| Author | Subject: Re: central america |
| Martin Bayerle | Posted At 11:43:14 04/15/2001
Hello, Mickey, I'm interested in why you captioned your post at our forum "Central America," which, of course, is another shipwreck. From what I understand, the total recovered there may be about $110 million. Not too shabby. If, and I repeat, IF the Republic carries her fabled cargo, we should be able to top that. But nothing succeeds like success, and one cannot deny Tommy Thompson's feat. However, although he had technological hurdles to overcome, he was working with a well known and established loss. His greatest difficulty was finding the wreck. Once found, and with an established cargo to recover, his salvage progressed. We, on the other hand, are working with a far more illusive cargo, possibly a ghost cargo, which may be only a rumor. Thompson also considered the Republic, but he could not establish the cargo. He settled on the Central America as a more likely success. I had both the Central America and Titanic on my list (in the early 80s) as my next projects, but here I remain. To date, we've recovered hundreds of artifacts, but no gold. The difficulty is that we're looking for about 3 cubic yards of gold coins in (or more likely UNDER) what is the equivalent of a 70 story collapsed building. For example, if you consider the tragic Oklahoma Murrah Federal Office Building bombing, a nine story building reduced to rubble. There you had several hundred workers, multiple heavy duty cranes, bulldozers, jackhammers, etc., etc. at the surface - and it took approximately 3 months to excavate that site. Now, take the equivalent amount of debris, put it under 260 feet of sea water, place it in one of the most treacherous areas of the North Atlantic, have one 100 ton crane and put two divers out a diving bell - and you'll get a sense of the complexity. In the case of the Central America, a good part of Thompson's recovery was exposed at or near the surface due to the deterioration of a predominantly wooden vessel. We have to contend with a monster, and a rumor. Thanks for the inquiry. Martin Bayerle |