In a bid to recover the remaining gold from a sunken 19th-century steamship, an expedition is set out this week. The steamship yielded an estimated $50 million, 25 years ago, but could not do more because of being shut by legal challenges.

The Odyssey Explorer and its crew of 41 were set to leave late Tuesday or Wednesday for the S.S. Central America. The area is located about 160 miles off the coast of the Carolinas in 7,200 feet of water. The vessel is likely to spend as long as four months and it will return before the beginning of hurricane season in late summer.

The S.S. Central America will receive its first visitors next months, which would also be the first in more than two decades. A group of shipwreck experts will endeavor to recover remaining gold, for which the potential price is estimated to be close to $100 million.

The S.S. Central America is considered as the Titanic of the 19th century by many. It has certainly become a cautionary tale of ambition, costly legal battles, embittered friendships and repentant investors.

"I have been telling people for years, and as the historical record suggests, the amount of gold that was in the hands of the passengers on the S.S. Central America was of the same order of magnitude of the commercial shipment", said Ben Evans, a geologist, historian and coin expert from Ohio who was on the initial 1988 expedition and is returning again to the wreck.

He said that they have no idea about the figures but the reason to go back there is huge. The initial cache of gold was recovered during a four-year expedition led by shipwreck enthusiast Tommy Thompson, an Ohio native, in 1988. An 1857 hurricane drowned the S.S. Central America, which is considered as one of the worst maritime disasters in the nation's history.