In September 1857, SS "Central America", a side-wheel steamer carrying 500 passengers and tons of gold from California, sank in a hurricane 200 miles off the Carolina coast and was lost in legend for more than a century. Its tragic story resurfaced in 1989, when Tommy Thompson, an ocean engineer, sailed into Norfolk harbour with over ten tons of pioneer gold. Using oceanography, computer science and information theory to sift through historical records and penetrate the deep sea, Thompson's team had recovered perhaps the greatest treasure ever found. This book presents an historical record of the initial disaster, rendered in detail from contemporary accounts, and a chronicle of the technological breakthrough in which deep-sea robots were developed to perform heavy, delicate and complex work one-and-a-half miles below sea level. It describes how a team of scientists and engineers, the Columbus-America Discovery Group, battled against massive storms, technological challenges and intrusive salvagers to succeed in their quest.