By Mary Jane Schramm
On March 25, 1921, the 170-foot Naval fleet tug “USS Conestoga” departed San Francisco Bay, headed for American Samoa via Hawaii. Springtime sea conditions in the Gulf of the Farallones off the Golden Gate can be notoriously rough; this day was no different. The morning’s choppy seas, whipped by winds that built to 40mph in late afternoon, became towering waves. The vessel breasted huge swells and was rocked by confused currents; but tugs are tough workboats with powerful engines, built for endurance. Despite its rough start, “Conestoga” was scheduled to reach Hawaii by early April. Contact was lost, but it was assumed still en route until, when over a month overdue, the Navy launched the largest sea and air search to date, scouring the seas from Baja California to Hawaii. Families and friends of the 56 lost seamen gave in to renewed grief when the search was abandoned, their grave site remaining a mystery.
Diving into the Past: In September, 2014, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Maritime Heritage Division launched an expedition in Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to explore a few of its hundreds of shipwrecks, some whose locations were unknown. We’d set out to explore several targets that day, including the famous “Noonday,” a sleek, swift clipper ship that in 1863 had struck eponymous Noonday Rock, a submerged pinnacle northwest of the main Farallon Islands. It sank, but all hands were rescued. We’d hoped our Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) cameras would reveal the “Noonday’s” graceful lines and classic shipwreck image: a noble sailing ship at rest on the seafloor. And, we had news media aboard expecting to broadcast our discovery far and wide, and share its story. But what our cameras captured was the bare, flattened outline of a vessel of the right size and configuration, shrouded in silt and mud. Fierce currents and the passage of time had razed its superstructure. Still, the archaeologists could identify it as the “Noonday.”
Mystery Ship: After gathering what data we could, we moved on to our next targets. Disappointed by the “Noonday’s” anticlimactic visuals for the media and for forensic examination, we swung by the scenic Farallon Islands because another scheduled target, though our lowest-priority site, lay nearby: a “supposed” vessel, but possibly just a rocky feature. Multibeam sonar images from 2009 invited further exploration, and the ROV was deployed. It revealed an early 20th Century vessel, heavily encrusted with marine life. Colorful rockfish cruised our camera and weaved in and out of the vessel’s 12-foot propeller, portholes, mooring bitts, a towing winch, and other equipment. A giant Pacific octopus peered out from between steel plates. In death “Conestoga” had become a submerged reef, replete with life: fishes, corals, eery white “metridia” and other sea anemones, algae and sponges.
But - it matched no ship known to be lost in these waters - a mystery! With skill and determination, the maritime archaeologists began exhaustive searches of lost ship databases, and with some informed guesswork, a keen eye for details, and after a followup visit in 2015, NOAA and the U.S. Navy finally confirmed it was the USS “Conestoga.” It had sunk just three miles east of Southeast Farallon Island, hours after leaving port.
Closure: Nearly a century had passed, but at last we knew the fate of the tug and its crew. Not only was maritime archaeology served by this accidental discovery: the descendents of the seamen found closure over the fate of their missing kin. “Conestoga” is now on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, a military gravesite protected by the National Marine Sanctuary Act and the Sunken Military Craft Act. And thus the final chapter in its history was written.
Watch the video at https://tinyurl.com/37sys43k See more Greater Farallones shipwrecks at: https://farallones.noaa.gov/heritage/shipwrecks.html.
Images
• Far left: USS Conestoga 2 months before it sank. Photo: Naval History & Heritage Command.
• Lower left: Giant Pacific octopus eyes the ROV arm (left) with suspicion. Photo: ONMS-NOAA.
• Above: The ship's guns matched and positively identified the Conestoga. Photo: Naval History & Heritage Command & NOAA/Teledyne SeaBotix.
