The salvaged treasure is being auctioned at Sotheby's in New York by a consortium of insurance companies directly linked to the underwriters of the original loss. A cargo of ingots, nuggets, coins and gold dust - estimated to be worth more than pounds 80 million at today's prices - sank when the SS Central America, bound for New York from Panama, went down in a hurricane off South Carolina on September 13, 1857, with the loss of 450 lives. The treasure originated from the pickings of the California gold rush. It was being sent to the Philadelphia mint to be turned into new bars and coins to provide a fillip to the New York banks, which had suffered badly from the crash of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company. The loss of the gold sent the United States stock exchange into the "Panic of 1857".
