[Josh] The Gold Rush.
[Peter] That sparked a mass migration from all over,
people trying to get to California
and stake their claim and get rich.
[Josh] And to get there, people are willing to risk everything.
[adventurous music playing]
This is a route that had never been tamed before.
That's right. Nobody had done this.
Enter shipping tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.
♪♪
[Peter] Close to the top of the rapids,
she's just overcome by the force.
♪♪
[Josh] Why is this such an important ship to find?
[Peter] It captures the American spirit of adventure.
So we're gonna retrace the route.
-Except for the sinking part? -Well, hopefully.
[music intensifies]
Looks like we're coming into rapids.
[Peter] Hang on! It's goin' get bumpy!
Punch it! Here we go!
Good, good, good!
Ha! There it is!
Oh, my word! That's a boiler!
Whoa! Crocodile!
Oh, look at that crocodile!
♪♪
-This is tough going. -[Peter] Whoa!
-Check it out! -Oh my god
[dramatic music playing]
The year is 1848.
Gold is discovered in California,
and suddenly tens of thousands are desperate
to seek their fortunes in the West.
There's just one problem.
Traveling over land coast to coast is
a long and dangerous journey, and there's no easy
shortcut on the water.
The Panama canal doesn't yet exist.
But self-made shipping tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt
has a radical new business idea, a steamship that would take
passengers from New York to San Francisco,
but not by cutting through Panama,
rather by going through the nearer nation of Nicaragua.
If successful, the route would reshape global trade
and alter the history of the Americas.
For the crucial maiden voyage, Vanderbilt handpicks
the steamship Orus, one of the quickest
and most agile vessels of its kind,
with two cutting edge lever beam engines.
But midway through the voyage,
the 158 foot ship encounters deadly rapids,
is battered by whitewater, and smashes onto the rocks.
Attempts to free the ship prove futile,
and the Orus is abandoned, where she's consumed
by the river and the jungle,
eventually disappearing from memory.
Now though, a team of explorers is using newly
uncovered accounts to hunt for the remains
of this history-making ship.
And I'm joining them on a remote river expedition
through treacherous crocodile filled waters
and dense snake infested jungles.
So please keep your hands, arms, feet, and legs
inside the boat at all times.
We're full steam ahead in search of one of the most
important and largely forgotten wrecks in history.
[theme music playing]
[Josh] The past is all around us.
Oh, my god! It goes on forever!
A world of mystery...
Come on! Look at that!
Danger...
Hang on!
...and adventure. It's just straight down!
I gotta get a new job.
I travel to the far corners of the earth to uncover
where legends end.
We got it! Yes!
And history begins.
Whoo-hoo! Here we go!
I'm Josh Gates, and this is "Expedition Unknown."
[tropical music playing]
This is the largest country in Central America
and amazingly one I have never set foot in.
That makes this country number 115 for me.
But who's counting?
[whispers] I am.
Managua is a vibrant city of over a million
proud and resilient people in a country that caught
America's eye long before anyone had heard
of the Iran-Contra affair. Look it up.
The U.S. has long had an interest in Nicaragua.
Our border is only about a thousand miles away,
and it's this proximity that lies
at the heart of our story.
Because before Panama had a canal,
Nicaragua was eyed as a possible path between the seas.
Why?
Lakes.
The biggest is Lake Nicaragua.
100 miles long and 44 miles wide,
it covers nearly 15% of the country.
Lake Nicaragua connects with the Atlantic
via the San Juan River.
Seizing on this unique geography, transportation mogul
Cornelius Vanderbilt hopes to develop
an aquatic superhighway.
The Vanderbilt fortune, which eventually produced
Vanderbilt University, the largest home in America,
and Anderson Cooper, started with Cornelius,
one of the most successful and ruthless industrialists
of his era.
In 1848, he outfits the steamship Orus
for the inaugural voyage, a trip from which
she would never return.
All of Nicaragua's biggest cities are built
near these lakes here on the western side
of the country.
But I'm going to the opposite coast,
to the east, where there's almost no infrastructure.
So before I leave the capital, I need to pick up
some supplies.
Also, I'm starving.
[Nicaraguan guitar music playing]
[Josh] Welcome to Mercado Carlos Roberto Huembes.
Here you can find just about anything
you might possibly want to wear,
shoot, or play.
Along with some dishes that you may or may not
want to eat, such as the local delicacy,
Pinol de Iguana.
It's a maize-based stew made with a female iguana
and her eggs.
I mean,
it's not the worst iguana dish I've ever had.
In preparation for a remote river journey,
I also score a hammock, a good machete,
and I find you can never have too many hats.
