Point San Luis | The Mystery of Souza Rock

POINT SAN LUIS

The Mystery of Souza Rock

BY KATHY MASTKO

Diver exploring Souza Rock’s sea life, including metridiums, also known as plumose anemones. Courtesy of Shawn Stamback, SloDivers, Morro Bay

Alittle over two miles southeast of the Point San Luis light station lies a danger to boats and a diver’s paradise teeming with color and life. It’s an underwater monolith that rises to within sixteen feet of the surface, jutting up abruptly from a depth of nineteen fathoms. A gong buoy marks it, painted red over green and with a red light, referred to as buoy 14SR.

The hazard is named Souza Rock. The question is whether it should be?

In 1887, the San Luis Obispo Tribune wrote about a whaling station on the mainland near Port Harford (now called Port San Luis), referred to as Whaler’s Point. The view, the paper described, was without rival:

To the left lies the spacious and splendid harbor of San Luis Obispo, walled in on three sides by lofty and rugged mountains that stand as a barrier between the placid waters and the strong northers that occasionally spring up inland. Facing the Point reposes the mighty Pacific, which stretches away in the distance until the restless waters seem to blend with the azure sky.

The paper noted, however, that the “aromatic atmosphere” interfered with the proper appreciation of the view, describing the air at Whaler’s Point as “the rankest compound of villainous smells that ever offended human nostrils.” At the time, there were twenty men living at the station, engaged in shore whaling under the command of John Oliver. There were also two women living at Whaler’s Point: Captain Oliver’s wife Mary and “the wife of the lighthouse keeper.”

Now there wasn’t an “official” lighthouse on Whaler’s Point or, indeed, anywhere in the vicinity of Port Harford at the time. Frustrated by the government’s unwillingness to erect a light and fog signal, the Pacific Coast Steamship Company had taken matters into their own hands. In June 1881, the Tribune reported on a light the steamship company was installing:

Port Harford is assuming such importance as a shipping port, that it is quite necessary that there be a lighthouse at “the Point.” Messrs. Goodall, Perkins & Co. have been unable to get the Government to take hold of this project, and have attended to the matter at their own expense. The lantern and fixtures came down on the [steamship] Orizaba last trip, and from this time forward the light will regularly send out its radiance over the oft-troubled waters. The entire expense of building the lighthouse, together with that of employing a man to keep the lights trimmed and lighted, is borne by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company.

The ”lighthouse keeper” the 1887 news article referred to was Antonio Souza; his wife, Francisca, née Oliveira. Souza was the man hired to maintain the steamship company’s private light and sound a cannon during foggy weather to help guide vessels into the harbor. Presumably he had been tending to the light ever since it was first installed, as a letter he wrote in 1900 noted that he’d lived at the Point for twenty-seven years.

In December 1888, the Tribune reprinted an article from the San Francisco Chronicle announcing that a new danger to maritime navigation on the west coast had recently been located in the vicinity of Port Harford. The paper reported that the steamship company employed “a Portuguese,“ whose job it was to keep a light and fire a gun in foggy weather. This man was a skillful fishermen, the reporter wrote, who in his spare time fished off the Point and knew that fish were often found in waters where the bottom was rocky:

To ascertain what kind of bottom there is beneath him (when the depth is not over twenty fathoms) this cunning fisherman lies down in his boat with one ear glued to the planking. Listening thus he can tell by certain clinking, scraping or sweeping sounds whether he is passing over gravelly, rocky or sandy ocean floors. In this case, he recognized the clinking sound that indicated the presence of rocks and, therefore, fish. Preparing to catch some, he dropped overboard his weighted line and was surprised when the sinker struck bottom at a depth of sixteen or eighteen feet… He repeated the cast and found his boat was over a small group of rocks dangerously near the surface and heretofore unknown.

14SR lighted gong buoy. Courtesy of Missy Lintner

trip down the coast Captain Ezekiel Alexander examined the area and found, almost in the general path of ships headed into Port Harford, “a narrow upheaval of rock, broken in such manner as to leave two points within seventeen feet of the surface.”

The Tribune reported later that same month that Souza, “the man who discovered the new rock in the bay,” was the recipient of a reward from the government in recognition of the discovery.

Less than two years after the rock’s discovery, Souza was appointed an assistant keeper at the Point San Luis light station which was finally built by the government in 1890. He served there for ten years before transferring to Point Conception.

Also in 1890, Antonio J. Silva—another Portuguese fisherman—started squatting on Whaler’s Island, which was connected to the mainland and Whaler’s Point by a small jetty. Whaler’s Island had been commandeered by the government in 1876, reserved for lighthouse purposes, although neither a light nor fog signal

Close-up view of Souza Rock’s sea life. In the center is a large metridium. On the right is a white-spotted rose sea anemone. Courtesy of Shawn Stamback, SloDivers, Morro Bay

was ever placed there.

Silva peacefully occupied this government property with the tacit permission of the Lighthouse Service until 1896, when the government began legal action to force him to leave. He did so, but not without protest. In fact, he managed to persuade United States Senator George Clement Perkins to write to the Secretary of the Lighthouse Board on his behalf: wreck of vessels entering the Harbor of Port Harford.

Those who signed his petition included Captain Alexander as well as Charles Goodall, agent for the Pacific Coast Steamship Company. Alexander and Goodall were certainly aware of the circumstances surrounding the rock’s discovery, and would no doubt have taken issue had Silva’s claim been false.

I enclose herewith a petition of Antone [sic] J. Silva, Port Harford, California, for permission to occupy Whaler’s Island situated off Point San Luis Obispo, California and respectfully ask for it your early and favorable consideration.

It appears that Silva has been allowed to remain undisturbed on the island for the last six years, during which time he has been engaged in fishing, and so far as I have been able to learn, is a peaceable and law-abiding person, attending strictly to his business, and is a steady and hard-working man. Captain Alexander and others, masters of vessels plying along the coast of Southern California, speak in very favorable terms of Silva, and say that he has always been on the lookout for any dangers to navigation when fighting the waters about Port Harford and on occasion has rendered good services to them during foggy and inclement weather.

What is startling is that, in his petition, Silva wrote:

I am also the person who discovered and reported the dangerous rock known as “Susa [sic] Rock,” thereby in all probability preventing the

(Further, a Notice to Mariners issued by the Lighthouse Service and printed in the January 30, 1889, issue of the Daily Alta California stated that Souza Rock had been recently discovered by fishermen.)

Like Souza, Silva went on to become a lighthouse keeper. He served at Point San Luis from 1906 until 1933, becoming the station’s longest-serving keeper.

Who really did discover the rock?

My bet is on Silva. Souza, age thirty-seven at the time, was likely the boat’s owner and captain. Silva, sixteen years his junior, was no doubt his fishing partner that day and most likely the one with his ear “glued to the planking” who dropped his weighted line and discovered the underwater hazard. Souza, employed by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, would have taken the lead in reporting the discovery to his employer, who in turn would have informed the lighthouse officials in San Francisco about the discovery made by Souza’s boat.