SS Republic (USS Tennessee)-- Part 5: The Sinking

By evening , her hull was leaking so badly that the fire in her boiler was extinguished, and she stalled in the heavy seas, now taking on more water  than her crew and passengers could bail out.

At 4 p.m., October 25, 1865, she sank.  The passengers and crew escaped on lifeboats but 40-foot seas because of the hurricane  made staying afloat very challenging.  They were not found until two days later, in much suffering, by the sailing ship  Horace Beals.

On October 29, the steamer General Hooker had been sent to look for the Republic, and rendezvoused with the Horace Beals and the passengers transferred to it and taken to Charleston, S.C..

Most of the passengers and crew survived, though a few were lost in the seas after the sinking.  The gold coins were lost.

Of course, with those gold coins out there somewhere, people began looking for them.

--Old B-Runner