Well, it looks like it's time for a little adventure.
To join the team retracing the Orus's ill-fated journey,
I've got to get to the starting line
on Nicaragua's eastern coast.
But with no regular air service heading that way,
I charter a plane from Managua across... well,
the entire country,
187 miles of it.
I would describe the arrivals lounge as uncrowded.
OK, well, welcome to the Caribbean side
of Nicaragua.
♪♪
[Josh] This is the untamed Mosquito Coast,
a place both beautiful and notoriously wild.
Today, it looks like nobody's here.
However, I'm far from alone.
Vanderbilt's crew wasn't the first to try
to tame this place.
And just inside the tree line are other travelers
who met their fate here.
These overgrown graves are etched with clues
hinting at a tumultuous past.
There are Spaniards buried here, but also tombstones
to American sailors, Englishmen, Scotsmen,
even Freemasons.
In 1522, Conquistadors claimed Nicaragua for Spain,
but the Spanish were unable to maintain their hold
on the isolated Caribbean coast, which became a haven
for pirates and the British settlers,
who established a momentarily thriving outpost
known as Greytown.
But today, only forgotten tombstones remain.
Not too far away, though, is life.
The successor to Greytown, the remote village
of San Juan de Nicaragua, perched on the humid edge
of civilization with no roads in or out.
I head to the dock to meet expedition leader
and fellow Explorers Club member, Peter Tattersfield.
-Hey, Peter. -Hey, Josh.
-Good to see you, man. -Great to see ya!
Let me introduce you to my business partner,
Miguel Fernandez. -Miguel, pleasure.
Great to meet you, Josh.
Peter is a technical diver who's been working
in marine archeology for more than 30 years,
where he not only hunts for historic wrecks,
but finds them.
And I know that a few years ago,
you were part of a major discovery of another lost ship.
Yes, the SS Independence.
I received a grant from the Explorers Club,
and working in collaboration with INAH,
the Institute of National Anthropology and History,
we were able to locate the remains
of the SS Independence off the coast of Baja in Mexico.
Incredible. Awesome.
OK, let's talk about this mission.
I have to say, like a lot of people,
I had never heard of the Orus.
This idea of bringing ships through Nicaragua,
I knew nothing about this.
So where does this whole story start?
It all starts in 1848 in Sutter's Mill, California,
with the discovery of gold.
That sparked a mass migration from all over,
people trying to get to California
and stake their claim and get rich.
[Josh] But the road to Gold Rush riches ain't easy.
Aspiring 49ers have three nightmarish itineraries
to choose from. Take your pick.
♪♪
[Josh] Option one, travel across the country
3,000 miles in a bumpy wagon train
for four to six months, with the exciting possibilities
of contracting cholera or smallpox,
native skirmishes, or freezing to death
in the mountains.
Not for you?
OK, well, option two is by sea,
a nice little 17,000 mile jaunt around the tip of South America,
assuming your ship doesn't wreck and you survive being
on a floating petri dish for six to eight months.
Or three,
a boat to Panama and then a generally horrible
55-mile trek through unforgiving jungle
before taking another boat up the west coast.
Sure, it's the fastest option, but it does come
with the super-fun bonus of exposure
to deadly tropical diseases like yellow fever and typhoid.
There's got to be a better way.
Enter self-made shipping tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.
[Josh] Though he is perhaps most remembered
for building an overland railroad empire,
he comes from more aquatic roots.
Born into a working-class family
on New York's Staten Island, Vanderbilt amasses his fortune
through ferry and steamboat operations,
earning the nickname, "The Commodore."
He then ushers in the golden age of steamboat travel
and becomes an obscenely rich man by staying
one step ahead of his competitors.
Now, Cornelius Vanderbilt hears that the Panama route is
charging $600 per person to move people across
up to California.
And so he figures that by using the Nicaragua route,
he can shorten the trip by 700 miles,
he can charge half, and still make a bundle of money.
And this whole trip through Nicaragua
will take people how long? -About 30 days.
I mean, compared to eight months and having to walk
over the Rockies, like, that sounds like a great deal.
-It's a no-brainer. -[Josh] Right.
[adventurous music playing]
[Josh] Vanderbilt plans a five-leg journey
to complete his Nicaragua route.
First, passengers will travel from New York here to Greytown
on large ocean-going steamships.
Then a river steamship will complete the daring
120-mile run up the fast and shallow San Juan River.
Then a third ship to cross Lake Nicaragua,
followed by a 12-mile stagecoach ride to the Pacific,
where a final ocean steamer takes them to San Francisco.
