Revisiting the SS Central America search

In 1857, while carrying passengers and gold from California to New York, the SS Central America sank in a hurricane, taking some three tons of gold bars and coins to the ocean bottom almost 8,000 ft below. Some 425 people, including the captain of the ship, lost their lives. In 1989, after three summers of effort at sea, the Columbus America Discovery Group recovered one ton of gold bars and coins from the wreck. This paper reviews the analysis that was performed to produce the probability distribution used to plan the successful search for the wreck and critiques that analysis based on information obtained in the years since the original 1992 article was written on this topic. This paper also provides an update on the legal battles and the disposition of the recovered gold.