The Ship of Gold: The Sinking of the SS Central America

On September 3, 1857, the SS Central America left the port of Aspinwall — today's Colón, Panama — bound for New York City with 477 passengers and 101 crew. Under the command of William Lewis Herndon, a naval officer who had once explored the Amazon Valley, the ship carried 10 short tons of gold prospected during the California Gold Rush. It was a routine run along a well-worn route, one of many that had ferried fortune-seekers and their spoils between the coasts since the rush began.

Routine ended on September 9, when the ship sailed into a Category 2 hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas. By September 11, winds of 105 miles per hour had shredded her sails and driven heavy seas over her decks. Water poured through a leaking seal where a paddle wheel shaft met the hull, and by noon the boiler could no longer keep steam pressure up. The bilge pumps shut down. The paddle wheels that had kept her bow into the wind stopped turning, and the ship began to settle by the stern.

Herndon's crew flew the ship's flag upside down — the American distress signal — hoping a passing vessel would see it. None did. Through the night, passengers and crew formed a bucket brigade, bailing water by hand in a losing fight against the rising tide inside the hull. During a brief lull as the eye of the hurricane passed overhead, men tried desperately to restart the boiler. They failed, and the second half of the storm struck with the same fury as the first.

By the morning of September 12, the ship was powerless, adrift in the storm's grip. Two vessels appeared on the horizon, including the brig Marine, and about 100 passengers — mostly women and children — were ferried off in lifeboats. But the winds and seas kept pulling Central America and most of her people away from any hope of rescue. At eight o'clock that evening, she sank. Of the 578 souls aboard, 425 were lost, Herndon among them, going down with his ship. A Norwegian barque, the Ellen, later pulled 50 more survivors from the water, and three others were found in a lifeboat more than a week afterward.

The scale of the loss of life stunned the nation, described at the time as having no parallel among American maritime disasters. But the financial loss mattered too: the gold aboard was valued at roughly $8,000,000 in 1857 dollars — worth an estimated $2.4 billion today — and its disappearance from the economy helped trigger the Panic of 1857. The ship itself had been valued at $140,000, far more than most vessels lost in disasters of that era. Herndon's memory endured: two US Navy ships were later named USS Herndon, as was the town of Herndon, Virginia. Two years after his death, his daughter Ellen married Chester Alan Arthur, who would become the 21st President of the United States.