So Vanderbilt gets a contract with the Nicaraguan government
to transport people across the country,
there's just one hiccup. -OK, what's that?
There's no steamship that has ever navigated
the 120 miles of the San Juan River
up to Lake Nicaragua.
OK, that is a minor hiccup.
To conquer the untamed waters of the San Juan River,
Vanderbilt needs a special ship.
He believes he's found one in the Orus.
Designed in 1842 by master engineer
James P. Allaire,
158 feet long and weighing in at 247 tons,
Allaire brags that the Orus could stop, start,
forward and back quicker and more certainly
than any boat in New York.
This was due in part to her cutting-edge
twin-engine configuration and massive coal-fired boiler.
So she sounds like an incredibly able ship
to take on this river. -She had a shallow draft,
she was very maneuverable,
really kind of ideal for the San Juan.
-And what happens? -[Peter] On her first attempt
up the river, she gets about two-thirds of the way up,
and disaster strikes.
While attempting to run
one set of swift and shallow rapids,
the Orus grounds out on jagged rocks,
becoming hopelessly trapped.
The crew desperately tries to free her, but in the end,
they're forced to abandon ship.
In time, the wreck fades from memory and is swept away
by the rushing water.
Why is this such an important ship to find?
The Orus, it's gonna take us back to that era of 1850,
the Gold Rush era.
It captures the American spirit of adventure.
And you think you can find it?
I know we're gonna find her.
I love the confidence. All right, so what's our plan?
So we're gonna retrace the Orus's route.
-Except for the sinking part? -Well, hopefully.
Right. Is this us?
-[Miguel] This is us. -We're ready to roll.
-Let's go! -[Josh] OK.
We load the boat with supplies and proudly hoist
Explorers Club flag number 124, which has been on expeditions
to the rough seas of the Cape of Good Hope
and traveled by dog sled across Alaska's Bering Strait.
Now it's tackling the mysteries of the San Juan River
and the wild jungles on either side.
To guide us through the dangerous
and doomed route of the Orus, we're joined
by seasoned captain Julio Murillo
and pilot Geovanny Butos.
All right, here we go!
Into the unknown. Next stop?
The Orus.
Let's do it! Here we go, guys!
Let's do it
♪♪
[Josh] We leave behind the village and our last view
of the tropical waters of the Caribbean,
as we steam up the mouth of the river
into a watery labyrinth.
The San Juan discharges a staggering 40 million
cubic gallons of water a day.
All that H2O flows East through narrow channels
jammed with rocks.
This is a world of unpredictable currents
and shifting shoals hidden just below the surface
that could shred our hull like Swiss cheese.
This river has such diversity, Josh.
We got crocodiles and caimans, freshwater bull sharks
up by the lake. -Freshwater bull sharks, OK.
And on land, don't think on land it's much safer.
You gotta deal with jaguars and all kinds of snakes.
This guy hits a rock and we lose that prop,
then what do we do?
-Grab your life preserver. -We're swimming to Greytown.
I mean, that's not even a joke.
There's no roads. Nobody's coming for you.
[Peter] No one's coming for you.
[exciting music playing]
Whoa! Crocodile!
Oh, look at that! Crocodile!
Slow down, slow down, slow down!
Look at that thing!
[cinematic music playing]
Crocodile! Look at that thing!
That wasn't a little caiman. That was a proper crocodile.
Wow!
These waters are teeming with American crocodiles,
which can reach up to 14 feet in length.
I'm happy to be inside our boat with explorers
Peter Tattersfield and Miguel Fernandez
on an expedition up Nicaragua's wild San Juan River
in search of Cornelius Vanderbilt's
lost steamship, the Orus.
OK, so let's talk about this.
So we just left Greytown on the Caribbean side,
so that's here. -[Peter] Yep.
And how far did the Orus have to travel on this journey?
Well, the length of this river is 120 miles.
And how far did the Orus get?
We figured she made it about two-thirds of the way up,
up into an area with some known rapids, a lot of hazards.
It gets to those rapids, and then she makes an attempt.
She gives it a shot, and she starts heading up.
Close to the top of the rapid, she's just overcome
by the force. -Right.
And she's pushed back, and she ends up wrecking
onto the rocks themselves. -So what do they do?
Well, they try all they can to get her released.
They use ropes to pull. They use levers.
They're pushing, they got men in the water,
and nothing seems to work.
Eventually, they abandon her. She's beyond repair.
So what? This ship just gets
left wrecked in the middle of the river?
Yeah, we have travelers accounts that see her
throughout the years sitting in the middle of the river.
One of them, Samuel Clemens.
-Mark Twain. -[Peter] Mark Twain.
