Ohio Treasure Hunters Keep $1-Billion Haul

A federal judge Tuesday awarded a small group of scientists and investors from Columbus, Ohio, sole ownership of the richest sunken treasure in history--more than $1-billion worth of bullion and coins from the gold fields of California.

The ruling gives Columbus-America Discovery Group title to all gold and other artifacts recovered from the SS Central America, which sank in a hurricane 160 miles off the coast of the Carolinas in 1857.

The ship went down in 1 1/2 miles of water, taking 425 lives and carrying three tons of gold to the bottom.

U.S. District Judge Richard B. Kellam in Norfolk, Va., rejected claims by nine insurance companies that they had a right to the treasure because they had insured some of it at the time of the wreck. He also denied assertions by Columbia University and two individuals that they had provided information that helped locate the ship.

“We were just ecstatic about the ruling,” Thomas G. Thompson, the scientist and expedition leader, said in a telephone interview from the ship where he has been directing the second recovery effort at the site.

The first haul was brought to port in Norfolk last summer. The treasure included uncirculated coins from the U.S. Mint in San Francisco and rare examples of privately minted gold and gold bars weighing as much as 62 pounds each. The first installment alone was valued at $1 billion or more.

As soon as word of the find spread, insurance companies filed claims in court asserting ownership because they said they had paid claims on the cargo. Their lawyers said that the gold was never lost or abandoned, despite resting on the ocean bottom for 132 years.

But Kellam said that the companies had produced no documents showing that they insured the gold and he said the treasure had been abandoned anyway because the companies had never tried to recover it.

He ruled that the treasure rightfully belongs to Thompson and his colleagues, who had used sophisticated new techniques to locate the wreck and spent millions of dollars developing new deep-ocean equipment to recover the gold.

The Thompson team’s effort began with the gathering of all personal accounts of the sinking that could be found, then subjecting those accounts to computer analysis and correlating them with maps, meteorological and navigational records from 1857, including data on the earth’s rotation. The results narrowed the likely resting place to 1,400 square miles off the coast of the Carolinas.

For 40 days in the summer of 1986, the team’s research vessel searched the ocean bottom in that area with special sonar equipment until an image flashed on the screen that appeared to be the Central America. Analysis over the winter led to the conclusion that the ship indeed had been located. And in the summer of 1987, the team brought up its first artifact from the wreck.

Thompson and his crew of 25 learned of the ruling Tuesday morning after working all night to recover more gold from the wreck. Last year, the treasure was brought aboard the ship as it was found. But this summer, security concerns caused the group to devise another method. The treasure is being stored in one spot on the ocean floor and will be hauled up and transferred to land aboard a carefully guarded ship later.

“There’s a lot of concern about piracy,” said Thompson, who declined to discuss how much gold has been recovered this summer.

Barry Schatz, a partner in the group, said that none of the gold will be sold until the recovery effort is completed, probably in the fall of 1991. Weather limits the salvage operation to three or four months in summer and early fall.

“Nobody knows the ultimate value of this treasure because there has never been another find like this,” said Schatz, noting that negotiations also are under way for a movie about the search.

The court ruling will make millionaires of the scientists and the investors who financed the $10-million search. But Thompson said that the judge’s decision also opens the way for increased exploration of the ocean bottom by establishing the rights of private individuals to treasure discovered in the open sea.

“This ruling means there is a lot less risk for people who want to do explorations in the deep ocean, whether it’s for treasure or minerals,” said Thompson.