This is the steamship Pulaski.
Wow, look at this.
[dramatic music playing]
A second engineer poured very cold water
into a boiling copper boiler...
- [explosion] - ...and created a bomb.
We think that there was $100,000
face value of coins.
We translate that to today's value and that's roughly how much money?
It's in the tens of millions of dollars.
[dramatic music playing]
[Josh Gates] In the water.
What is this?
- This coin is worth $30,000 to $40,000? - Correct.
[Josh over radio] It's part of a ship!
It is a massive part of a ship!
It actually sort of gives you chills. I mean, it's eerie.
Holy [bleep]! Holy!
There's a gold coin in here. Look at this!
[dramatic music playing]
The year is 1838,
the age of the steam engine is in full roar.
Ocean journeys that once lasted weeks now take mere days.
A luxury available to anyone
who can afford the steep fare.
On the night of June 14th, the SS Pulaski,
a brand-new state-of-the-art sidewheel steamer
set sail out of Savannah, Georgia.
She is loaded with the city's wealthiest citizens
and some of their most valuable belongings
headed north for a summer in cooler climates.
As she passes about 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina,
the Pulaski suddenly suffers a catastrophic explosion.
Blasting her sidewheels clear off their axle
and turning the entire midsection of the ship into splinters.
Those passengers who don't die instantly
watched the ship crack in half and sink.
Nearly 130 lives are lost.
It's been called the Titanic of the south.
And for almost two centuries
the shipwreck's location has remained a maritime mystery.
That is until a group of salvage experts
recently discovered what they believe to be the Pulaski's boiler.
Now, using top-of-the-line technology
they're launching a new mission
to find the rest of the ship.
But there's another prize.
It's believed the ship was carrying
more than $20 million worth of rare coins.
So, to help the team find the Pulaski and her cargo
I'll be facing deep water, rough conditions
and turbulent history.
So get ready
because adventure lies full steam ahead.
[horn tooting]
My name is Josh Gates.
Hello!
Explorer, adventurer...
This is sick.
Help!
...and a guy who ends up in some very strange situations.
Oh! [bleep]
Woo! That was exciting.
With a degree in archaeology and a passion for the unexplained...
[exclaims]
...I travel to the ends of the Earth,
investigating the greatest legends in history.
Okay, let's punch it.
This is Expedition Unknown.
[guitar music playing]
Wheels down. Savannah, Georgia.
[horn tooting]
The steamship Pulaski launched from these very docks
and 183 years later
the city remains a jewel of Southern preservation.
It's the kind of place that envelops you.
It sweeps you along with music and humidity.
A place of neatly landscaped squares
and stately mansions
resting under the moss covered arms of towering oaks.
This is the hostess city as she's long been known,
a place that makes you realize that you never knew what hospitality meant.
[both] We love Savannah!
[Josh] Oh, and the food.
I do declare.
The Lowcountry boil has been a staple here
for as long as folks have been pulling shrimp,
crab, clams and crawfish from the mouth of the Savannah River.
I'm gonna be here for awhile.
Can I get a bib?
In fact, from its founding in 1733
life in Savannah has always revolved around the water.
A history chronicled at the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum.
This mansion belonged to one of the owners of the Savannah.
The first steamship to cross the Atlantic.
Amidst the museum's galleries
I find New York Times best-selling author Patti Callahan,
who recently wrote a novel about one of the south's most tragic
and least known maritime accidents.
And, Josh, this is the steamship Pulaski.
[Josh] Wow.
[dramatic music playing]
When I was thinking early steamship
I wasn't thinking about something like this.
This thing looks like it was a behemoth.
This thing was over 200 feet long which is
more than twice the length of the ship that the colonists came over on.
I have to say, and I'm sort of embarrassed to say,
I have never heard this story.
You're embarrassed? I researched Savannah,
I write about Savannah
and I had never heard of the steamship Pulaski disaster.
You know, why isn't there a bigger historical record of this disaster?
Some stories were just lost to time.
[Josh] So I heard it referred to as the Titanic of the South.
Is that a fair analogy?
It's fair for loads of reasons. One is,
there's not enough lifeboats.
[Josh] It's just these four lifeboats?
These four lifeboats for 190 passengers.
- Wow. - But other than that,
there was the innovation,
the speed, the wealthy passengers,
- the hubris. - Mmm.
