Shipwreck sleuths detail new finds off Bay Area coast

SAN FRANCISCO - Switching on the lights of their $100,000 remote controlled vehicle, a team of federal shipwreck investigators got a technicolor surprise on the ocean floor near the Farallon Islands, 30 miles outside the Golden Gate.

Cloaked in white sea anemones, surrounded by multicolored rockfish and harboring a bluish octopus, the iron skeleton of a century-old, steam-powered oceangoing tugboat lay upright in 187 feet of water, listing slightly to the left.

The team, led by veteran marine archaeologist James Delgado, dubbed its Sept. 13 discovery the “mystery tug” because it was not among the more than 300 documented shipwrecks in a 1,300-square-mile patch of the Pacific Ocean stretching from Sonoma County south to San Mateo County.

But only 18 of the wrecks, most dating from the Gold Rush era to the early 20th century, have been visually confirmed by divers or by remotely operated cameras, Delgado said, leaving what he called a “great undersea museum” largely in the dark.

A San Jose native, Delgado, director of marine heritage for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has explored shipwrecks around the world for 33 years, including the Titanic, the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Mongol emperor Kublai Khan’s warships lost off the Japanese coast in the 13th century and the first survey of the steamship Pomona’s remains in Fort Ross Cove in 1984.

Intent on shedding more light on the Bay Area’s undersea history, the NOAA team of researchers conducted a survey Sept. 11 to 15 and on Tuesday reported their findings at Lands End in San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate on a calm, sunny day. It’s the start, the team said, of a two-year investigation of the region’s shipwrecks.

Protruding from the gate’s murky waters at low tide were the barnacle-encrusted engine blocks of two well-known wrecks, the oil tankers Frank H. Buck and Lyman Stewart, steel-hulled vessels said to have been “born together and died together,” 15 years apart in the treacherous entry to San Francisco Bay.

Both launched in 1914 from the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, the oil-laden ships met their common fate in the fogbound channel, the Stewart’s bow smashed by an incoming freighter on Oct. 7, 1922 and the Buck rammed head-on by an outgoing passenger liner on March 6, 1937. All hands aboard both vessels were saved and the wrecks wound up next to one another on the rocky shoreline.

As part of the five-day exploratory cruise, the NOAA team completed the first-ever sonar survey of the submerged remains, just offshore from the USS San Francisco Memorial at the end of El Camino del Mar in the Seacliff neighborhood.

The team also spotted - via the remotely operated vehicle - the torn, twisted wreckage of the SS Selja, a 380-foot cargo steamship that sank after a collision west of Point Reyes on Nov. 22, 1910. The jagged hulk was “a frightening place to be,” threatening to snag the expensive ROV, said Robert Schwemmer, West Coast coordinator of the maritime heritage program.

Controversy over the Selja’s loss, including the lives of two Chinese crew members, included a legal case that was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and helped define maritime law.

Sonar images detected the location of the Noonday, a 19th century three-masted clipper ship that struck a subsurface rock west of the Farallones and sank on Jan. 1, 1863. Remains of the vessel, built of New Hampshire white oak and launched in 1855, were covered by sediment, the team concluded.

The rock it hit, covered by 18 feet of water, was named Noonday Rock.

The anonymous tugboat, however, was photographed in detail, with the ROV’s camera peering downward into the engine room, revealing a white porcelain toilet that had fallen from the disintegrated deckhouse into the hulk.

No salvage of the 160-foot tug will occur, Delgado said, as the wreck is now an artificial reef. “It’s part of the ecosystem,” he said. “We’re bringing up the stories, the history down there.”

There was no evidence of a collision that might have doomed the vessel, he said.

“It is a mystery,” Schwemmer said. “That’s the beauty of sharing these stories with the public” in hopes someone might come forward with more information.

The tug might have departed from San Francisco and never reached its destination, but no one would have known where it was lost, said Stephen Haller, a National Park Service historian and team member.

The Gold Rush that began in 1848, producing about $7 billion worth of gold at modern prices, made San Francisco among the world’s major ports for about 100 years, despite its formidable approach.

Strong currents and dense fog, combined with an onshore wind, trapped vessels on the rocks in the era before technology-aided navigation. But even on a postcard-perfect day like Tuesday, Haller pointed out swirling currents near Mile Rock, capped by the remains of a lighthouse built in 1904 and dismantled in the 1960s.

San Francisco Bay remains a major commercial destination, and the government continually surveys the approach to the Golden Gate. “To this day we are still charting,” Delgado said.

The restless ocean here, the graveyard for more than 300 ships, keeps changing.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.