Shipwrecks at Fort Ross State Park to be explored

Marine archaeologist James Delgado and a team of about 30 experts will launch an investigation of shipwrecks associated with the “doghole ports” of the Sonoma Coast next week, starting at Fort Ross State Park.

The public is invited to watch from the bluff as divers from the research vessel Fulmar document the wreck of a 225-foot, steel-hulled steamer, the Pomona, that struck a rock and sank close to shore in the Fort Ross Cove on March 17, 1908.

Delgado, director of marine heritage for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other team members, including California State Parks archaeologist Breck Parkman, will be on the bluff from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday as the nine-day mission gets started. Divers will also try to find remains of the J. Eppinger, a wooden schooner that wrecked in the cove during a storm on Jan. 2, 1901, Delgado said.

There are about 100 documented shipwrecks along the Sonoma Coast located near some of the 11 doghole ports that served the booming redwood timber industry from the mid-1800s into the 20th century. Fort Ross, Timber Cove, Stillwater Cove and Gerstle Cove are among the small ports on the rocky coastline, where elaborate systems of chutes and cables transferred lumber from onshore mills to vessels that carried the cargo to San Francisco and around the world. Mariners joked that the ports were so small they were barely large enough for a dog to turn around.