Twain describes the remnants of a wreck at the foot
of some rapids that is overtaken by vines and vegetation.
Wow! So she just becomes
another hazard on the San Juan.
[Peter] Yeah.
[Josh] Over decades, witnesses describe
the overgrown wreck transforming into a kind
of artificial island.
And travelers' accounts of this wreckage just cease?
They start to fade away, and the route gets used
less and less, and then the Panama Canal comes along.
Right, and the Orus is all but forgotten.
-Pretty much. -Pretty much.
[Josh] Had she completed her voyage in 1850
and Vanderbilt's travel route become a success,
the world might have a Nicaragua Canal,
and the Orus would be remembered as a pioneering vessel.
Instead, today, not even a single photograph
of the ship survives.
Now, we do know that she's a wooden hull, right?
-[Miguel] Yep. -And what are the pieces
that are most likely to survive?
I would say the machinery, the boiler for sure,
and if there are parts of the engine.
And those boilers are big, right?
Those boilers are big, and they would have been bolted
to an iron slab. -[Josh] OK.
To very large timbers, which could definitely have
survived as well. If we're lucky,
we might find some of those elements.
[Josh] The boiler was the beating heart of the Orus.
A coal-burning furnace generated steam which drove
two lever beam engines, pushing paddle wheels mounted
on either side of the vessel.
While much of the wood has likely rotted away,
the heavy metal components of the power plant
may have survived.
The question is, is she still visible?
-[Miguel] That's right. -She might be submerged.
Right, she might be under the waterline.
[Miguel] Absolutely. At this point.
OK. Wow!
On paper, this sounds easy.
How hard could it be to find a giant steamship
in the middle of a river? It's gotta be simple, right?
But once you come out here, you realize it's not so simple.
[Peter] No.
[Josh] And the Orus is far from alone.
In the decades after the ill-fated trip,
dozens of other steamers were lost on the San Juan.
Identifying the remains of the Orus may be a challenge.
That is, if we can even reach her.
Josh, this is our first set of real rapids.
Wow, and they are deceptive because they don't look
that bad, just these little white caps.
-[Peter] Yeah. -But we're barely moving.
Yeah.
-You can feel the pull. -[Josh] Totally.
[Peter] You can definitely feel the pull.
-It's moving a lot of water. -Yeah.
[Josh] We run the first set of rapids,
but the churning waters are not the only danger
lurking just beneath us.
-Julio, how deep is it here? -More or less three feet.
-Three feet? -Three feet.
Oh, three feet.
Imagine the Orus coming through here with only
three feet of draft. -[Peter] Yeah.
Ooh!
And there it is, right there.
You can feel the motor hitting the sandbank.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, shallow! Shallow!
Stop, stop, stop! We cut the engine.
The last thing we want to do is damage the propeller
and strand ourselves far from civilization.
And we're grounded out.
OK, we gotta push off of it, yeah?
We make like amateur gondoliers and use a pole to work our way
free from the sandbar.
[dynamic music playing]
-We're coming off it? -[Peter] Yeah.
[Julio] Yeah.
[Josh] Yep, that's deeper.
All right, we're off the sandbar.
Can you punch it?
[engine revving]
Punch it.
[speaking in Spanish]
[Josh] Here we go. Good, good, good.
Okay, we're off it.
Whoo!
We escape the shallows and thankfully avoid
any damage to the boat.
Mile after mile, hour after hour,
we wind through the endless jungle,
deeper into the "Heart of Darkness"
that swallowed the Orus, and into more churning rapids.
So what's the strategy? To the right?
-[Julio] To the right. -[Josh] Yeah, a la derecha?
-[Julio] We go to the right. -[Josh] OK, here we go.
Okay, we're coming through.
Still water ahead.
After navigating the rapids, Julio says he has
something to show us.
The water level is too high right now, but when the river
is low, he has seen rusty metal debris breaking the surface.
We are far up the river, so could this be all
that's left of the Orus?
Julio, how far underwater do you think?
It could be a few feets,
maybe three or four feets.
Oh, there's a little bit of swirling there.
-You see that? -[Julio speaking in Spanish]
[Josh] Look at that. Right there, right there!
-You see that? -[Peter] Yep.
-[Josh] The swirl? -[Peter] Yep.
Can you reach the bottom there or no?
-[Julio] No. -There's something there.
It's not close to the surface.
So, this is normally where we would pull out the sonar.
We're using a slightly more manual technique today.
[Miguel] There's something here.
Oh.
-Something there? -Touch.
-[Julio speaking in Spanish] -Yep.
-There's something right here. -We got something.
That's a structure.
