Josh Gates Hunts America’s Titanic Treasure | Expedition Unknown | Discovery

Wheels down, Savannah, Georgia.
The steamship Palaski 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.
We love it, and the food!
I do declare, the Low Country 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.
[Music]
I’m going to be here for a while; 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 Patty 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 Palaski.
[Music]

Wow! 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 ft 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 had never heard this story.

You’re embarrassed?
I research Savannah, I write about Savannah,
and I had never heard of the steamship Palaski disaster.
Why isn’t there a bigger historical record of this disaster?
Some stories are just lost to time.

So I’ve 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—
it’s just these four lifeboats for 190 passengers.

Wow! But other than that,
there was the innovation, the speed, the wealthy passengers, the hubris.
But while the sinking of the Titanic has been called a night to remember,
the Palaski 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?
She has two side wheels, and they are three stories 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—
a lot of accidents.

Despite the risks, passage on the Palaski 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 older steamers.

After thanking Patty for sharing the story of the Palaski 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 Palaski has been such an elusive wreck.
We steam 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 all right?
Hey, nice to meet you!
I’m J.
Nice to meet you, Josh.
I’m Mark.
Hey, Josh. Micah.
Micah, nice to meet you.

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 Palaski.

Welcome to the Blue Water Rose!
Let’s head forward to get you settled.
All right, let’s do it!
Come on, you guys are out here!
We’re out here!

How far offshore are we right now?
We’re more than 40 miles offshore.
Where are we anchored?
We’re on top of a part of the wreck of the Palaski.
It’s here, it’s under us.
Part of it’s under us?
Yes, really!
Yes, absolutely!

You sure about that?
We’re positive!
You 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?
The 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 rests at just over 100 ft.
[Music]
Visibility is great; must be about 80 ft.

As I drop down, my view is obscured by swarming schools of fish—
they’re everywhere!
This is crazy!
I make my way through the fish tornado and approach the bottom.
Stand by.
I see it on the barren ocean floor!

Shipwrecks become artificial reefs,
an oasis for all kinds of sea life.
Something big is down here!
Oh my God, there is something down here!
Is that a boiler?

Incredible!
This looks like it might be part of the boilers of the Palaski,
sitting on the otherwise featureless sandy bottom.
Lies a huge mass of twisted metal,
part of the mammoth steam boilers that once powered the SS Palaski,
the so-called Titanic of the South,
before it exploded off the Carolina coast in 1838.

Unreal!
You can still see the rivets in the boiler.
Look at how the metal is bent here.
You can tell this was a violent explosion.
At 11:05 p.m., cold water dumped into a hot boiler,
creating a reaction so powerful
that it literally blew the side wheels off the Palaski
and cracked the ship in half.

This mangled wreckage is all that’s left on this part of the seafloor.
Much of the ship was wood—
must have been blasted to bits.
Who knows if anything else is left?
At this depth, I don’t have the luxury of investigating for long.

Okay, I’m out of bottom time; I’m headed up!
Huge, huge piece of machinery down there!
That looks like it could be a boiler!
See all the riveting on it and stuff?
It’s old!

So, pretty good evidence.
I mean, what else would be sitting out here
that looks like it’s from that era,
that size?
And we’ve got another piece of evidence
that proves that this is the Palaski.
Okay, found a candlestick,
and on the inside of that candlestick
was engraved SS Palaski!
Get out of here!

After drying off, Micah shows me what else they’ve found.
Oh, you got the goods up here now!
Look at this!
All of these things were actually found within about 100 ft
of the boilers that you just dove on.

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 Bogotá; this is Colombian.
That’s right!
This says Bolivia.
Yes, minted in Bolivia, and Great Britain mixed in.
Yeah!

So why coinage from all over
at the time of this sinking?
The United States didn’t have enough of its own mintage
to support the economy.
Foreign currency was legal tender
up until the mid-1850s,
so you could use gold and silver coinage
from anywhere in the world.
It was all done by weight.
They didn’t care if the gold was from Mexico,
the United Kingdom, Great Britain, or Colombia.

So this ship is kind of a coin collector’s dream!
Well, that’s what’s really interesting for us
because of the time period.
Some of these coins can be really rare,
and so a perfect example is this little coin.
This is a US coin.
It is, and it’s a $5 piece amount.
This is a $365 coin.
This is what? A quarter of