'Bay Area’s Titanic’: 1901 shipwreck near Golden Gate found

SS City of Rio de Janeiro built by John Roach & Son in 1878 at Chester, Penn. regularly transported passengers and cargo between Asia and San Francisco, photo taken at Nagasaki, Japan, 1894. SS City of Rio de Janeiro built by John Roach & Son in 1878 at Chester, Penn. regularly transported passengers and cargo between Asia and San Francisco, photo taken at Nagasaki, Japan, 1894. Photo: Hand Out, Courtesy San Francisco Maritime Photo: Hand Out, Courtesy San Francisco Maritime Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close 'Bay Area’s Titanic’: 1901 shipwreck near Golden Gate found 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

Combining new technology with detective work, scientists found and then got their first look at San Francisco’s most famous shipwreck — the passenger ship City of Rio de Janeiro, which sank in the Golden Gate nearly 114 years ago with the loss of 128 lives.

The location of the wreck has been one of the region’s biggest maritime mysteries. The ship has not been seen since it crashed into the rocks on the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate in early 1901.

The Rio was discovered with a remote submersible last month, broken and covered with sediment, only half a mile from San Francisco in 287 feet of water. The scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration took 3-D and sonar images of the sunken ship.

“It is a great discovery,” said Robert Schwemmer, maritime heritage coordinator for the Office of National Maritime Sanctuaries. The wreck of the City of Rio de Janeiro was the biggest maritime disaster in this region. “It is often called the Bay Area’s Titanic,” he said.

The Rio, which carried 210 passengers and crew, crashed into the rocks at Fort Point near where the Golden Gate Bridge now stands, in a heavy fog, on Feb. 22, 1901. There was panic and confusion aboard, and the ship went down in 10 minutes. Many of the passengers were trapped in their berths below, and their bodies were never recovered.

James Delgado, a marine historian, calls the wreck a sunken cemetery. “It is a mud-filled tomb,” he said.

Most of the passengers and nearly all of the crew were Chinese. Many were emigrants on the last leg of a long journey from Asia. The ship’s last voyage began in China. The Rio stopped in Japan and Hawaii before heading for San Francisco Bay.

Fog obscured the Golden Gate on the night of Feb. 21, 1901, so Capt. William Ward anchored the ship just off the Cliff House, in sight of San Francisco.

Fateful decision

But before dawn, the fog seemed to lift, and after consulting with Capt. Frederick Jordan, the bar pilot, Ward weighed anchor and headed for the Golden Gate. The fog closed in again, however, and about 5:30 a.m. Feb. 22, the Rio ran onto the rocks.

There was tremendous confusion, according to accounts at the time. The officers and crew spoke different languages, and the lifeboats were never launched,. The ship’s lights went out, and the ship drifted off the rocks and sank.

Schwemmer is touched by the tragedy of that long-ago morning. “Many of these people were about to start a new life in a new country,” he said. “They were only perhaps an hour away from the dock in San Francisco. That is something to think about.”

Only 82 of the 210 people aboard were saved, many by the crews of Italian fishing boats heading out to sea. Ward went down with his ship.

More than a year after the Rio sank, the vessel’s wooden pilothouse floated loose from the wreckage and drifted to Fort Baker on the Marin side of the Golden Gate. Inside were Ward’s remains. The Chronicle reported that he was identified by a watch he always wore and a watch fob made of a silver Chinese coin.

Scientists and treasure hunters have been looking for the Rio for years, partly based on century-old rumors that the ship carried a fortune in silver. A group whom Delgado and Schwemmer call “treasure hunters” thought they had found the wreck in the Golden Gate in 1987.

Search went awry

However, the searchers were unable to reach it, and the remote-controlled underwater vehicle they were using was lost in the swirling currents of the Golden Gate. Also, the NOAA scientists say, the expedition’s coordinates were off.

So the search went on.

Delgado, who has studied shipwrecks for years, believes the rumors of sunken treasure were wrong. The silver bars in the old sea story were actually bars of tin, he said.

But the real scientific treasure lay in finding and photographing the wreck. Earlier this fall, an outfit named CodaOctopus Products was demonstrating some of its equipment to the San Francisco Police Department’s Marine Unit, which was interested in underwater searches.

The demonstration took place near the Golden Gate where the freighter Fernstream sank in 1952.

New technology

Schwemmer and Delgado, who had been conducting research involving wrecks earlier in the year, heard about it, and CodaOctopus and Gary Fabian, a sonar expert, joined in the expedition to find the Rio.

“It was a beautiful clear November day, and the sea was flat calm,” said Schwemmer. “We had to work at slack water, between the tides. We could only make a few passes. I was glued to my seat. We were close to Fort Point. And there it was.

“You could see the bow clearly, and then the stern, all buried in 113 years of mud.”

Finding the wreck, Delgado said, “was like turning on the light in a dark room. It’s great. That’s why we do what we do.”

The ship will likely remain where it is, buried in more than a century of mud and debris, like a maritime graveyard.

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cnolte@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @carlnoltesf