What Lies
C O V E R
S T O R Y
BENEATH Channel Island Shipwrecks Tell Stories of Heroism, Heartbreak, and High-Seas Scalawaggery
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ver the last two centuries, some 300 ships have met their fate among the rocks and reefs of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands. Stately four-masted steamships ferrying gold and lumber, nimble rumrunners dodging the Coast Guard, rustbucket harpooners hunting seal and otter— otter all done in by the tricky currents and erratic weather that churn through the crossing. Fog has always been the real killer, especially in the days before GPS. It can come on fast and thick, frightening even the saltiest of captains and forcing them to navigate blindly. The curved west side of San Miguel Island is known as the “catcher’s mitt” because of it. Among the scores of wrecks out there, historians have identified just 25. The rest are either lost forever or just waiting to be discovered. But finding them isn’t easy. Their remains are often camouflaged under marine growth. “You really gotta take a loooong look,” explained Robert Schwemmer, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration diver and archeologist known as the Indiana Jones of West Coast shipwrecks. He uses old photos and newspaper clippings to get a general idea of where a boat might be before organizing an expedition. “You try to identify manmade shapes, like straight lines and symmetrical curves. Most people can swim right over them and not see them.” Those that do are treated to rare glimpses into our historic maritime past — visible relics such as boilers, paddle-wheel shafts, and engine LIVING HISTORY: NOAA’s blocks, as well as smaller treasures. Robert “Shipwreck Bob” Schwemmer remembers findSchwemmer (left) recently met ing a French perfume bottle with Santa Maria’s Dr. Jens Frederick in the wreck of the WinJarlshoi Birkholm, whose granddad was field Scott Scott, which went captain of the George E. Billings. down off Anacapa Island in 1853. “What’s the story
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images courtesy of the Santa Cruz Island Foundation and * AllRobert Schwemmer
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THE INDEPENDENT
FEBRUARY 27, 2020
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behind that?” he asked. “Did it belong to a man bringing it back for his wife? Did he trade for it in San Francisco? That’s what I love about this.” Then there is the thrill when his discoveries reach people whose ancestors had been affected by the shipwrecks. Just recently, Santa Maria resident Dr. Jens Frederik Jarlshoi Birkholm got in touch after hearing that the George E. Billings was found near Santa Barbara Island. Birkholm’s grandfather Frederik S. Birkholm had captained the Billings, and he had the pictures to prove it. He’d always hoped the ship would turn up and complete that chapter of his family’s history. “These discoveries bring to life important human stories,” Schwemmer said. As excited as Schwemmer gets about these discoveries, he gets just as serious when talking about the regulations that protect them. The wrecks sit in the jurisdiction of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, which means they’re closely guarded by federal antiquity laws. Without the proper permit, it’s illegal to remove or damage the wrecks or the artifacts among them. “Fines are steep, up to six figures,” he warned. “And if you’re doing something commercially, it could mean the loss of your boat.” If you come across a new wreck site, officials ask, note its location, take a picture, and report it to the sanctuary at (805) 966-7107. Scientists like Schwemmer are more interested in facts than legends, but some are just too enticing to ignore. One has it that a gold-filled Manila galleon—one of the famed Spanish trading ships that sailed from the Philippines to California and then to Acapulco from the 16th through the 19th centuries —might be down there. Their route went right along the islands, and around a dozen of them disappeared somewhere in the Pacific. The supposed discovery of a golden captain’s ring off San Miguel in 1974 piqued a lot of interest, but historians remained dubious. Still, it seems reasonable to assume that one of the Chumash tomols or a Chinese “junk” that used to catch abalone and smuggle opium during the late 1800s might be waiting to be discovered beneath the sea. This year, Schwemmer plans to investigate three “targets” off Anacapa Island using an ROV, or remotely operated vehicle. “They look like shipwrecks, but we’ll see,” he said. And Schwemmer hasn’t given up on the Watson A. West West, a 192-foot schooner swallowed by the sea in 1923. Her crew of nine escaped on a skiff before she sank. They rowed for 18 hours to reach Santa Barbara, where they arrived “exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and half-clad,” news reports said. The Watson is somewhere off San Miguel, and she remains the largest vessel in the area yet to be found. “I still would love to locate that,” Schwemmer said.
SAN MIGUEL ISLAND
Acknowledgement: Much of the information and many of the photographs in this story were sourced from Islapedia.com, a comprehensive database covering hundreds of topics and thousands of entries on all eight California Channel Islands. It was started in 1973 by cultural anthropologist Marla Daily, president of the Santa Cruz Island Foundation, and is a continuing research work in process.
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