Arctic Discoverer

In 1857, a wooden-hulled steamship named the SS Central America set out from New York, bound for Panama. On board were 578 passengers and crew, 38,000 pieces of mail, and 21 tons of gold, worth a few hundred million dollars today. Unable to withstand a brutal hurricane, the SS Central America sank 160 miles off the coast of South Carolina, losing 425 lives and all its precious gold. The shipwreck sits 8,000 feet deep. The ship was transporting gold worth hundreds of millions of dollars today, which was being brought in to prop up New York’s struggling banks. The loss was so great that it contributed to the Panic of 1857 – one of the world’s first truly global financial crises.

The Arctic Discoverer first launched in 1958 as the A.T. Cameron, a Canadian research trawler and icebreaker. The ship was decommissioned in 1981 before being put back into service the following year as the Arctic Ranger. In 1988, the veteran vessel was purchased by the Columbus-America Discovery Group, a salvage company headed by marine engineer and treasure hunter Tommy Thompson, who had assembled a team of experts to locate the legendary SS Central America, known as the “Ship of Gold.” After sourcing and purchasing the icebreaker, Thompson transformed the ship into a state-of-the-art deep ocean research and recovery vessel and rechristened it the R/V Arctic Discoverer.

Thompson was convinced he had a good idea where the wreck was located and needed a ship robust enough to carry the necessary equipment to pinpoint the location exactly, along with his 12,000-pound submersible robot, Nemo. Against all odds, Thompson set out in the summer of 1988 ready to find the lost treasure of the SS Central America. The exact location of the wreck was discovered on September 11, 1988, with the help of one of the world’s first marine global positioning systems, together with the Nemo robot. What they found inside would have repercussions that would last decades.

‘The bottom was carpeted with gold. Gold everywhere, like a garden,” Thompson said of the moment they located the treasure, according to Columbus Monthly, a magazine covering news in central Ohio. Thompson and his team went on to recover 3 tons of gold ingots, coins, and other valuable artifacts worth roughly $50 million. The news of the gold discovery caused a legal firestorm. Descendants of the insurance companies that had paid out 130 years earlier filed a claim in court, demanding their share. A total of 39 insurance companies filed suit against the Columbus-America Discovery Group. 

For the next several years, the R/V Arctic Discoverer continued to work at the shipwreck, examining new species of octopus and sharks, as well as excavating the gold as the legal battles continued. In 1996, the presiding judge awarded Thompson’s crew, the Columbus-America Discovery Group, 92% of the treasure. But by this point, Thompson owed 161 investors who had bankrolled the search and salvage operation. The remaining 8% of the treasure was awarded to the investors. They had paid Thompson $12.7 million to find the wreck and recover its cargo, but had seen zero return on their investment. Four years later, in 2000, Tommy Thompson found a buyer and sold 532 gold bars and thousands of coins to the California Gold Marketing Group for $50 million.

Two of the investors teamed up and sued Thompson in 2005. They were joined a year later by members of the crew, who claimed they had been cheated out of money as well. In 2012, a judge demanded Tommy Thompson appear in court regarding the legal cases against him. His lawyer appeared on his behalf and stated his client was at sea with no expected return date. Instead of turning himself in, Thompson and his then-girlfriend Alison Antekeier went on the run. The judge ordered U.S. Marshals to find Tommy Thompson. The R/V Arctic Discoverer was seized and sold at auction for $50,000. 

The buyer of the R/V Arctic Discoverer planned to strip the boat and sell it for scrap metal. A majority of the equipment and logs were auctioned off on eBay. The ship ended up docked at a marina in north Florida. Tommy Thompson was apprehended in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2015, only 70 miles from his last known residence. He and his girlfriend had been living on cash and staying in a $200-a-night hotel with more than $425,000 in cash. Following their arrest, the duo were extradited to Ohio and put in front of a judge. Antekeier received a 5 month sentence, which included a month in prison, two months house arrest and two months credit for time she’d already served on remand.

Thompson was questioned about the whereabouts of 500 missing gold coins, not to mention the $50 million he received in 2000. He told the judge the coins were being held in a trust in Belize, but would not disclose their precise location, much to the annoyance of the investors. As for the millions Thompson had received from the sale of the gold ingots and coins in 2000, his supporters reportedly claim he said that it had been spent on legal fees and outstanding loans. Unimpressed with his excuses, the judge sentenced Thompson to 2 years in prison and fined him $250,000. However, the sentence was delayed until Thompson revealed where the coins are and assists in recovering them. The coins are said to be worth up to $4 million, and their recovery would go a long way towards appeasing the out-of-pocket investors.

Thompson maintains that he does not know the whereabouts of the coins and was held in contempt of court as a result. He has been languishing in jail since 2015, trapped in a sort of legal limbo. As of 2025, he remains in prison. The case is highly unusual as the normal maximum limit for holding someone in contempt is 18 months, but a federal appeals court has ruled the limit does not apply in this situation. U.S. Marshals believe Thompson buried the gold after finding empty tubes at his abandoned mansion. The judge has fined him $1000 a day until he cooperates with the plea deal and answers questions on the whereabouts of the gold. Thompson is facing a bill of more than $2.7 million and counting.

In the meantime, salvage giant Odyssey Marine Exploration began busily locating and recovering more treasure from the SS Central America. The company was awarded a contract to salvage the wreck in 2014. In fact, Thompson reportedly only investigated around 5% of the shipwreck, leaving a staggering 95% of the site still to be explored. Since it started operation, Odyssey Marine Exploration has salvaged thousands of gold coins, ingots, and other precious items worth tens of millions of dollars. Intriguingly, a National Geographic documentary detailing Tommy’s rise and fall was released in 2024 titled Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal.

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