 1988, shortly after we found the shipwreck.

We recovered Coin Pile #1 on May 9, 2014, this deposit of treasure that I had been thinking about for over a quarter century. Then we learned its true nature and what it had to tell us.

As the sun set on September 12, 1857, the situation on board the S.S. Central America was hopeless, so far as saving the ship was concerned. Lifeboats had ferried the women and children to rescue by the brig Marine, which had been carrying a cargo of molasses from Cuba. As it grew dark, the lower deck levels filled with water, and the swelling seas battered the foundering vessel. The stern was settling faster, so this sent hundreds of men crowding forward toward the bow, clutching their last precious possessions: their money, their jewelry, and their photographs.

There were scenes of despair, as some men threw coins into the sea, or dumped gold dust on the deck, knowing that the wealth they valued was worthless at that moment, in fact a dangerous weight that would drag them down. Finally, the ship lurched at a sharper angle and was engulfed by the sea. A whole host of men dropped their belts, bags, and satchels of gold onto the deck as the ship dropped from beneath them.

The ship remained upright during a spiraling 7,200-foot fall that last about half an hour. The ship's main and mizzen mast and rigging acted a little like a squirrel's tail, dragging through the deepening water, adjusting the sinking ship to where the bow was declined. Although it sank stern first, it impacted the bottom bow first, slightly listed to port. The impact at 3 knots made the ship forward of the central engineworks explode like a water balloon, the hydraulic force blowing the decks and even the boilers and water tanks over into a large portside debris field. This included the parcels of gold men had dropped on the foredeck.

Let's have a closer look at this parcel, Coin Pile #1, and see what it has to say. When we picked up these coins in 2014, I immediately noticed a difference, compared with what we had recovered from the commercial shipment in the earlier expeditions. From the haphazard pattern of the pile, I think it is likely that these coins, sixty-two $20 gold pieces, along with a long loop of gold chain, were the contents of a bag or purse that was dropped on the deck as the ship sank.

The commercial shipment's coins were mostly U.S. $20 double eagles, thousands upon thousands of them. This is where the similarity ends. The original owner of this bag was a wealthy man, traveling with other wealthy people. A $20 coin was not very useful in day-to-day transactions. (A modern analogy might be a $500 bill, if there still was one.) It is likely that this man was a merchant, or at least someone who needed $20 gold pieces. But he was probably not from San Francisco. As we spread the pieces from this pile on the black rubber mats of the exam table, I immediately noticed something different. I had personally examined and curated over 6,800 double eagles from the commercial shipment, and I thought I knew what to expect from a group of only sixty-some. But among the dozens of Liberty Heads there sat the billboard face of an Assay Office $20.

The design didn't surprise me, but the size did. I had seen this sort of device on close to 200 $10 pieces made by Augustus Humbert or the successor Assay Office, coins that we recovered during the earlier expeditions. We found a whole box of privately-minted $10 coins in the commercial shipment, but not one single Assay Office $20. So, as I began examining the new recovery, cold, wet and glistening in front of me, I was smiling. This was clearly something new.

Quickly, I noticed that there were numerous other pioneer twenties, a lot of Kelloggs. I counted them up. Ten! We had found only 9 in the entire commercial shipment. There was also Moffat $20. Again, not something previously seen in the commercial shipment.

 

When the tally was finished, the sixty-two $20 coins broke down as follows: (numbers of coins in parentheses)

US Mints:
1857-S (23), 1856-S (7), 1855-S (7), 1854 (2), 1853 (6), 1852 (2), 1851 (2), 1850 (1)

Pioneer/Private Mints:
1855 Kellogg (4), 1854 Kellogg (6), 1853 Moffat (1), 1853 Assay (1)

So, who was the passenger who dropped his bag of coins onto the foredeck as the ship sank?

To read the complete article, see:
Treasure Talk 13: Shipwreck Scenes of History (https://finestknown.com/treasure-talk-13-shipwreck-scenes-of-history/)

For the complete series, see:
Category Archives: Treasure Talk with Bob Evans (https://finestknown.com/treasure-talk-with-bob-evans/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n12a12.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 2.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n13a17.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 2.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n14a15.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 3.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n15a16.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 3.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n17a16.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 4.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n18a13.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 4.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n19a20.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 5.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n22a13.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 5.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n23a16.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 6.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n27a14.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 6.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n30a21.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 7.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n32a16.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 7.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n40a15.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 8 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n42a21.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 9 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n49a19.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 10.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v28/esylum_v28n51a17.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 10.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n01a09.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 11 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n04a13.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 12.1 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n08a15.html)
TREASURE TALK WITH BOB EVANS, EPISODE 12.2 (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n08a16.html)

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