Yep, that's it, right there! This is it!
[Josh] Bam! Look at that!
-[Peter] Look at that! -[Josh] You literally staked it.
Dude, nice work! OK, now what?
-Get your wetsuit on. -Really?
Really.
OK, let's do it.
We gear up to do something that may be best described
as really stupid, a zero-visibility dive
in a crocodile-infested river with swiftly moving current.
Sure. Why not?
To keep us from getting washed downstream,
our lifeline is a rope anchored into the submerged structure.
Read you loud and clear.
Is it a wreck?
[dramatic music playing]
Guys, is it metal or wood?
[dramatic music intensifies]
[dramatic music playing]
10-4.
[Josh] We follow the safety line back into the sunlight.
Oh! Man, that sucks.
Thank you for getting me back on the line.
I had one hand on it near the surface and lost it,
and immediately you just start heading downriver.
Well, that's why I cut my fingertips off, Josh,
'cause I want to know where that line is.
Yeah, no, it's like it slipped away from me,
and then suddenly it's like you're gone.
Look, the visibility down there is diabolical,
but it's enough that the takeaway is clear.
That is not the Orus.
Thinking about where we are, we just passed a set of rapids,
so we're above a set of rapids, and the Orus needs to be below.
Yeah, right, the location doesn't quite fit.
-That's right. -[Josh] But whatever that ship is,
it's substantial.
Yeah, it is. It's a good-sized wreck.
You know, there was a ship that sank a few years later,
1854, the Ometepe, which was one of the big steamers
that went across the lake.
OK, so maybe that's the Ometepe?
Yeah, it struck a rock and they say it sank in 24 feet of water.
-How deep were you guys? -[Josh] That's about where we were.
Has the wreckage of the Ometepe been charted?
Uh, not that I'm aware of.
We may have just put eyes on a significant historical
shipwreck that's uncharted.
Amazingly, this may be one of Vanderbilt's other ships.
The Ometepe ferried traffic across Lake Nicaragua
after the wreck of the Orus.
The loss was another major blow for his transit line
and plans to build a canal.
Fully booked with 250 passengers when she hit a rock,
it's fortunate that everyone was able to evacuate.
Lost to the depths for more than 170 years,
we may have just put her back on the map.
-But the Orus still awaits. -[Peter] Let's go find her.
Let's do it, yeah.
Let's get off this water before a crocodile rips my leg.
-Come on. -[Peter laughs]
[Josh] Back on the water, the hours tick by
as we scan the banks for shipwrecks.
We continue to fight the heavy current,
taxing the outboard and burning through fuel fast.
Fortunately, Peter has a plan to gas up.
Hey, Josh, we got a little town coming up here pretty soon
that we're gonna pull into. -They got a town out here?
-Yeah, a river town. -A river town?
No roads in, no roads out. It's called El Castillo.
And there she is, right there!
[heroic music playing]
Is that a fortress up there?
Yeah, a fortress built by the Spaniards
back in the 16th century to ward off pirates.
Pirates?
-Pirates. -Of course.
[Peter] Josh, welcome to El Castillo.
Happy to be here. Dry land.
Gracias.
While Captain Julio refuels, we walk through a town
largely cut off from the outside world.
[guitar music playing]
[Josh] El Castillo looks like a lost set from the Jungle Cruise.
Luckily, the coffee is strong and the traffic is light.
In short, not much has changed since steamship passengers
dreaming of California gold walked these streets.
How cute is this town.
You never know what you're gonna find on the river.
And in the hills above, a derelict fortress is
a ghostly reminder of El Castillo's colonial past.
[adventurous music continues]
[Josh] Whew!
-Look at that view! -[Peter] Wow!
-That is something. -[Josh] Amazing.
[Josh] Built in 1673, it was strategically positioned
to protect the Spanish colonial capital in Grenada
from invaders.
A century later, a young Horatio Nelson captured
the fort for the British.
And in 1850, the town became a major stop
on Vanderbilt's developing trade route.
After the Orus disaster, this was the toughest
set of rapids for the future steamships
navigating the river.
It was so tough, Josh, that they would
disembark downstream.
They built a rail system to haul the passengers
and cargo around this castle, down to this point
at the foot of the castle, and they'd load their cargo
and passengers onto another steamship
that would take them westward back.
So they totally gave up on the idea of even
getting a steamship through this section.
[Peter] They really did.
[Josh] With the sun setting, we set up hammocks in town
to get some much needed rest.
[Josh sighs]
-All right, boys, good night. -[Peter] Good night.
[Miguel] All right. Good day, fellas.
[Josh] Great day.
Hey, none of you guys snore, right?