But while the sinking of the Titanic
has been called a night to remember,
the Pulaski has been largely forgotten, until now.
This ship was designed to do what?
It was designed to go fast
and it was designed to be impressive.
Why is she so fast?
[Patti Callahan] She has two sidewheels
and they're three storeys high.
It was impressive.
So this is, for its day, really high-tech?
Yes.
But we are only 30 years into steamship technology.
Think about the first 30 years of aviation technology.
- Lot of accidents. - [bell dings]
[Josh] Despite the risks,
passage on the Pulaski was in high demand.
The ship's route began in Savannah
where it would steam north to pick up more passengers in Charleston,
before continuing to Baltimore, Maryland.
All in just two days.
Less than half the time it took old steamers.
Let's talk about who's on board the Pulaski.
These must have been very wealthy citizens.
Very wealthy citizens but they were also from all over.
We had influential families of the south
including the owner of the ship.
Lamar.
Gazaway Bugg Lamar.
[Josh] Gazaway Bugg Lamar,
which, I promise, is a real name,
was a wealthy merchant in Savannah
who invested early in nascent steamship technology
and commissioned the Pulaski in 1837.
He's so proud of his new ship
that he brings along his wife,
six children, his sister
and his niece on the voyage.
Gazaway Bugg Lamar originally made his money
as many of the south's landed gentry did.
In the cotton business.
To be crystal clear,
that meant he and many of the wealthy passengers on board
were slave owners.
Were there slaves aboard the Pulaski?
There were a few. If you think about it,
- this ship is headed to free lands. - Right.
So they don't bring their enslaved with them.
- [Josh] Okay. - [Patti] Maybe some domestic help.
[Josh] And are they counted in the ship's manifest?
They are. They aren't named with last names
and sometimes they aren't named at all.
[Josh] The enslaved people on board,
while listed as passengers,
were denied actual names on the ship's manifest.
So we don't know who they were.
Other passengers we do know about
include former New York congressman William B. Rochester
whose father founded the city that bears his name.
These wealthy passengers also brought something else
aboard the Pulaski. Money.
They would pack it with them for the summer.
- [Josh] Right. - [Patti] If you think about it there was no paper money.
So the coins... There's gold, there's silver,
and they pack them in these trunks
- because they're gonna be gone for months. - [Josh] Right.
Today, these early mint U.S. coins
are extremely rare and highly prized by collectors.
A single coin can fetch tens of thousands of dollars.
Which means a fortune estimated
at more than $20 million was lost when the Pulaski sank.
She leaves Savannah when?
She leaves on June 13th, 1838 at 8:00 a.m.
[bell dings]
Ninety passengers got on board in Savannah
and 60 more got on in Charleston.
[Josh] Then, just after 11:00 p.m.
in the darkness of the Atlantic, disaster strikes.
[Patti] They're sailing towards Baltimore
when the boiler on the starboard side
goes dry.
And the second engineer
poured very cold water
into a boiling copper boiler.
And created a bomb.
[Josh] The Pulaski's boiler explodes with tremendous force
sending the three storey high paddle wheels
sailing off their axle
and blowing a gaping hole in the midsection of the ship.
Only 45 minutes later,
the last traces of the vessel are swallowed up by the sea.
[Patti] Going back to the Titanic,
it sinks in the same way.
Meaning it collapses in the middle.
- Right. - And the bow and the aft go upwards.
And so these 190 passengers,
- what becomes of them? - The captain was never seen again.
First Mate Hibbert helped people get on the life rafts.
Of the four life rafts,
only two were seaworthy.
- [scoffs] Of course. - Only two.
[Josh] While a few are able to ride it out in lifeboats,
other Pulaski survivors cling to pieces of the deck,
hanging on for the next five days and nights
until a schooner rescues them.
And so of the 190 passengers how many survived?
- Fifty-nine. - That's it?
That's it.
[Josh] The Pulaski was lost for nearly two centuries.
That is, until a few years ago
when a pair of salvage experts
claimed to find part of her remains off the coast of North Carolina.
After thanking Patti for sharing the story of the Pulaski with me,
I leave Savannah in the rearview and drive north
to meet the men who may have found her.
I motor 300 miles from Savannah
to the historic port of Wilmington, North Carolina.
At the junction of the Cape Fear River and Atlantic Ocean,
Wilmington has been a center of maritime commerce
since long before the American Revolution.
