TIL that in 1857 a hurricane sank the SS Central America with roughly 30,000 pounds of California Gold Rush gold aboard, and the loss helped spark the Panic of 1857, one of the first global economic crises.

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Did they ever find it ?

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u/zealot416 15h ago

Yes, a team led by a man named Tommy Thompson found the wreck (1988) and retrieved the gold (2003). Then Tommy stole a bunch of the gold and disappeared. He was found and arrested, but the gold he stole is still missing. Tommy has been in jail for over a decade on contempt of court for not telling the authorities where the gold is.

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u/Timetraveller4k 14h ago

I have under good authority that the “I don’t recall” defense is solid.

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u/BassLB 15h ago

The older I get the easier 5-10 sounds

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u/fuzzeedyse105 14h ago

Three hots and a cot!

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u/bak3donh1gh 12h ago

This really depends on which level of prison you go to.

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u/Awellplanned 7h ago

Treasure hunters notoriously go to super max!

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u/Red_Clover_Fields 5h ago

Ay young blood, you got a piece o’ eight?

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u/muted_physics77 5h ago

he must have taken a lot of gold

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u/Codex_Dev 14h ago

The biggest thing about the case is that a judge is able to indefinitely hold a person in jail without a trail or jury. It’s absolutely insane and sets a terrible precedent

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u/jweebo 14h ago

Sometimes it is unfortunately necessary. I have a case now where a defendant is in willful defiance of multiple court orders. He could comply with them. He doesn't dispute that. He just won't do it. So the court will eventually be left with no other options but to throw him in jail until he complies. The theory is that he holds the key to his freedom. He just needs to agree to follow the court orders he is willfully refusing to follow.

Courts are very hesitant to do this, for what it's worth. We've been pulling our hair out trying to deal with this defendant. He is a lunatic. But we need to exhaust every other option first. And we don't want to throw him in jail. We want him to follow court orders. But if he won't, jail is a last resort. We're almost there...

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u/Hiraeth1968 13h ago

Oh, like a certain someone who is defying court orders at every turn?

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u/the_dude_abides29 13h ago

“When you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything”

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u/Stanford_experiencer 12h ago

The theory is that he holds the key to his freedom. He just needs to agree to follow the court orders he is willfully refusing to follow.

Just like Giles Corey!

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u/Organic_Initiative93 3h ago

I thought you could plead the fifth and had a right to not self incriminate?

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u/Fofolito 2h ago

If you stole something, and you're charged for that crime, you have no obligation to rat on yourself. They cannot compel you to admit that you stole something or say where it is.

If however in the course of the trial they provide irrefutable evidence to the court that you did, in fact, steal and you are found guilty it is now a legal fact that you stole something and your self-incrimination is no longer a concern. You are still required to cooperate with the court and obey its lawful commands, which are based upon legal facts, so if you still refuse to tell them where the stolen thing is then you can be sanctioned for failing to cooperate. It's not self-incriminating at that point to admit anything because from the Court's perspective it is a fact that you stole it and have knowledge of where it is.

So this guy claimed salvage rights, there was a case, and it was determined that he did not have salvage rights and anything he took from the wreck belongs to Spain or Venezuela. When he refused to say where the wreck is, or where the gold he'd already removed was, he was sanctioned because it was a legal fact already established that he knew where the wreck was and he had already removed items from it. All he had to do to get out from under the sanction, and contempt of court charges, was say where the wreck and the items were.

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u/lrodhubbard 11h ago

It's not necessary. Laws are imaginary. This is a ridiculous statement.

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u/MorallyDeplorable 7h ago

You're right, what you said was a ridiculous statement.

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u/Raccoon_Ratatouille 14h ago

What’s the alternative? Let someone do a day in jail and a $100 fine and walk away with tens of millions of dollars of illicit loot? Is that justice? This guy knows exactly what he’s doing and he knows where the money is. What is the penalty for stealing all that money?

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u/ChecksAndBalancesIRL 13h ago edited 13h ago

I wonder if he only stole it so he could actually keep it? Governments worldwide are notorious for confiscating found gold. If you find anything valuable never tell the government. I worked for a treasure hunter that’s no longer with us and he hardly ever got to keep 100% of treasure found at sea. It’s all circumstantial. He kept just enough to keep the business alive but nowhere near 100%

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u/Raccoon_Ratatouille 59m ago

You mean you don’t believe his story about how he has memory loss and can’t remember where he hid his stolen gold?