[Josh] Uh, no.
-[crickets chirping] -[loud snoring]
[Josh] Early the next morning, we're back on the hunt
for the Orus.
With El Castillo in the rear view,
every trace of civilization vanishes.
We're alone on the river, surrounded by wild rainforest,
with nothing but green in every direction.
♪♪
[Josh] According to contemporary sources,
the wreck was overtaken by the jungle and transformed
into a small island somewhere in this area,
about two-thirds of the way to Lake Nicaragua.
We're in the right spot.
The Orus should be close, so we keep our eyes peeled.
[engine revving]
[Josh] It is so overgrown that it's kind of hard to imagine
seeing anything, unless it is just right on the water's edge.
The course of this river has changed a lot
over the last 200 years.
Today, what's in the jungle 200 years ago might have been
on the edge of the bank. -[Josh] Totally.
-Hey, guys. -There!
Right there. Look at that!
Right in there. That's metal for sure.
You see that?
Can we come around?
[dramatic music intensifies]
-That is metal for sure. -[Miguel] Yep.
[Josh] What the hell is that?
Let's see if we can find some place to come ashore.
[Miguel speaking in Spanish]
[Josh] We beach the boat in a clearing.
We'll have to bushwhack through the dense vegetation
to investigate the rusty metal debris.
♪♪
OK, now we gonna worry about what?
Snakes?
I think they're only about five different types
of venomous snakes here in Nicaragua.
Why did I even ask this question?
[Peter] Come on, we're having fun.
Keep your eyes open.
[Josh] Good lord.
[exciting music playing]
The thick jungle slows our progress to a crawl.
One machete chop at a time, we clear a path.
Anything?
[Peter] Nothing yet, but it's thick up here.
It should be on our left by the water, yeah?
[Peter] Yeah, I think I see something. Hang on.
-Hey, guys, get over here! -[Josh] You got it?
-[Peter] Over here! -Where is it?
[Peter] Right over here.
Ha ha! There it is!
Oh, my word. That's a boiler.
[Josh] That is absolutely a ship's boiler,
literally in the middle of the jungle!
I'm with explorers Peter Tattersfield
and Miguel Fernandez, searching for the steamship Orus.
So, we got something here like a hatch.
-[Miguel] Yeah. -[Josh] And I think this is connected.
[Miguel] I think this is actually the boiler
underneath us here. /Right, so this is the boiler.
This is actually part of the chimney
and there's a smaller chimney that goes up higher.
Right, so this is like the smokestack up here.
-Exactly. -Unbelievable!
So the million-dollar question, are we standing
on top of the Orus?
-I don't think so, Josh. -[Josh] You don't?
[Peter] I don't think so.
Number one, we don't have an island.
We have vegetation, but there's no island impact
with this wreck. Whatever this ship is,
I think she came to rest here,
and the bulk of her is two feet beneath us.
There is one other big issue with this, too.
-Yeah, rapids. -Exactly.
There's no rapids here at all.
We're not at the foot of rapids.
We're not above rapids. This is calm water out here.
[Peter] Yeah.
[Josh] We also know that the Orus was powered by two steam engines,
but here we don't see any remains
beyond the boiler and chimney. -[Peter] Probably not the Orus.
But a steamship in the jungle.
That's not something you see every day.
-But on Rio San Juan, it is. -[Josh] Right.
This era during the Gold Rush had a tremendous amount
of traffic up and down this river.
All right, so we'll document it as best we can and then
head back to the river. -Sounds good.
-[Peter] Let's do it. -[Josh] Let's do it.
♪♪
[Josh] Having come across another lost wreck,
we measure the dimensions of the boiler
and record GPS coordinates.
Hopefully, future archival research will uncover
a name and reveal the story of this mystery vessel.
[adventurous music continues]
[Josh] Back on the boat, we continue working our way
upriver for several more hours.
Hey, guys, we're coming up to a really, really dangerous
part of the river.
All the accounts that we have with these rapids,
this is where we have the greatest chance
of finding the Orus.
Keep your eyes open, but brace yourselves
for a bumpy ride. -All right.
Everybody hang on to something. Here we go.
♪♪
[Josh] Vanderbilt's lost steamship may have crashed on the rocks
in this rapid.
We need to be careful, or we'll meet the same fate.
Yeah, hang on. It's gonna get bumpy.
[Miguel] Hold on.
[Josh] Whoo!
Good Lord!
Fighting this current is no joke.
These are some strong rapids.
I mean, we are basically at a standstill here.
Like an aquatic treadmill, the surging waters have us
running in place.
-Come on! -[Miguel] Come on, baby.