I make my way to nearby Wrightsville Beach
where I charter a boat to take me offshore.
I soon see why the Pulaski has been such an elusive wreck.
We steamed for nearly three hours away from the coast
and out into open ocean.
Finally, I spot salvage vessel the Blue Water Rose,
and a pair of her crew.
Micah Eldred and Captain Mark Martin.
Got it. Woo!
All right. Hey, nice to meet you. I'm Josh.
Nice to meet you, Josh. I'm Mark.
- Hey, josh. Micah. - Micah.
Nice to meet you.
[Josh] Micah's company Blue Water Ventures
with its President and CEO Keith Webb
has already found treasure from ships
like the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita
and the Steamship North Carolina.
But right now, all of their attention is focused on finding the Pulaski.
Welcome to the Blue Water Rose.
- Let's head forward and get you settled. - All right. Let's do it.
Come on. You guys are out here.
- [Mark Martin] We're out here. - You're are out here.
[Josh] How far offshore are we right now?
[Micah Eldred] We're more than 40 miles offshore.
Where are we anchored?
We're on top of a part of the wreck of the Pulaski.
It's here? It's under us?
- Yes. - Part of it is under us. Yes.
- Really? - Yes. Absolutely.
- You sure about that? - We're positive sure about that.
I mean, I don't see a lot of landmarks around here, Micah.
Locating the wreck originally wasn't easy
but today we're confident that we're on top of it.
And how do we know that?
Easiest way to tell you is to show you,
so why don't you get suited up
and get in the water and see what's underneath us.
No time like the present. Let's get wet. Come on.
I suit up and dive in.
The waters are choppy and the current is ripping.
Fortunately, the crew has left a shot line I can follow down to the bottom
which rest at just over 100 feet.
[dramatic music playing]
As I dropped down my view is obscured
by swarming schools of fish.
I make my way through the fish-nado
and approached the bottom.
On the barren ocean floor
shipwrecks become artificial reefs.
An oasis for all kinds of sea life.
Something big is down here.
[dramatic music playing]
[Josh speaking]
Sitting on the otherwise featureless sandy bottom
lies a huge mass of twisted metal.
Part of mammoth steam boilers
that once powered the SS Pulaski.
The so called Titanic of the South
before it exploded off the Carolina coast
in 1838.
At 11:05 p.m.,
cold water dumped into a hot boiler
created a reaction so powerful
that it literally blew the sidewheels off the Pulaski
and cracked the ship in half.
This mangled wreckage is all that's left on this part of the sea floor.
At this depth I don't have the luxury
of investigating for long.
[dramatic music playing]
Huge!
- Huge piece of machinery down there. - Yeah. Yeah.
That looks like it could be a boiler.
- See all the riveting on it and stuff. It's old. - Yeah.
So, pretty good evidence.
I mean, what else would be sitting out here
that looks like it's from that era that's that size?
And we've got another piece of evidence
that proves that this is the Pulaski.
- Okay. - Found a candlestick.
And on the inside of that candlestick
was engraved SS Pulaski.
Get out of here.
After drying off,
Micah shows me what else they found.
Oh, you got the goods up here. Now, look at this!
All these things were actually found within about 100 feet of the boiler
that you just dove on.
[Josh] The first haul the team brought up included
personal effects from some of the passengers.
And coins. Lots of coins
which they've now shielded inside protective containers.
All right, so the thing that jumps out at me first of all
is that they seem like they're from all over.
This is from Bogota. This is Colombian.
[Micah] That's right.
- [Josh] This says Bolivia. - [Micah] Yes, minted in Bolivia.
- And Great Britain mixed in. - [Micah] Yes.
So why coinage from all over?
At the time of the sinking, um,
the United States didn't have enough of its own mintage
to support the economy.
Foreign currency was legal tender
up until mid-1850s.
So you can use gold and silver
coinage from anywhere in the world?
[Micah] It was all done by weight.
They didn't care if the gold was from
- Mexico, or United Kingdom-- - [Josh] Or Colombia.
- Great Britain or Colombia. - So this ship is kind of a coin collector's dream.
Well, that's what's really interesting for us is because
the time period, some of these coins can be really rare.
And so a perfect example is this little coin.
[Josh] This is a U.S. coin?
