Thompson knew his crew had found the ship they’d spent the past five years searching for: the SS Central America. The Central America was one of a new class of steamships commissioned in 1853. Others, crazed or resigned to their fate, flung gold coins at the wind. Each square on the grid was assigned a number—the higher the number, the greater the probability of finding the Central America in that spot. “I don’t know the whereabouts of the gold,” Thompson said during an October 2020 hearing.