[Josh] It almost feels like we're going backwards in this.
You can absolutely see how a ship the size of the Orus
could get destroyed in here.
We clear the first leg of the rapids and find
an unusual channel forking off near the river's edge.
This is not the back of the river.
This is an island.
[Peter] This is an island for sure.
[Josh] This is reminiscent of what passersby
like Mark Twain noted a century ago.
A small island which built up around the Orus.
It's certainly worth investigating.
Can we sneak in here, you think?
Let's see if we can get out of the main current here.
♪♪
Beauty, amazing, we're in.
OK, we're on the inside of whatever this island is now.
Right in the rapids, and we got an island.
Absolutely!
So let's see if we can come ashore.
Right here.
Everybody hang on!
As I set foot on dry land, we are once again enveloped
by thick wilderness.
Wow! Look at this place.
-Hey, Peter. -[Peter] Yeah.
-Gonna need that. -[Peter] Oh, yeah.
So let's see where this goes.
[Peter] We got some work ahead of us, though.
Yeah, this looks overgrown.
Keep an eye out for anything metal, any kind of objects.
[Josh] That's right. OK.
We bushwhack our way toward the far edge of the island,
searching for traces of anything man-made.
[Peter] It is thick up here.
♪♪
This is tough going.
Inch by inch, we hack our way to the opposite shore.
Looks like it opens up.
-[Peter] Whoa! -[Josh] What you got?
-[Peter] Check it out! -Oh, my god!
-[Miguel] Oh, boy. -[Josh] Holy [bleep]!
Look at that!
That is an entire boiler system.
-[Miguel] This is a steamship. -That's from a steamship?
Yes, for sure.
Try clear this out, so I can get a good look at the boiler.
[Josh] Oh, my God! Look at this!
But is it the pioneering Orus, or just a boiler
from a later lost steamer?
Good?
Look at this beast!
OK, so let's talk about this thing.
I mean, this is insane.
If I'm not mistaken, this is a cylindrical style boiler.
It was first developed in the 1840s, which is
right the time when the Orus was built.
So this is definitely potential.
-This fits the bill. -Absolutely.
[Peter] And not only that, we're right by a set of rapids.
[Miguel] Guys, there's even more up there.
Oh, there's more in front of it.
I think there's some machinery.
-[Josh] Oh, there's more. -[Peter] Yeah, look at this.
[Josh] Look at this. There's a lot more here.
This looks like part of an engine.
[Miguel] These are definitely engine parts.
And remember what I told you guys?
The Orus had a twin beam engine.
That's right. And look at that.
Look at these parallel pieces.
This is almost a smoking gun. We know from designer
James P. Allaire's records that the Orus had
two lever-beam engines driving paddle wheels mounted
on either side of the hull.
You should be able to see furnace openings on the bottom
of the boiler. Can you see anything?
Oh, there is! look at that!
That's the opening to the furnace.
[Miguel] It is.
[Josh] What's in there? Can you see in there?
[Miguel] I can.
Check it out.
[Josh] What's in there?
-You got something? -[Miguel] I do.
-[Josh] What the hell is that? -[Peter] What do you got?
[excited] Oh, my.
♪♪
[Josh] Welcome to charming downtown Managua,
Nicaragua's cultural center and the heart of its capital.
It's funny. I thought it would be bigger.
Weird.
This scale model is an exact replica
of the city's main drag before a devastating earthquake
flattened it in 1972.
Now visitors can tower over "Mini"-agua
and remember the city that was frozen forever in time.
I just raided the mini bar.
♪♪
'Cause it's a small hotel, Mini -- doesn't matter.
You get it.
[exciting music playing]
Check that out.
-[Josh] Is that coal? -[Peter] Look at that.
-Is that coal from the furnace? -[Miguel] It sure is.
[Josh] We've just found a lump of coal,
yet somehow it feels like Christmas.
That's because our expedition up the San Juan River
in Nicaragua may have hit pay dirt.
[Miguel] I got another piece.
-That's coal. -That is definitely coal,
and that is old coal.
And remember, the Orus was burning coal.
Right. So another piece of evidence.
-They're stacking up. -They are stacking up.
Everything we're seeing matches descriptions of the Orus.
We've got an 1840s era coal-fired boiler wrecked
near a rapid and embedded in an island.
Check, check, and check.
Oh!
I got metal! Oh!
Look at this! Look at this!
-[Peter] Whoa! -[Josh] This is an anchor.
-[Peter] That is an anchor. -[Miguel] Definitely.
I mean, that is for sure an anchor.
The main part of the anchor here, you can see,
is completely buried.