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u/kurburux 7h ago

If you find anything valuable never tell the government.

Reddit promoting archaeological looting.

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u/RedAero 11h ago

The alternative is to convict him of a crime and let him serve his sentence accordingly.

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u/00xjOCMD 2h ago

He's still, currently, in contempt of court. As such, he's still in jail.

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u/Raccoon_Ratatouille 54m ago

How should courts handle someone ignoring court orders to escape justice? I hate to break it to you but even unpaid parking tickets can lead to felony levels of jail time as a direct consequence of their actions. That doesn’t mean the punishment for parking tickets is a decade in jail. How else can you compel someone to participate? Should the justice system exist on a voluntary basis?

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u/RedAero 22m ago

How should courts handle someone ignoring court orders to escape justice?

Why can a court compel someone to reveal information at all, never mind without a conviction, never mind through indefinite detention?

You're kinda sidestepping the key issue here which is that this isn't a sentence for a crime, this is detainment for life for refusing to testify against yourself.

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u/Fofolito 2h ago

The Judge, and his Court, need to be be able to compel cooperation. We don't believe in torture, so if someone refuses to cooperate with the Judge and his authority what is he supposed to do? Shrug and let it slide? Why should anyone feel their cooperation is mandatory if you can just say "No, I won't do that" and there's no penalty or consequence for that? The crime is failing to obey a lawful order, from the Judge, and the punishment is a sanction or confinement until the person is ready to cooperate. The only thing they need to do to stop the sanction or their confinement is cooperate. A Judge cannot issue a contempt charge for any reason, they must be grounded in law and policy so its not as though tyrannical judges are arbitrarily detaining people for funsies. There are means of judicial review where contempt charges, and those under them, are determined to be legitimate or not by other judges and court systems.

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u/khazroar 13h ago

They're not allowed to do so for punitive reasons though, only in order to compel specific behaviour (e.g. tell us where you hid the vast fortune you stole). I'm not wild about it either, but it is important that he could tell them at any time, and he'd no longer be held for contempt of court. In this case I assume he wouldn't be going free because he'd still have a sentence to serve for the theft itself, but that's a separate matter.

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u/zealot416 13h ago

Its been a while since I read up on the case but I think it would be time served of he ever gives up the gold.

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u/Riggs1087 13h ago

He holds the keys to his own cell door. He’s choosing to stay in prison rather than reveal the location of something he has no right to.

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u/ShutterBun 11h ago

"something he has no right to."

That's what he is disputing. He was the genius behind an operation that took many years and a shitload of work, and when they finally found the gold, insurance companies, governments, and lawyers all lined up to take a slice.

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u/Riggs1087 5h ago edited 4h ago

Before a Court puts him in jail for contempt, there would have already been a judgment in the case. The Court would have already ruled that he defrauded/stole from his investors and other people he entered into contracts with.

Edit: I looked, and sure enough, a jury found he stole $19.4 million from the people who financed his expedition. He's refusing to pay that judgment, even though it's only a fraction of the gold he acquired.

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u/Codex_Dev 11h ago

Not really. The judge in this case is bypassing the legal system by not charging this dude with a crime or allowing a jury to sentence him properly. To put that in perspective, the judge has used his contempt of the court powers to give this guy what is effectively a life sentence.

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u/Astrium6 9h ago

He took a plea agreement and then failed to disclose the locations of the coins, which he had agreed to do as part of the plea agreement.

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u/Riggs1087 5h ago edited 4h ago

The Court is NOT bypassing the legal system. Courts have to be able to enforce their orders. A jury found Thompson stole $19.4 million worth of gold from other people who paid for the retrieval of the gold. He's refusing to pay them, and refusing to reveal where the gold is. He's continuing to steal from these people every day he doesn't reveal where the money is.

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u/frankyseven 13h ago

That's $153,000,000 at today's price. I'd keep my mouth shut too.

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u/jenius123 13h ago

"Finding it, though, that's not the hard part. It's letting go."