[Micah] It is and it's a $5 base amount.
This is a 1836 $5 coin.
This is, what, a quarter ounce?
Exactly. It's about a quarter of an ounce of gold.
So the value of the gold here is about
- four hundred, 500 bucks? - [Micah] That's right.
Okay. But the value of the coin?
This particular coin would exceed $10,000.
[Josh] This coin is worth $10,000?
So now my mind is reeling.
Like, what else could be down there?
Based on the archival research,
we think that there was
around $100,000 face value of coins.
We translate that to today's collectible value
and that's roughly how much money?
It's in the ten of millions of dollars.
Well, now I see why you guys are out here
all this way offshore.
All right, so the $10,000 question is,
where are these coins coming from and how do you find more of them?
The answer lies at the stern of the Blue Water Rose
where Mark is keep wreck hunting missile.
I was not aware there were weapons on board.
Well, it's not a destructive weapon.
It's a technological weapon.
- Yes, so-- - It's a side scanning sonar.
[Josh] By dragging this torpedo called a Towfish through the water
side scan sonar will use sound waves
to map the ocean floor and everything resting on it.
We need this why? I mean, we're sitting right on top of the boilers.
We are but you'll notice that there wasn't anything else around.
No, that's right. It was just white sand.
So it exploded.
So we know that there's debris
scattered in at least a two to three miles radius.
- Two to three miles? - Yes.
You gotta remember it took 45 minutes for this thing to sink.
Right. In terms of these coins,
and the really valuable items on board the ship,
is there a part of the ship you think they were in?
The aft section is probably where the majority
of the gold and silver are.
[Josh] Most of the coins would have been stowed in passenger cabins
located in the rear half of the vessel.
To hunt for more of the wreck
Mark and I rig the Towfish
and carefully bring it to the back of the boat to deploy.
- Okay. - [Mark] All right.
[Josh] Here we go.
[dramatic music playing]
Okay.
Towfish in the water.
All right. Let's go see what she sees.
After you, come on.
Here we go. Fingers crossed.
- [Mark] We've got data. - [Josh] All right, she's running.
So let's talk about what we are looking for
other than a giant steamship.
I mean, what would jump out at you in here?
Anything that has a pretty decent size,
- four-five meters or bigger. - Yeah.
A complete circles
- and right angles rarely happen in nature. - Yeah.
So that's something to look at.
If it's sitting high up
you're gonna see a shadow off to one side or the other.
So that's something to look at.
All right. Well, let's do some watching.
The Blue Water Rose runs along a straight path
for more than a mile and a half
before changing course.
Making a turn!
[Mark] Roger!
Let me know when we start the next line!
Copy!
All right. Coming around.
[dramatic music playing]
Ah, look, there's something.
[Josh] Yeah, there's something right there.
[Mark] That thing's probably about four-five meters.
But it's not big enough
- and there's nothing around it. - Right.
There's no debris field. There's just something sitting there.
Yeah, it could be something that could've fallen off a boat.
Right. That can be anything.
- Yeah. - Okay.
And this is how it goes.
Search in a straight line...
Making a turn to starboard!
...turn and repeat.
Sonar scanning may not be the most glamorous part of a salvage operation
but it's important to maintain razor sharp focus at all times
while collecting data.
Because good things come to those who wait.
- Oh, there we go! - Oh!
- Look at that. Look at that. - There you go. Boom.
- All right, we mark that as a target. - What...
- There was a bunch of stuff there. - Yeah.
And it looked kind of like,
something coming out and then something turned off to the side.
Looked like to the right. Looked like two pieces.
-[Josh] That's cool. -[Mark] Yeah. That's worth looking at.
-All right. Well, we got a target. -Okay.
[Josh] We marked the sonar hit and continue mowing the lawn.
Oh, there's some debris there.
- Oh, big pieces. - [Josh] There's something.
[Mark] Something big is coming in.
That's gotta be five or six meters. Outrageous.
Oh, oh, whoa. Look at this! More coming in.
And it keeps going! Look at this!
Yeah, huge.
That thing's at least 20 meters long.
I mean, there's something sitting down there that's 60 feet long.
[Mark] Yeah. And you've got a defined trail coming off--
All of this looks like a debris. Look at that.
[Mark] Yeah. That stuff is obviously manmade.
We gotta look at that.
That's absolutely something we're gonna look at quickly.
