U.S.S. Conastoga found

[Mayerling]

The U.S.S. Conastoga left San Francisco for a trek to Hawaii and then her berth in American Samoa in 1923. She never reached either destination, and despite an incredibly large air search near Hawaii (for that period) was never found. Eventually a lifeboat and some minor items washed ashore near Mexico. The ship and it's 58 man crew were lost in one of the largest missing ship mysteries of our Navy.

Today it was confirmed that in 2009 wreckage of a ship found off some island near California and San Francisco were those of the Conastoga. The reason it took some seven years to confirm this was that there was a misconception as to where Conastoga met whatever fate she did. She was supposed to report to Pearl Harbor, and it was thought she had no problem crossing the Pacific until she approached the Hawaiian Islands (where that air search occurred). The fact that the wreckage was found on the Mexican coast meant nothing because the sea currents can cause wreckage to float thousands of miles away from a wreck site. The researchers (after the discovery of the wreck) looked for some local tug boat (the Conastoga was a larger ocean going tug boat - hence it's large crew) that was missing from the local California ports and was used in home waters. Only gradually did they realize that the Conastoga fit the physical descriptions of the wreck.

Apparently the ship hit a storm while near these islands, and tried to make for a safe anchorage but the heavy seas washed over the deck and swamped the ship.

Photos of the wreck posted on the internet show that it has (since the tragedy occurred) become a sea life sanctuary, as many wrecks have, with small animals and sea growths on it's frame. As such it is now under Federal Government protection.

There is an up-dated article on Wikipedia on the Conastoga with the latest articles regarding it's discovery. Like the discovery nearly two years back of H.M.S. Erebus of the ill-fated Franklin Arctic Expedition (1845-1850?) this kind of news suggests that in time more of these old missing ship cases may be cleared up. We may yet find the U.S.S. Cyclops, the Waratah, etc.

Jeff

[GUT]

Thanks Jeff.

Very interesting.

[ChrisGeorge]

Ocean-going tug USS Conestoga (AT-54) disappeared after leaving Mare Island, California, on 25 March 1921, bound for Samoa, with 56 crew members presumed dead. Information from http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/accidents.htm

[Mayerling]

Thanks for the photo Chris.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Thanks Jeff.

Very interesting.

What is the most intriguing missing ship mystery in Australian waters GUT?


Jeff

[GUT]

What is the most intriguing missing ship mystery in Australian waters GUT?


Jeff

I guess the Waratah counts as an Aussie ship, sort of but not Aussie Waters.

A few in war time the HMAS Sydney was missing for years but discovered a couple of years ago.

And many during the early years of settlement and indeed a few Dutch pre European settlement.

Australia’s first shipwreck was English, the Tryal, lost in 1622 long before Cook sailed our shores. She carried 500 golden royals and gold spangles as a gift for the King of Siam.

Now I think she was found in the 1980s

Now there are a few I'd love to find:

Madagasca. She left Melbourne for London in 1853 with 68,390 ounces of gold, and was never heard of again. That treasure is worth $27 million today.

The ‘Sun’ went down in 1826 with 40,000 silver dollars in the eastern Torres Strait.

Though some of these may have been found.

High Aim 6 was a Taiwanese ship found in Australian waters with all crew missing. A puzzle of Marie Celeste Standards. (Jian Seng is another similar situation, which may have been people smugglers)


Kaz II was found around the Barrier Reef (2007), with no one on board, but technically not a Ship but a Yacht.

Just a few that take my interest.

[Mayerling]

I had heard of the rediscovery of the HMAS Sydney, which sank with it's enemy ship (a Japanese one) in a 1942 battle I believe. The issue was whether it was sunk from damage by the Japanese warship it fought or was torpedoed - possibly by a Nazi submarine assisting it's ally.

Yes it would be fun to find one of the treasure ships, but the governments usually have to have their cut in the finding. Also you have to do the work with a fine eye to the archeological record of the wreck.

Jeff

[Damaso Marte]

If we are talking objects in Australian waters, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 would be at the top of my list...

[Rosella]

And mine, if it did indeed go down in Australian waters or the Great Southern Ocean.

