A pair of men’s jeans, recovered from the wreckage of a 19th-century shipwreck, were auctioned last week for a dazzling $95,000. According to the auction house’s description, this is the earliest known heavy-duty trousers, likely made by or for Levi Strauss & Company in the 1850s. The trousers sank with the SS Central America off the coast of Carolina during a hurricane in September 1857 and is well preserved thanks to the anaerobic environment in which it was found. Previously, the oldest known Levi’s was found in an abandoned mine shaft and dates to the 1880s, selling for $87,400 at auction earlier this year.
The SS Central America was a 280-foot steamship that operated between Central America and the East Coast of the United States in the 1850s. On its unfortunate final voyage, it carried 587 passengers and crew, most of whom had traveled by another steamship from San Francisco to Panama. His cargo included thousands of newly minted 1857 Double Eagle coins, as well as older gold coins and bullion. This is where his nickname came from: “The Ship of Gold”.
The voyage began smoothly, but on September 9, 1857, a category 2 hurricane struck the ship, tearing the ship’s sails apart. Two days later, the ship took on water and its wheels and boiler failed. The sharp drop in steam pressure shut down both bilge pumps; so both passengers and crew worked strenuously as part of a bucket brigade to combat the rising water. After this things calmed down for a while, but the crew were unable to restart the boilers, and the hurricane returned in full force soon after.
153 passengers, mostly women and children, were rescued from the ship, whose location was determined on the morning of 12 September. However, continued strong winds pulled Central America and its remaining passengers and crew even further away. This sad event resulted in the sinking of the ship at 8 pm and the death of 425 people.
Central America was left to rot at the bottom of the ocean until 1988; On this date, treasure hunter Tommy Gregory Thompson led an expedition to locate the wreckage and recover gold and other artifacts using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). The gold found was valued at between $100 and $150 million, and the largest piece, the 80-pound gold nugget nicknamed “Eureka”, was bought for a record $8 million in 2015. Unfortunately, Thompson faced lawsuits from investors claiming they hadn’t seen a profit, and disappeared in 2012. But in 2015, he was caught and arrested in a hotel in Boca Raton.
The oldest known jeans: whose was it?
The jeans that were unearthed from the wreckage, on the other hand, were found in the trunk of a San Francisco merchant named John Dement. Although the design of the copper rivets on the pocket corners and the bottom of the button zipper of the classic Levi’s we know was not patented until 1873, the company itself was founded in 1853 as a dry goods store in San Francisco. But the auction house noted that the Central American “miner’s pants” are almost identical to another pair of vintage Levi’s in many respects, such as the style, shape and size of the buttons. In addition to the mine shaft jeans that were auctioned earlier this year, Albert Einstein’s Levi’s leather jacket fetched over $110,000 when it was auctioned by Christie’s in 2016.
Other items up for auction from SS Central America include the Easton’s wedding dowry, various items of clothing, passenger receipts, luggage tags, a brass bell, chamber utensils, dishes and cutlery, figurines, ship timbers, a beer bottle, and chamber keys. On the other hand, an 1849 Colt pocket pistol, a women’s shower set and chastity belt, and Captain Herndon’s personal sextant, which was a common navigational tool at that time, were also included in the auction.
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