- So we got two killer targets right now. - Yeah.
- Should we dive the first one? - Absolutely.
All right. Let's get wet. Come on.
The Blue Water Rose returns to the coordinates of the first target
and sets a multi-point anchor.
A small runabout is used to drag a large anchor
from the stern of the ship 300 feet out to the side of the vessel.
The same process is repeated on the other side.
Along with the anchor off the bow
the ship is now pinned in three places over the site.
And that's because the Blue Water Rose is about to do something
she was never designed for.
- How are we doing? - We're exactly over the spot that we wanna blow
so now we're about to drop the blowers.
Now these are something you do not see on most boats?
No. The common name for these is called mailboxes.
- Right. This is like Mel Fisher territory, right? - Um... Yeah.
Yeah, he's the one that made them popular.
[Josh] Mel Fisher is a legend among treasure hunters.
In the 1960s, he pioneered blowers like these
which helped him salvage a wrecked Spanish galleon called the Atocha.
And recover 40 tons of gold and silver
worth a cool half a billion dollars.
- Okay. Well, let's grab them. - All right.
The two massive mailbox blowers are lowered and pivoted into position.
Under the boat, one of divers from the Blue Water Rose
then pins them against the hull.
After that, it's time to fire up the engine
and stand back.
[dramatic music playing]
The engine revs
and the propellers direct massive torrents of water
straight down toward the sea floor
clearing sand from the bottom and hopefully
exposing whatever is hiding below.
To find out what we've uncovered,
Captain Rodney, tech diver Adam Drewbecker and I
get kitted and take the plunge.
We descend through the blue toward the sea floor.
Like the boiler site, we're still in over 100 feet
of water, at this depth,
I'll have to monitor my computer carefully,
remaining on the bottom for no longer than 15 minutes
before risking decompression sickness.
[man speaking]
[Josh] Then, out of the haze, comes a shadow.
A shadow that soon takes on an unmistakable shape.
Scattered along the bottom is rusted machinery
from the SS Pulaski.
[Josh] Nearby, something even more extraordinary.
Remains of the ship herself.
This is something we never expected.
The blowers have exposed some of the actual ribs of the ship,
not seen since her fateful voyage nearly two centuries ago.
But I'm reminded that this ship also took
128 souls down with her,
though the team I'm here with are salvaging the wreck
in accordance with maritime law,
none of them lose sight of the history,
each item they find is part of a dramatic
and tragic human story.
I have less than 10 minutes of bottom time remaining.
Luckily, Captain Rodney has discovered
another historical treasure,
the very nails that held the ship together.
[Rodney speaking]
Captain Rodney uses an underwater scooter
to clear sand from around the wreckage.
Now, it's time to let the metal detectors get to work,
an earpiece tucked under my mask strap will beep,
if it gets a hit.
[device beeping]
[Josh speaking]
[device beeping]
[Josh] I have only four minutes of bottom time remaining,
but as we furiously metal detect,
the excitement continues.
[laughs]
We continue to scan the sand around the timbers,
even though my computer is screaming at me.
In fact, I've got such treasure fever
that another diver has to remind me to leave.
[man speaking]
Low on air, and out of time, we retreat from the bottom.
The metal boiler pieces and coins mean
we probably just discovered somewhere behind
the midsection of the ship.
And clearly, there's much more down there to be found.
Unbelievable. Whoo!
Oh, man, you have wreckage down there.
- [laughs] - Unbelievable, dude.
Are you kidding me? We got coins.
- We got coins... - We got coins, we got a whole cluster of those
- other silvery things. - Silver coin, yes.
Silver coins and it looks like there's a gold embedded in there.
Nice, nice.
- You got the goods, right? - I got 'em, I got 'em.
Do not drop it.
[Josh] We carefully transfer the coins,
and ourselves back on board the boat.
I love that you put it into Crown Royal bag,
it's a high class operation out here, I had no idea.
- Only the best. - Only the best.
- All right, come on.
- Okay, here we go. - I mean, come on.
- Look at this... - That's sweet.
-Are you kidding me? Look at... -Beautiful.
- That's spikes, so... - See this spike.
That's why it's all clumped because this iron started
- to concrete before the silver did. - [Josh] Right.
So it's, it's stuck them all to it.
Oh, yes, so, one, two, three, four, five,
and, dude.
