Scientists locate 'ghost' ship wrecks in San Francisco waters

[Buster's Uncle]

Scientists locate 'ghost' ship wrecks in San Francisco waters
Reuters
By Daniel Wallis  3 minutes ago



(Reuters) - U.S. government researchers working with divers and sonar equipment have located the wrecks of what they dubbed "forgotten ghost ships" in waters just outside San Francisco's Golden Gate strait.

The discoveries by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists follow a two-year project to find, identify and better understand some of the estimated 300 wrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and adjacent Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

NOAA confirmed on Tuesday the discovery of the 1910 shipwreck SS Selja, as well as an unidentified sunken early steam tugboat that it described only as the "mystery wreck."

It said researchers had also located the 1863 wreck of the clipper ship, Noonday, lost in 1863 and part of the fleet of fast-sailing vessels that brought men and supplies to California during and after the Gold Rush.

James Delgado, director of Maritime Heritage for the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, described the waters in the area as one of the United States' great undersea museums.

"These wrecks tell the powerful story of the people who helped build California and opened America to the Pacific for nearly two centuries. Finding the remains of these ships links the past to the present," Delgado said in a statement.

NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the U.S. National Park Service published the first detailed inventory and history of the region's wrecks in 1990.

Since then, the administration said, project co-leader and NOAA maritime archaeologist Robert Schwemmer has done research in archives around the world, as well as interviewed fishermen and wreck divers such the Lanham brothers of San Francisco.

The Lanhams, who have discovered a number of historic Bay-area wrecks, led the NOAA team to the wreck site of the Selja.

The steamer sank in a fatal collision 104 years ago that featured in a legal case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court over a key aspect of maritime law, the "rule of the road."

In addition to the newly identified ships, NOAA said that Vitad Pradith, one of its researchers, completed the first sonar survey of the submerged portions of the well-known wrecks of the tankers Frank H. Buck and Lyman Stewart.

The engines of both vessels are visible at low tide off San Francisco's Lands End, inside the waters of Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

(Reporting by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Sandra Maler)


http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-locate-ghost-ship-wrecks-san-francisco-waters-191034851.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Historic 'Ghost Ships' Discovered Near Golden Gate Bridge
LiveScience.com
by Megan Gannon, News Editor  15 minutes ago



This huge ship now rests on the bottom of the Gulf of the Farallones, just west of San Francisco. Named Selja, it sank in 1910 after a collision with another ship.



The waters just west of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge hide a graveyard of sunken ships. By some estimates, there are 300 wrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area alone. But only a fraction of them have been seen by scientists.

Marine archaeologists and researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have set out to document those lost vessels. Over the course of a five-day survey that just ended yesterday (Sept. 15), the team discovered the sites of at least four wrecks: the 1910 SS Selja shipwreck, the 1863 wreck of the clipper ship Noonday and two unidentified wrecks.

"We're looking at an area that was a funnel to the busiest and most important American port on the Pacific Coast," said James Delgado, director of Maritime Heritage for the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. The wrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones span a huge chunk of history, from 1595 to the present. Perhaps the best-known recent example is the tanker Puerto Rican, which exploded and sank off San Francisco in 1984.

Delgado told Live Science that the team used a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to assess eight spots that had intriguing sonar signals. Four of of those sites turned out to have shipwrecks.

One of the newly located wrecks, the SS Selja steam freighter, was a workhorse that carried goods between the Pacific Northwest and China and Japan. On Nov. 22, 1910, the 380-foot-long (116 meters) vessel sank after it collided with a steamer named Beaver off Point Reyes, California. The Master of Selja, Olaf Lie, tried suing the Beaver and its owners for the loss of the ship, but the maritime court ruled against Lie, claiming he had been going too fast in a thick fog and was responsible, according to NOAA.

A volunteer who reanalyzed a cache of NOAA sonar data found a signal that was the right size and in the right location to be the clipper ship Noonday. The vessel had brought men and supplies to California during and after the Gold Rush. On New Year's Day in 1863, after a 139-day journey from Boston, the Noonday struck a rock just as it was approaching its destination, the San Francisco harbor. It quickly took on water and sank. Today, the vessel is obscured by mud.



The blip in this sonar image is the clipper ship Noonday, which sank in 1863 after hitting a rock just outside of San Francisco harbor.


The team also discovered one badly broken-up wreck covered in fishnets and a rather intact tugboat where no wreck was expected to be found, Delgado said. "We have a little homework to do there," he added.

NOAA additionally completed the first sonar survey of the wrecks of the tankers Frank H. Buck and Lyman Stewart, which were both loaded with oil when they ran aground in 1937 and 1922, respectively, after collisions with other vessels in thick fog. The engines from both shipwrecks are visible today when the tide goes out off San Francisco's Lands End park.

NOAA has created an online inventory of underwater footage, sonar images, historic photographs and documents related to the wrecks that have been located.


http://news.yahoo.com/historic-ghost-ships-discovered-near-golden-gate-bridge-194242088.html