Explorers believe they have found the sunken remains of an 1860s steamer that could yield the richest cargo ever recovered from a shipwreck: thousands of gold coins worth as much as $180 million.
The S.S. Republic was carrying 59 passengers and 20,000 $20 gold coins from New York to New Orleans when it sank in a hurricane off Savannah, Ga., on Oct. 25, 1865, according to newspaper accounts and other historical records.
Odyssey, a publicly traded company founded in the mid-1990s, has a number of shipwreck search projects in various stages. Stemm and Morris have performed only one other deep-water excavation, that of a Spanish wreck in the Dry Tortugas that yielded about $5 million in gold and thousands of artifacts.
There is just something about treasure that captures the imagination.
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