Pants recovered from shipwreck fetch $114,000 at auction

The pants and other auctioned artifacts were salvaged from the S.S. Central America, a ship that sank in 1857.

A pair of work pants that sold for $114,000 at auction this month after being pulled from a shipwreck in 1857 may be an early version of Levi's jeans Strauss, auction officials said, though a company historian said it was "speculation."

The auction Holabird Western Americana Collections auction on December 3 featured 270 items salvaged from the S.S. Central America, which had traveled from Panama to New York in September 1857 when it sank in a hurricane with 425 people on board.

The wreck was discovered in 1988 off the coast of South Carolina, and the rights to its treasures, which included thousands pounds of California gold, have since been the subject of a decades-long legal battle.

The pants were found in a trunk belonging to John Dement , a Mexican-American War veteran from Oregon. Mr. Dement was a buyer for his family's trading shop and, on business trips to buy goods, survived many stormy voyages, including the sinking of the S.S. Central America, according to the auction catalog .

Mr. Dement's trunk was recovered in 1991, and the items inside, which included socks, nightgowns, and paperbacks, were salvageable because the trunk contained little or no oxygen inside.

The condition of the trunk prevented its contents from exhibiting the bacterial degradation and biological consumption seen in the most exposed objects during the wreck, said Robert Evans, chief scientist and historian of the S.S. Central America project, in the auction catalog.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Inside the chest, scientists also found the work pants, which are made of an unknown thick material and covered in black and brown stains. It was unclear who made the winning bid for the pants.

Holabird Western Americana Collections said the work pants may be affiliated with Levi Strauss because that he was a major seller of dry clothes. goods during the gold rush and treasure lost in the shipwreck. The tagless pants have a five-button fly pattern, and the buttons are "nearly identical in size and style of manufacture," further convincing sellers that the pants could be made by or for Strauss, according to the company's catalog. auction. p>

Mr. Strauss and his partner, Jacob Davis, patented the first modern bluejeans in 1873, 16 years after the sinking of the S.S. Central America.

Tracey Panek, historian and director of the Levi Strauss & Co. Archives, said in an email that the pants' connection to Mr. Strauss was speculative.

Mrs. Panek, who inspected the pants and other artifacts from the wreckage in person, said that while she was excited by the find, she saw nothing that could link the pants to Mr. Strauss.

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"From the white color, the absence of suspender buttons, five fly buttons instead of four, and the unusual fly design with additional side buttonholes, to the fabric non-denim which is much lighter than the fabric used by LS&Co For its first riveted garments, the Dement boot pant is not typical of the miners' work pants in our records,” Ms. Panek said.

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No matter where the pants came from, at the time of the sinking they would not have approached the value of other loot on the S.S. Central America.

Passengers boarded the ship with gold coins and nuggets, which had been collected from years the gold mining towns of northern California during the gold rush. California...