- Oh, gold, yes. - Gold.
Nice.
Sweet, and then look at this.
- Oh, nice. - [Josh] There is more.
Depending on the year and condition of these coins,
I could be holding a few thousand,
or tens of thousands of dollars in my hand.
What is your move now? What do you do with these?
[man] Now this stuff will go to NGC,
an artifact conservation lab.
- [Josh] Okay. - And they have processes that they use
to clean all of this stuff up, separate it.
- Get rid of the concretion-- - What, you pop these in the mail?
Uh, no, no exactly, we hand deliver 'em.
- Hand deliver 'em. - You up for a drive?
- With this stuff. - Yeah, yeah, you might not see me again.
- But I'll drive away for sure. [laughs] - We'll send an escort.
Before investigating our other target,
the Blue Water Rose needs to return to port
to refuel and resupply, so I say goodbye for now,
and catch a flight from Wilmington to Sarasota, Florida.
Thankful that the TSA didn't check the contents
of my carry on.
I'm here to meet up with Mark's contact
at the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation,
also known as NGC.
Numismatics, aside from being fun to say,
is the study or collecting of coins, metals, and paper money.
And NGC is one of the world's foremost
authorities on conserving and grading rare coins.
- Hey. - Hey, Josh, Dave, nice to meet you.
- Dave, how are you? - Craig, nice to meet you
Craig, nice to meet you as well.
Okay, I have a lot of questions for you.
- Okay. - So your customers are who?
Dealers, collectors, crazy shipwreck hunters?
Exactly, so we go from our collectors,
all the way up to mints,
US mints, world mints, it's the whole gamut in between, we do it all.
And when we say that you're grading coins.
- Right. - That means you're determining their quality?
That's true. First we make sure is the coin real,
that's a basis and then from there, yes,
it... is the coin new, is it worn,
does it have a scratch on it and everything in between,
we do a full evaluation on the coin.
And along with grading them, you're actually cleaning them,
you're conserving the coins, right?
We'll take all the grease, all the grime off the surface
and reveal the coin beneath.
Okay, well I brought you a few goodies today
that I think might be on the more challenging side.
- Great, well, let's go to the lab. All right. - To the lab. Let's do it.
Dave leads me to NGC's conservation lab
where they've examined everything the Blue Water Rose
has pulled up from the Pulaski.
- Right here, Josh. - Okay. Wow, look at this.
- Hey. - Josh, this is Ryan, he's our chief lab tech.
Nice to meet you.
And he's been working all this cool Pulaski stuff,
why don't we put on our safety glasses and gloves
- and he can show us some neat stuff. - Sure.
So, this is all from the Pulaski?
Yes, it's all actually from the Pulaski,
what we have here is a key.
- My fingers aren't gonna melt off here. - No, no,
this is very safe chemical that we use in the lab.
Look at that. What is it attached to?
I don't know, it looks like it could be a tag
for something, maybe, is what the key was for,
maybe it said it was some room with a boiler room
- and some sort of iron piece. - Yes, some iron piece.
- Is that awesome? - [Josh] It's amazing.
A lot of history in your hands.
- Okay, and... - This one was actually a wax seal.
They used to use.
Look at that, so this would be if you were sealing a letter
- or a document. - [Dave] Correct. Right.
That's incredible.
This is actually a hair comb.
Wow.
Sometimes, it's not the gold and silver stuff,
-it's the little personal item -Absolutely.
That you really make you feel connected.
That's beautiful.
- And this guy? - This is a pocket watch
that was actually found in the wreck.
Oh, come on.
That is crazy.
[Ryan] And, Josh, if you carefully open that, you can notice the time.
11:05, that's the moment of the explosion?
Right.
The watch I'm holding is literally frozen in time.
Stopped forever at the exact moment
- the boilers exploded. - [explosion]
And the Pulaski sank, claiming the lives
of nearly 130 passengers.
It actually sort of gives you chills, I mean It's eerie.
That's amazing.
Artifacts like this tell a story,
serving as a powerful reminder of the triumphs,
and the sins of the antebellum era,
a history that generated tremendous wealth
for a select few.
A portion of which I've carried here for conservation and analysis.
Wow, this is really fantastic. You see this?
Did I see it, are you kidding?
-I almost drowned. I was so excited. -Wow.
Look at that, Ryan, huh?
