Gold-rush steamer SS Pacific found with $5 million treasure

Looks like the gold rush isn’t over.

A famed treasure ship — carrying a near $5 million in current value — that was lost to the Pacific Ocean in the 1800s has been found by a pair of nautical sleuths, the Daily Mail reported.

The SS Pacific, an iconic vessel captained by Jefferson Davis Howell — brother-in-law to Confederate president Jefferson Davis — sunk off the coast of Cape Flattery in Washington State in 1875. On a voyage from British Columbia to San Francisco, she collided with another ship known as the Orpheus after a second mate onboard the latter mistook the Pacific’s lights for that of a nearby lighthouse.

The tragedy in the water — the deadliest at the time for the western states — took 325 lives as the ship sunk to the ocean’s bottom with $180,000 in gold. The Orpheus reached shore before sinking later that night and its crew managed to disembark safely.

For more than a century, the Pacific’s whereabouts was a mystery until two men, Matthew McCauley and Jeff Hummel from the Northwest Shipwreck Alliance finally spotted the sunken treasure steamboat.

They had seen two circular depressions — thought to be the steamer’s wheel paddles — in the seabed not far off from the site of the wreck. It is something that the Alliance anticipated in their elaborate search, according to spokesperson Philip Drew.

“The site required close and repeated examination with side scan sonar lines and remotely operated underwater vehicle dives to gather enough data and evidence,” he said. “Sure enough, we were able to image both paddle wheels with sonar and view the uncovered portion of them with the ROV in a nearby debris field.”

Although the Pacific’s precise location has yet to be publicly announced, the Alliance said it is roughly 23 miles offshore at a depth between 1,000 and 2,000 feet. The organization was granted exclusive salvage rights from a judge recently, according to the Mail.

“The discovery was more of a slow realization than an a-ha moment,” Drew said. “And there’s still years of hard work ahead to excavate the wreck, taking the appropriate care to recover and preserve artifacts.”

Rather than plunder the lost gold, the Alliance instead wants to open a museum putting artifacts from the ship onto display. However, first there will be a legal window for descendants of those associated with the Pacific to claim ownership of parts recovered.

“We believe the wreck is in an incredible state of preservation and so we expect and hope that the artifacts we recover will have considerable historical significance,” Drew said. “We’re also very much connected to the stories of all those who perished on the fateful day in 1875, which tempers our celebration of this discovery.”

Only two people survived the tragedy, according to the Mail. The ship was carrying members of the region’s elite in addition to miners returning home for the winter as well as 41 people designated as “Chinamen.”

No human remains have been found at the site of the Pacific and it is unlikely any will be sighted because of the powerful currents of the northwest Pacific, according to the Alliance.