On days when the fog isn’t too bad, sailing through San Francisco’s Golden Gate offers a beautiful view. You’ve got the city to the south, the Marin Headlands to the north, and, since 1937, the famed bridge overhead. But if you could see what’s below the surface, things are considerably less cheery. The rough waters to the west of the strait, known as the Gulf of the Farallones, include major shipping lines to the ports of San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond. And they’re littered with the remains of hundreds of ships.
Now, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have found the SS City of Rio de Janeiro, the most famous of San Francisco’s many lost ships, and produced 3-D sonar maps of the wreck. The discovery is part of a two-year project to find and document wrecks within the Gulf of the Farallones and learn more about the area’s rich maritime and biological history.
At 5:30 am on February 22, 1901, the iron-hulled City of Rio de Janeiro, enveloped in fog, hit the rocks of Fort Point just within the Golden Gate. Water flooded the bulkheads, sinking the ship within 10 minutes and killing 128 of the 210 passengers aboard, most of them Chinese and Japanese emigrants. Captain William Ward, who died, and Pilot Frederick Jordan, who lived, were found guilty of gross negligence because they never should have attempted to enter San Francisco Bay.
In 1987, a salvage team said it found the remains of the ship some 300 feet down, but never proved the claim. It wasn't until last month that NOAA scientists conclusively found the wreck in the main ship channel, not far from where it sank 113 years ago. This week, they released a sonar profile of the City of Rio de Janeiro. The ship may be, to use the NOAA’s term, “a crumpled, scarcely recognizable iron hulk encased in more than a century worth of mud and sediment,” but the stern, bow, and point where the hull broke are clearly discernible on the sonar image.
“The latest developments in sonar … have given us an unparalleled opportunity not only to find these things but to look at them in detail," says James Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the NOAA. For this project, the team is using a 3D sonar called Echoscope, made by UK-based Coda Octopus. The Echoscope, carried by an ROV the size of a refrigerator over the wreck, offers a level of detail previous sonars haven’t provided, allowing the team to spot the mud-encased ship. “It’s at a whole different stage,” Delgado says. “We will be able to virtually record, document, and raise these ships, with sonar, to share their stories.” (There are no plans to actually move the wreck.)
The agency's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries Maritime Heritage Program hopes to find and document some 200 wrecks. It’s identified nine so far, including two others in the Golden Gate strait: the City of Chester, which sank in 1888, and the MV Fernstream, which sank in 1952.
There’s historical data to be had, of course, about the disasters themselves, how ships were made, and about the people who sailed them. But there are benefits for ocean science as well, Delgado says. “If you look, say, at a wreck, and you know exactly when it sank, and you know the amount of marine growth, or how it’s become habitat, you have a timestamp that enables our marine biological colleagues to say this is the rate of colonization, this is the role of upwelling [when deep, cold water rises toward the surface].” City of Rio de Janeiro provides insights into “the dynamics of ocean currents and sedimentation at the Golden Gate.”
Delgado also hopes the project sparks interest in ocean science among young people. Such discoveries and the compelling stories behind them can pique their interest and instill an appreciation for exploration. “The oceans are still the vast undiscovered frontier, with so much to offer," he says.
