A ripping true tale of danger and discovery at sea." - Washington Post "An old-fashioned seafaring adventure, awash in time and vigor. a complex, bittersweet history of two centuries of American entrepreneurship, linked by the mad quest for gold." - Entertainment Weekly "A twenty-four-carat sea classic." - New York Times Book Review Gary Kinder has the skill to put it all together, and luckily for us, we get to read it." - Los Angeles Times A marvelous tale, with generous portions of history, adventure, intrigue, heroism, and high technology interwoven. The result is an extraordinary narrative of human drama, heroic rescue, scientific ingenuity, and individual courage. Kinder chronicles Thompson's epic battles with naysayers, violent weather, experimental technology, the harsh environment of the deep ocean, and unscrupulous rival treasure hunters. As the target for his impossible quest, Thompson chose the wrecksite and fabled treasure of the Central America. Combining historical adventure and scientific discovery, Gary Kinder re-creates the ill-fated voyage, and then tells the story of Tommy Thompson, a young engineer from Ohio who, in the 1980s, set out to be the first ever to work on the bottom of the deep ocean. It remains the worst peacetime disaster at sea in American history. Despite the heroic efforts of the captain and his crew, the ship, over four hundred lives, and twenty-one tons of California gold were lost. In September 1857, the SS Central America, a steamer carrying nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California Gold Rush, was caught in a hurricane two hundred miles off the Carolina coast. The 20th-anniversary edition of Gary Kinder's bestselling dramatic story of shipwreck, treasure lost and found, and a new chapter in deep-sea technologyįrom bestselling author Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea is a "ripping true tale of danger and discovery at sea" ( Washington Post), newly updated for this special 20th-anniversary edition.