Discovery Of Navy Shipwreck Solves 95-Year-Old Mystery

A Navy tugboat that disappeared after it sailed from San Francisco in 1921 has been found by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers in shark-infested waters about 30 miles west of San Francisco, putting an end to a 95-year-old mystery.

The tugboat, the USS Conestoga, left California with 56 officers and crew members on board, bound for Tutuila, American Samoa, by way of Hawaii. When the ship failed to arrive, the Navy carried out an expansive air and sea search, but only a battered lifeboat with the letter "C" on its bow was ever found, hundreds of miles off the expected course.

In 2009, the NOAA Office of Coast Survey spotted an uncharted shipwreck near the Farallon Islands, a forbidding cluster of sharp rocks known for shipwrecks and a large population of great white sharks. Video from an investigation in 2015 using remotely operated vehicles shows the shipwreck under nearly 200 feet of water, encrusted in rust but largely intact, festooned with colorful sea anemones, rockfish and els.
 Using the video, the NOAA and Navy researchers confirmed that the wreck's distinctive propeller and deck-mounted gun matched the long-lost tugboat.

"After nearly a century of ambiguity and a profound sense of loss, the Conestoga's disappearance no longer is a mystery," Manson Brown, a deputy NOAA administrator, said in a statement Wednesday.

Weather logs indicate that soon after leaving California, the tugboat hit high winds and rough seas. A garbled radio transmission relayed later by another ship stated that the tug was "battling a storm and that the barge she was towing had been torn adrift by heavy seas."

Researchers said they believed the boat had sunk as the crew members tried to reach a protected cove on the Farallons.

"This would have been a desperate act, as the approach is difficult," the NOAA report on the discovery noted. "However, as Conestoga was in trouble and filling with water, it seemingly was the only choice to make."

The exact location of the wreckage was not announced, to prevent diving or looting, the agency said.

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