That's fantastic. So there's a gold coin
maybe another one in here.
So what happens now, Ryan,
how do we get from this to shiny coins?
Right, it's a multi-step process,
but the first process is to put it in these solutions.
Okay.
[Josh] Ryan places the coins into a chemical bath.
Over the course of days or even weeks.
The solutions will gently eat away at the encrustation
revealing the coins beneath.
All right, so obviously we're not going to stand here
for four or five days and watch this bubble,
but do you have a sense of what these coins are?
I do. I think I know what they are based on
their size and shape and what's come off the Pulaski in the past.
[Josh] Dave leads me into the grading room
where specialists evaluate currency,
ranging from ancient Rome to modern day.
Let's talk about our coins, the ones from the Pulaski.
- Okay. - What do you think they are?
I think actually they were probably these two coins we see right here.
And so these are Mexican eight Real coins.
- Which is like our silver dollar at the time. Correct? - Right.
[Josh] And this one is actually from the Pulaski itself?
- It certainly is. - And so today,
what would the value be of something like this?
- This is probably like $1,000 for that coin. - Wow.
So if there are five or six silver coins
attached to that spike.
- Right. - Just that one piece could be worth
- five or six grand. - Yeah, but don't forget,
- he also had the gold coin in there also. - Right,
so what's that gold coin?
Well, let's take a look.
Next, Dave shows me a set of half eagle gold coins,
the same type he expects to find in the conglomerate
from the wreck.
You got Liberty on there, 1836, the eagle on the back.
- Right. - And...
- Five D. Five dollars. - Five dollars.
And United States of America.
- And these also came off the Pulaski. - They did
and the remarkable part about this is
they literally show hardly anything wrong with them.
- Yeah. - In fact, they look like the day
they were just minted, so to find coins
of this beauty and this originality is rare,
- which seems kind of contradictory. - Right.
'Cause you've got all these rich folks on the ship,
they're getting newly minted coins from the bank
- to take with them. - [Dave] Right.
And then they get trapped after the shipwreck
in the sand. Nobody ever touches them.
- They're like brand new. - Right.
[Josh] Of the original 550,000 or so half Eagles,
the US Treasury minted in 1836
only a few thousand survive.
The Pulaski coins, which have been stashed
in the bank of the Atlantic for more than 180 years,
are some of the best preserved examples on Earth.
Could I spend this today, by the way?
- You absolutely can. - That's legal tender?
- It's legal tender still. - I could walk into a store
- and that would be worth five bucks. - Correct.
- Not that you'd want to do that. - Right.
- But walk into my store, okay? - You're right.
What's the finest of these four coins?
It's the last coin here.
- May I? - Oh, yeah.
- I mean it looks brand new. - Right.
So this coin would be worth how much?
Five grand, six grand?
- Eight grand. - Probably 30 to 40,000.
This coin is worth 30 to $40,000.
That's in your hand. Correct.
Okay. I'm gonna put that right back there.
There you go. That's insane.
Just the idea that there could be hundreds
of these coins, still down in that wreckage.
- Right. - You're just talking about astronomical amounts
- of money here. - Absolutely.
And the mother lode, chests of coins stored
in the passenger cabins have yet to be found.
I received word that the Blue Water Rose
is about to return to our second sonar target.
So I hurry back to Wilmington where I then catch a ride out to sea.
Several hours later and more than 40 miles
from the coast, I find Mark and Rodney
anchoring the ship over the sonar hit.
Somewhere below us, are the unseen remains
of a historic American shipwreck,
not to mention a bounty of more than $20 million
in gold and silver,
[Josh] Well, they're still out here, that's a good sign.
How's it going, guys?
I'm happy you're here.
I'm 40 miles off the coast of North Carolina,
searching for the remains of the Pulaski,
a steamship that sank here in 1838.
- Great to see you. - Great to see you again.
How you doing, Rodney? How's it going out here?
- Good, it's going great. - Turn your pockets out.
- What do you got under there? - I dumped it before you got here.
Of course you did.
Remember that really nice sonar hit we had.
- Hell yeah. - That's where we are.
- You haven't been down there yet? - No.
- Whatever that is, is big. - Yeah.
When the Pulaski's boilers blew,
the ship broke apart and scattered,
creating a three mile debris field.
- [Rodney] There she goes. - [Josh] In the water.
