Shipping 



waves and could at the same time be a more 

 efficient shape than conventional hulls for 

 moving through water. 



Dredgings of rock and sediment often 

 contain artifacts lost or discarded from ships. 

 Chief of these are cinders and pieces of 

 coal, but occasionally broken chinaware and 

 glass have been found. Even steel cable 

 and bits of iron and brass, a tar bucket, 

 paint cans, beer cans, bottles, rubber, cloth, 

 and paint brushes have been noted, although 

 most of this rubbish is highly perishable in 

 sea water. Much more interesting as artifacts 

 are wrecked ships where all or part of the 

 ship still remains. 



The earliest wrecks in the southern Cali- 

 fornia region may be of Spanish ships, one 

 of which is reported by Coffman (1957) to 

 have been a galleon carrying $2,000,000 in 

 gold which struck Ship Rock off Santa Cat- 

 alina Island in 1598. Another worth $700,000 

 is supposed to have sunk on Cortes Bank in 

 1701, another with $2,000,000 sunk at the 

 north end of San Clemente Island in 1754, 

 and another carrying silver sunk at San 

 Miguel Island in 1801; and lastly a Spanish 

 frigate supposedly with $1,200,000 in gold 

 ran aground at the northwestern tip of 

 Santa Catahna Island in 1852. Solid veri- 

 fication of these reports is lacking, and it 

 should be recalled that charts of the period 

 prior to 1800 left much to be desired in ac- 

 curacy, so even if the ships were wrecked 

 there is considerable doubt about the exact 

 localities. Possible support for the 1598 

 wreck off Santa Catalina Island is provided 

 by the mention in Vizcaino's diary of seeing 

 two pieces of figured China silk during his 

 visit to the island in 1602 (Bolton, 1916, p. 

 85). The Indians told him that a ship carry- 

 ing people like the Spaniards and also 

 Negroes was driven ashore on the island 

 and wrecked; however, circumstances pre- 

 vented Vizcaino from visiting the wreck site. 



During the last century many well-estab- 

 lished shipwrecks have occurred on the 

 islands and mainland, owing to stranding 

 and breaking up at night or in fog or in 

 narrow entrances of bays, to fire, and to 

 collision and foundering. Many of the 

 larger wrecks have been tabulated by Mason 



309 



(1955) through compilation from Coast 

 Guard and Hydrographic Office bulletins 

 and from generally unverified newspaper 

 stories (Fig. 238). His map was later copied 

 and published by McKinney (1956). The 

 largest ship reported wrecked was the Cuba, 

 3168 tons, stranded high on San Miguel 

 Island on September 8, 1923. Little loss of 

 life has been incurred by the wrecks off 

 southern California; in contrast, north of 

 Point Conception where winds are strong 

 and waves are high, as many as 250 casualties 

 have occurred in a single shipwreck. Chief 

 losses in southern California have been in 

 Navy ships. A gunboat, U.S.S. Bennington 

 blew up off San Diego in 1905 killing 65 

 men, and a submarine, U.S.S. F-1, was 

 rammed and sunk off San Diego with 19 

 men in 1917. Famous in the annals of Cali- 

 fornia was the driving ashore just north of 

 Point Arguello of nine destroyers, one after 

 the other, during ten minutes of the same 

 foggy morning in 1923 that the Cuba was 

 stranded. The cause was a navigational 

 error, a reversed radio compass bearing 

 (Hadaway, 1957). Twenty-three men were 

 killed, and the seven destroyers that finally 

 were lost were more combatant ships than 

 were accounted for by enemy action during 

 all of World War I. During the first month 

 of World War II a tanker, Montebello, was 

 torpedoed and sunk about 130 km north of 

 Point Conception (Gibbs, 1957). A lumber 

 schooner, Absaroka, was also torpedoed off 

 Point Fermin, but the buoyancy of its cargo 

 permitted it to make port. In May 1942 a 

 Japanese submarine was rumored to have 

 been sunk in the outer San Pedro Bay; a 

 magazine story even mentioned its salvage 

 (Wellman, 1950), but Admiral King's (1946) 

 official Navy summary of sinkings indicates 

 that no Japanese warships were sunk east 

 of the Hawaiian Islands. Evidently, the 

 rumor was false though recurrent, and no 

 sinkings related to enemy action occurred 

 in southern California. 



In spite of increased navigational aids the 

 number of shipwrecks off southern Cali- 

 fornia presents a steady increase each decade 

 (Table 30), more or less paralleling the in- 

 crease in number of ships, fishing boats, and 



