SS CENTRAL AMERICA: Destined for Disaster
“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same . . . DESTINED FOR DISASTER” - Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
It began on Ancestry.com. Casey Gauntt discovered that his third great-aunt and her baby daughter were among 161 survivors when the SS Central America sank in 1857 in the clutches of a hurricane, taking over five tons of California gold and 435 souls to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
While history tends to focus on the $500 million in sunken treasure discovered in 1988, some deeper digging revealed far more intriguing and little-known tales: the stories of some of the bravest, most adventurous, inventive, resilient, and fascinating Americans of their time or, for that matter, any time.
SS Central America: Destined for Disaster reconstructs that final, fateful voyage through the eyes of those who were there. People who lived, thrived, loved, and died as a young nation came of age during the Gold Rush, Great Migration West, and the Civil War. It explores the lives they lived before, and for the lucky few, how their stories unfolded after.
A crew member who had survived three previous shipwrecks and was the last to be pulled out of the water, nine days later. The seasoned skipper of the brig Marine who heroically rescued all 60 of the women and children on board. The 18-year-old mother whose goldminer husband went down with the ship, and became a nurse during the Civil War and a good friend of the 21st President of the United States.
This is a visceral examination of the sea as the great equalizer; how facing an endless ocean reveals courage, cowardice, and survival instincts in their purest and most primitive forms.
It presents probing questions: what would I have done? Would I have waited my turn for a seat in a lifeboat? Could I have survived in the ocean an hour, a day, five days or more without giving up or going crazy?
The fact is we can’t know until we’ve been put into a situation where death introduces herself. But in Destined for Disaster you’ll gain insight into those thoughts, fears, and feelings, told through the souls aboard the Ship of Gold.