Using sidescan sonar, we were able to pinpoint
two promising sites.
Oh, whoa, look at this, more...
And it keeps going. Look at this.
This second target is large enough
to be a significant portion of the wreck,
which has never been found.
All right, cool, let's do it, let's get wet, guys. Come on.
All right.
While we suit up, Captain Rodney drops anchor.
Rough seas are in the forecast,
and he wants to make sure we don't drift too far off
our target.
Once we're geared up, we hit the water.
[Rodney speaking]
Read you loud and clear.
Roger that.
[Josh] We're either 100 feet from history,
or an ocean full of nothing.
With conditions deteriorating topside,
the water is less clear below.
We continue the descent, straining to see the bottom,
and hoping for any sign of wreckage.
Josh, how's it look down there?
Is it part of the wreck?
[Josh speaking]
As I close in on our target, it becomes clear
that the object is manmade,
and that it's absolutely enormous.
Can you make out anything specific?
[Rodney speaking]
That means we're probably in the center section.
[Josh] This is a huge discovery,
prior to these scans, the exploded boiler
was the only documented part of the wreck.
Now, we know there's more here, much more.
This may be the entire engine area
and sections aft.
We circle the hulking remains of rusted machinery
that hasn't been seen since the 1800s.
Let's get as much on film as possible, so we can review it
[Josh] Swimming past the towering hunks of twisted metal.
I'm awe struck by the scale.
This wreck is a crucial piece of nautical history,
spanning 200 feet.
The Pulaski was the most high tech
and luxurious vessel of its day,
a marvel from the steam age.
Bring home some goodies, Josh.
Outstanding.
With limited bottom time and a storm brewing topside.
We dropped to the sand, and begin to metal detect.
[detector beeping]
Immediately we start to get hits.
And the Pulaski's treasures can't hide for long.
[Josh] Savannah's Chippewa Square Park
is a popular destination for tourists.
All because of one very special bench.
The network always said that Expedition Unknown
was like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get.
But there's one episode we did,
it was like a caramel, because we got into
a real sticky situation.
This other show. It's like a pecan cluster,
'cause things got real nutty real quick.
I'm sorry, sir, I'm on the phone, could you...
Well, sorry, sir, but from this day on,
whenever I talk to someone.
I am punning.
Oh, my God, I just...
He just sat down next to me, I don't...
Topside here.
Is it nice and shiny?
Yes, yes.
[Josh] The gold coin is a US piece from 1836.
Face value, $5, value today,
depending on the condition, tens of thousands of dollars.
We scour the area, searching for more.
[detector beeping]
[laughs]
[Josh] The salvage team manages to one up
the Crown Royal bag from our last dive
with another special numismatic containment device,
a sack with a dollar sign on it.
The excitement is nearly enough to make me forget
that I can't stay down here forever.
We kick our fins toward the light,
and pull back from the extraordinary wreckage
and treasures of the SS Pulaski.
Our discovery of the Pulaski's keel section
and the paddle wheel area is historic,
and will help reveal more lost details about her sinking.
Topside, our coins are cataloged and added to the whole.
These two gold coins, plus the materials
I brought to the lab and NGC, tally nearly $100,000.
In the days that follow, 33 more gold coins
are discovered, and nearly 100 silver coins.
To date, the team has uncovered more than 700 coins,
as well as haunting historic artifacts
from the night of the explosion.
As I journey home. I make one last stop.
A quiet churchyard on South Carolina's Edisto Island.
Here, a weathered obelisk stands in memory
of parishioners who died aboard the Pulaski.
Among them a 15 year old girl, and an 11 year old boy.
It is the only real memorial to a nearly forgotten disaster
that took the lives of so many.
The coins recovered from the wreck
have immense monetary value,
and were a heart stopping thrill to uncover.
[laughs] Yes, yes!
But the true value of the treasures here runs deeper.
They are a snapshot of America as it stood
at 11:05 p.m. on June 14th, 1838.
A nation so young that our minted currency
was just emerging.
And a place where vast wealth was forged in the furnace
of human bondage.
Missing from the ranks of those aboard
are the unnamed servants and crew,
enslaved people who sailed on an unwilling voyage.
They died alongside some of the wealthiest citizens of the South,
as the ocean claimed the powerful and powerless alike.
It has taken 180 years.
But now, both are being remembered.