The S.S. Central America was a beautiful side wheeler, 300 feet long, steam powered with coal, as well as sail, and was jet black. Her decks were scrubbed smooth and shiny, and the deckhouses were naturally finished with marine varnish. She had a red stripe below her deck, which ran along her entire length. When she was under sail, her splendid tall masts, held and flew billowing white sails. When she wasn’t proceeding under wind power, below decks there were two enormous steam engines with pistons that traveled ten feet from top of stroke to bottom. The side paddle wheels were three stories high. A fine ship.
She ran a regular route from New York to Cuba, and then on to Panama. Since there was no Panama Canal in 1857, the Central America deposited passengers and freight at Panama. They traveled across the isthmus and boarded another ship on the western side, proceeding then to San Francisco. The gold rush was on, and freight and passenger traffic and cargo was heavy. The Central America, on her return trip to New York, carried much gold, which had been minted at the new San Francisco Mint. The trip from Panama to New York was scheduled for five days, and when she left Havana at 9:25AM, on September 8, 1857, heading for Cape Florida, the weather was fine, with moderate breezes and smooth sea. She was loaded with people and gold.
Captain William Herndon was 43, slight, balding, married, and had one daughter. His red beard made him look like a professor or banker, rather than a sea captain. He had been at sea for 29 years, and was a skilled mariner. On the morning of the second day out, Second Officer James Frazer said in his log that there were, “fresh breezes, whitecaps, and a 20 knot wind.” Cape Florida was seen fifteen miles to the west. They had run 288 miles from Havana in 26 1/2 hours. By afternoon, there was a change. The wind continued to rise, and the waves lifted the steamer’s bow higher and higher, before dropping her into the oncoming sea. Passengers were becoming alarmed and seasick. Even the ship’s doctor became seasick.
“When twilight came, if it could be called twilight, there was a raging storm such as we had never seen before. The waves and sky were crashing together,” wrote seaman Manlove. That night, the wind continued, and the rains began. Captain Herndon turned the ship away from the shore and headed toward Cape Hatteras The steam engines also ran bilge pumps, which kept the holds from flooding, and chief engineer George Ashby, discovered that the ship had sprung a leak. The bilge pumps were unable to keep up with the increasing flow of water. To move the coal from the coal bins to the boiler room, coal heavers pushed wheelbarrows full of coal to the firemen, who fed the boilers. The captain ordered the wheelbarrows abandoned, and ordered a continuous chain of men to feed coal in buckets from the bins to the firemen. Needing more, the captain ordered the dining room staff to also move coal from the bins to the firemen. Everyone was so sick, that no one wanted food anyway. No matter how much they tried with chains of buckets, it was not enough to keep the mighty boilers’ steam pressure adequate, and pressure dropped precipitously. The paddle wheels mover ever more slowly. The sails had been blown away in the raging storm, and steam power was all that was left.
Finally, the water became so high, that it flooded the coal room, and passers were waist-deep in water. It then reached the starboard boiler, and passengers heard a hiss from water meeting a hot firebox. The ship was leaning, and water even came through portholes. Some of the staterooms were waist deep in water. The starboard boilers were soon flooded, and then the port fires were extinguished with rising water. The hurricane continued. The Central America had been leaking for hours, and there were no more sails or engines. The captain then said that everyone must help. Buckets and containers of all sorts were rounded up and pressed into service. Men took off their coats and began bailing water. Soon the women too began doing what they could to help keep the ship afloat.
At 7PM, nearly every man on the ship, over 500 in all, were either in a bailing line, or helping run the manual deck pumps. The hurricane continued, and the bailing never stopped. Hand to hand, the water filled buckets were passed up the gangway. Men grew wearier and wearier. Captain Herndon continued to visit the bailing lines, and urged everyone to continue their efforts. At daylight, it seemed as though they would win, but the storm returned, and all knew they would sink.
A two-masted brig, the Marine, departed Cuba about the same time as did the Central America. It too was suffering greatly from the hurricane, but she still floated. Aboard the Central America, Captain Herndon had lookouts scanning the horizon. One lookout suddenly shouted, “Sail Ho,” meaning that a dot on the horizon may mean salvation. The captain ordered all guns fired to attract attention, and soon the Marine hove to along side of the sinking Central America. Soon, another ship, the El Dorado came into view and also took some of the passengers aboard, but neither rescue ship could take all, and as is the rule of the sea, it was “women and children first.” The Central America sank, taking hundreds of lives and all the gold. Of late, the sunken ship has been located, and the gold is being recovered.
What’s the point of this story, which is true? It seems to me that the governments throughout the world are bailing, bailing, bailing, with buckets full of paper money, in order to keep their respective ships of state afloat. They long ago abandoned true money backing of their currencies which is gold and silver, and sailed off into the briny deep. Sure enough, a storm has come about, and the waves are getting higher and deeper. The storm is huge deficits, wasteful spending, and progressive lack of confidence in all paper monies. The Central America was a fine ship, and stood a lot of punishment before she went down. The dollar has been a fine currency, and stood a lot of battering, until she sprung a leak in 1971, when Nixon removed the final, small gold backing. Since then, she has been at the mercy of various ship of state captains, treasury secretaries, inept Congress, inane Presidents, and grabbing voters who always clamor for more largess from the public treasury. In other words, it has been not “bail, bail, bail,” but “print, print, print.”
Is Humpty Dumpty about to fall off the wall? Can all the kings’s men put it back together again, if all confidence is lost, as has happened hundreds of times in history? Not likely. What will happen, is simply that a new, unbacked currency will probably be run off the presses. “Liberties?” “Freedoms?” Will the new one have any value? No, but I do know that eventually all this “printing, printing, printing,” will cause the buck’s fate, to be as those hurricane waves did to the Central America, and literally sink it. The bailers are getting tired, and the water is up to the poop deck. John Q. Public is increasingly looking askance at all printed fiat currencies. When will the blind faith in the fiat dollar come to an end? Who knows, but its purchasing power has already shrunk by 98%. Why wait till it becomes even more of a laughing stock? As the dollar fades, gold and silver glow, as if by phosphorescence. Protect yourself.