So the flukes, all that must be all the way
underneath this mass.
Again, this is more evidence that this ship, whatever it is,
when it wrecked here, it formed a kind of island.
There's gotta be more around here, Josh.
Let's keep on looking.
[Josh] To fully investigate the debris field,
we put on wetsuits and brave the crocodile-infested waters
to see what's hiding beneath the surface.
All right, let's talk about the plan here.
What are we looking for underwater?
So, these pieces of machinery should be bolted
to an iron plate, and that iron plate
would have been bolted to a keelson.
That's a really big, thick piece of timber
that ran the length of the hull. -That's right.
Orus has to be wooden hulls, so that configuration is
indicative of the Orus. -[Miguel] Absolutely.
And in fact, this is a wood-hulled ship, right?
So, there should be timber all through here.
It's gotta be, yeah.
OK, let's see if we can see anything underwater here.
-Here we go. -[Peter] Let's go.
We only have a few inches of visibility,
so we use our hands to grope in the murk.
♪♪
Peter!
-Yeah? -[Josh] I'm feeling wood
all over the place down here, aren't you?
I'm feeling wood, but I'm feeling an iron
or steel plank right here beneath me.
-[Josh] Where is that? -Right here.
-Give me your hand. -[Josh] Uh-huh.
Feel this.
-Whoa. -[Peter] That is metal.
-[Josh] That's metal. -[Miguel] What do you guys have?
There's like a metal plank that runs right underneath
this equipment. -[Miguel] Is it flat?
-[Peter] It's flat. -[Josh] Yes, completely flat.
And can you get any sense of how thick it is?
-I'd say an inch and a half. -[Miguel] Oh, man.
And there's also what feels like there might be like
decking here. Hold on a second.
-[Miguel] Wood? -[Josh] Yes.
Ha! Look at this. That's a piece of timber.
[Miguel] That's a great piece of timber.
-Look at that. -For sure.
-Look at these parts here. -Right?
This looks like it might have been drilled out here.
This is not like an old branch. This is a piece of timber.
You can see that's planed.
Yeah, look at this drill hole right there.
There was a screw in there at one point.
That's amazing.
Two-lever beam engines affixed to a metal plate
sitting on a wood-hulled ship.
This is a dead match for the information we have
on the Orus.
All the pieces of the puzzle are sliding into place.
All right, let's take stock of things here,
starting with where we're at.
Where we're at feels right, doesn't it?
It feels like we're in the right place, Josh.
-A, we're in the rapids. -Like literally in the rapids.
-Right in the center. -B, an island.
[Josh] That's right. We've got a wreck
that has an island forming around it.
-Right. -So, I mean, already
that is incredibly promising.
We've got a boiler that was overgrown by the jungle.
And then we've got the wreck itself.
I mean, we've got a cylindrical style boiler
that fits into the era. -[Josh] Yep.
We know that it had a double-beam engine.
And we've got parallel parts here.
-Look at this. -[Josh] That are about the right size.
They're about the right size.
And underneath that, it's all bolted down to iron.
And we've got wooden timbers and beams underneath that.
And it appears to be a wooden hull.
OK. So?
Josh, Miguel, we're sitting on the Orus.
-This feels right. -It sure does.
-Absolutely incredible! -[Peter] Yeah.
And you know what is so wild about this?
This isn't some artifact that had to be dug up.
It had to be re-remembered.
It's like a forgotten piece of history just trapped
in this river. -She's been waiting for us.
She's been waiting for us. How about that?
-[Peter] Yep. -Awesome, awesome job.
-Guys, incredible. -[Miguel] Really exciting.
Look at that, the Orus.
Dude, unbelievable. Amazing job.
-Should we dry off? -[Miguel] Let's go.
Let's get out of here.
[triumphant music playing]
We clean off the vegetation to photograph and measure
the boiler and engine.
All of the evidence indicates that this is the Orus,
the first passenger steamer
to take on the mighty San Juan River.
A lost chapter in Nicaragua's history has been found.
♪♪
[Josh] Back in the Gold Rush heyday, when tens of thousands
of prospectors were traveling West,
Vanderbilt saw opportunity and dollar signs,
but his vision claimed the Orus, the Ometepe,
and dozens of other steamships.
In 1855, a rail line was completed across Panama,
and in 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad
bridged the United States.
In 1906, the opening of the Panama Canal was
the final nail in the coffin.
But history has a way of repeating itself.
Nicaragua is, once again, looking for partners to build
a new ocean-to-ocean canal.
But investors beware!
The San Juan River has a way of carving its own path
and deciding the destinies of those who try to tame it.
♪♪