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The quantity alone was overwhelming, but as Milt brought
the camera in for close-ups we found the condition even more astonishing. We
could even read the dates on coins that seemed, unbelievably, as if they had
left the mint the day before. As we stared at this unbelievable sight, it
seemed impossible that the world that gave birth to this treasure was now gone
forever.
The tumult and the drama of the violent sinking, the slow
wash of the sea, and the entropy of its surroundings had created a bizarre and
fragile environment. It appeared inert, but we knew the ship's timbers and iron
were being slowly ravaged by the inexorable dance of the ages: degradation and
decay. Yet amid this imperceptible drama of collapse, the gold rested like a
timeless, unchanging centerpiece. A million years from now the wood would be
consumed by bacteria, the iron rusted away, and most artifacts gone. Still
glistening under a heavy blanket of sediment, the gold once buried amid this
benthic chaos would be all that remained.
By the time we saw it, much
of the gold had fallen into curious arrangements. Early on, Nemo's cameras
found a mysterious tower of 300 double eagle gold pieces standing alone,
unsupported. The coins had been cemented together by a light glaze of sea salts
and rust, a miniature golden, organic architecture resisting the constant push
of gentle seafloor currents. We delighted in our early sightings. A range of
early pioneer coins carried the distinctive mark of long-defunct assayers such
as Moffat & Company and Wass, Molitor & Company-the lettering worn from
jingling in the pockets of miners long dead. Coins were encrusted in the shape
of wooden boxes that had rotted away or lay scattered as if they had only just
settled quietly in the timbers.
In one place at the site, a remarkable
cluster of eight gold coins (five double eagles, including one from the San
Francisco Mint, and three eagles, mostly from private mints), a small ingot,
and ten pieces of silver awaited discovery. As in the coin tower, rust derived
from more than 750 tons of iron in the ship had bonded the mass together in the
Central America's alien environment. In the center of one side of this
accretion, a rare $10 gold piece from the private mint of Dubosq & Co.-one
of fewer than ten known examples-had fallen free many decades ago. Exotic ocean
art.
Despite our exhilaration and wonder, a magnificent
gravity-perhaps radiating from the beauty, silence, and the timelessness of the
scene-underscored the overpowering significance of the find. We knew we were
looking at the wealth of early California, the hopes and dreams of true
pioneers, a thousand stories of the 19th-century America, and of tragedy and
success.
We also knew that no other quantities of California gold
still existed in original form. The gold we encountered was "priceless" not only
because of its extraordinary intrinsic value, but also because of its history
and uniqueness. This was the very gold that drew people to California and
fueled the nation's economy in the mid-19th century. It was the same gold that
passengers cast onto the decks of the Central America in the panic of the storm
and that bankers in New York had been awaiting so anxiously in September 1857.
Part of our American heritage, this was history in the form of a national
treasure. And we had found it.
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