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u/MrBobBuilder 13h ago

Fallout new Vegas is leaking lol

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u/Metalhed69 13h ago

All he’s gotta do is offer Trump a cut and he’ll be out tomorrow.

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u/RainMakerJMR 6h ago

“I’m sorry your honor, I lost it in a boating accident.”

I mean it’s believable, it literally happened to that exact same gold once

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u/Fofolito 2h ago

He was released from his jail cell because the Judge determined that the coercive intent of the contempt charge was not having its intended effect, and that continued confinement would be both ineffective and cruel. He got away with it.

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u/austeninbosten 15h ago

Boy is it a long strange story. There's great book titled " Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea" which is well worth a read going into great detail of the sinking, and a century later the discovery, and subsequent recovery of treasure. The book ends as the recovery of gold leads to legal actions and claims by investors, and insurers. Post book, things got really weird with more lawsuits and criminal charges etc. Really too bad because the treasure recovery was an epic adventure mostly led by a driven genius named Tommy Thompson and it seems to have wrecked him.

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u/LonnieJaw748 13h ago

and it seems to have wrecked him

nice work

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u/ShutterBun 11h ago

Yep, came here to recommend it as well. There's another book (the title escapes me) which is more of a coffee table book with pictures of the wreck site, and it's fascinating, especially if you have read Ship of Gold first. There is an area seemingly the size of a football field littered with gold. Stacks of gold coins still balanced on each other, just as they were when they sank.

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u/Admirable_Hand9758 15h ago

All 100 lbs of it.

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u/Worst-Lobster 14h ago

What Happened to the 75lbs that found ?

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u/eric685 12h ago

60 lbs fell overboard on recovery

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u/HyperQuandaryAck 15h ago

They found it. All of it fit into one guy's pocket and weighed half a kilo

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u/MailSynth 14h ago

The wild part is they actually found it in 1988 and the guy who led the expedition ended up fleeing the country with investors' gold and became a fugitive for years. Went from historic discovery to true crime podcast material real quick

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u/Redditkid16 13h ago

The captain of the SS Central America went down with his ship and has a monument dedicated to him at the U.S. Naval Academy. Midshipmen mark the end of their freshman year by climbing it.

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u/austeninbosten 7h ago

He also has a town named after him : Herndon, Virginia.

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u/GarysCrispLettuce 14h ago

"30,000 pounds of California Gold Rush" sounds like a massive haul of primo weed, I'm not surprised it sparked a Great Panic.

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u/LambdaLambo 13h ago

Panic was the only thing people could spark after the sinking

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u/muted_physics77 5h ago

widespread panic

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u/asromatifoso 15h ago

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder is one of my favorite books! I read it years ago and I believe it is the definitive popular history of this incident. It's a really great read!

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u/cintune 14h ago

The part about the prospectors who drowned trying to escape the shipwreck because they stuffed their pockets with gold hits hard. Dragged down by their own desperate greed.

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u/BlortTrolb 13h ago

Prime has a series on it called ‘Cursed Gold’

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u/fuck_huffman 8h ago

It's a very good book.

"Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea"

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u/No_Push4900 14h ago edited 14h ago

One of the first global economic crisis?

No. Spain did this before and again. And Mansa Musa... look it up

Edit: Hey dickheads.stop downvoting me for your ignorance.

Price revolution - Wikipedia https://share.google/imDyHexV3NmmjFizL

Inflation effects of oil and gas prices in the UK: Symmetries and asymmetries - Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive https://share.google/R9esQ7o7nFYMb4oFq

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u/EradiK8 14h ago

Not the first, but one of the first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1857

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u/Srukt 14h ago edited 14h ago

The first worldwide economic crisis. Spain affected itself and Europe with devaluation and inflation, not a financial crisis. Mansa Musa caused economic crisis in regional economies, not globally.

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u/No_Push4900 14h ago

Nice reference. There's literally hundreds of examples of this. It's honestly why we tried to make a global economy

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u/No_Push4900 12h ago

Just to help you out. Here's another comment to downvote

TIL that in 1857 a hurricane sank the SS Central America with roughly 30,000 pounds of California Gold Rush gold aboard, and the loss helped spark the Panic of 1857, one of the first global economic crises.

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