The Mahogany ship, lying under sand dunes on the Victorian coast has always intrigued me. In spite of many searches over the generations it has never been found. Is it a legend, was it a Spanish or Portugese galleon or an Asian trading vessel? We'll probably never know.

http://www.stradbrokeislandgalleon.com/mahoganyship.html

[Mayerling]

Thanks for the cite about the mahogany galleon Rosella. Interesting story, although it would not necessarily reduce Cook's historical reputation. He still travelled throughout the Pacific - nothing yet shows this craft travelled throughout the Pacific. Also, if you study the reputation of Christopher Columbus, there is a school of thought (originating in Lisbon) that he stole his ideas about sailing west across the Atlantic from Portuguese sailors, and this maintains that there was a government imposed "policy of silence and denial") by the Portuguese Government to keep their knowledge of the Western Hemisphere from general diffusion throughout Europe. Of course this does not explain why (if they knew of the New World before Columbus) the Portuguese under Henry the Navigator insisted on pushing caravels down the coast of Africa under seaman like Bartolemew Diaz and Vasco de Gama until they circled the Cape of Good Hope, entered the Indian Ocean, and reached India in 1498, five years after Columbus returned to Spain from his first voyage! Columbus may have heard of the Viking voyages, and those seamen fishing off the Grand Banks, etc. for cod, etc., but not of full scale naval activity by Portugal.

I also noticed today the Australian government has said the fragments that were found on the shore at Madagascar were from the missing plane. This and the previous discovery of the wing section last year do suggest the plane may have broken up when it hit the ocean. Certainly the wreckage broke off since the tragedy.

Jeff

[harry]

The 'Bethlyhem' sailed from Port Adelaide,South Australia,late 1960's and was lost without trace.Loaded a cargo of scrap metal.

[Rosella]

The theory that Portugese navigators were the first Europeans to sail around parts of the Austrailan mainland and chart it has been taught in Australian schools for a couple of decades now, Mayerling.
Portugese Timor is only about 650 kilometres from Australia and it was a colony of theirs from about 1514. Of course, officially the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon of the Duygken is considered the first European to sight Australia in 1606. However, if, and it's a big if, the Mahogany Ship is ever found I wouldn't be surprised if it is found to be Portugese.

[ChrisGeorge]

Discovery of shipwreck solves a decades-old maritime mystery of loss of U.S. Navy tugboat in 1921.

http://trib.al/ONzqV0F

[Joshua Rogan]

And mine, if it did indeed go down in Australian waters or the Great Southern Ocean.

The Mahogany ship, lying under sand dunes on the Victorian coast has always intrigued me. In spite of many searches over the generations it has never been found. Is it a legend, was it a Spanish or Portugese galleon or an Asian trading vessel? We'll probably never know.

http://www.stradbrokeislandgalleon.c...oganyship.html

Interesting stuff....if you look on Google maps I swear you can see a boat-shaped object just off the beach....mystery solved?

[ChrisGeorge]

The theory that Portugese navigators were the first Europeans to sail around parts of the Austrailan mainland and chart it has been taught in Australian schools for a couple of decades now, Mayerling.
Portugese Timor is only about 650 kilometres from Australia and it was a colony of theirs from about 1514. Of course, officially the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon of the Duygken is considered the first European to sight Australia in 1606. However, if, and it's a big if, the Mahogany Ship is ever found I wouldn't be surprised if it is found to be Portugese.

As some of you may know, I am a War of 1812 historian. In New Jersey, at the southern tip of the state, Cape May, and close to the Cape May lighthouse, there were the remains of a wooden ship on exhibit for a number of years. The claim was that the ribs of that ship were those of HMS Martin which was destroyed by American forces in the War of 1812. The truth though is quite the reverse. The Martin survived an encounter with American gunboats of the Delaware Flotilla and went on to fight another day, and it was the U.S. gunboats that lost the battle. The outdoor exhibit appears now to have been removed. In Tales of South Jersey: Profiles and Personalities, Rutgers University Press, 2001, p. 51, authors Jim Waltzer and Tom Wilk set the record straight.

See also

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/867

https://lostinjersey.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/the-hms-martin/