|
 History
The German designed and built steamer was launched as the
Coblenz at the Hamburg shipyard of Blohm and Voss
on March 18, 1897, having a registered length of 307.7 feet
(93.78 m), depth of hold 24.7 feet (7.52 m) and a breath of
42.2-feet (12.86 m). This shipbuilding firm, which has survived
two World Wars and is still in existence today, is recognized
for building other prominent vessels. Coblenz completed
sea trials and was delivered on May 5, 1897 to the Norddautacher
Lloyd of Bremen as an ocean going passenger steamer. Later
in the Coblenz’s career the steamer was running
the Imperial postal service on the South Sea line from Australia
to Japan. The vessel had accommodations for 54 passengers
including a saloon. Large cargo holds were located forward
and just aft of the wheelhouse structure. Coblenz
was in a Philippine port when the United States entered World
War I and was seized as a war prize. The passenger steamer
was admitted to American registry under a joint resolution
of Congress on May 12, 1917 and given the name Sachem
and was taken over by the United States Shipping Board.
|
 Panama
Pacific
Mail Steamship Company purchased the Sachem from
the United States Shipping Board on February 6, 1920 for $400,000.
Sachem operated for several months on Pacific Mail’s
service between San Francisco and Havana, Cuba, carrying passengers
and cargo. From a 1920 Pacific Mail Steamship Company publication
“The first trip of this vessel was completed on her
return to San Francisco and it was most gratifying to the
company to hear her so highly spoken of by her full list of
passengers, as all aboard were enthusiastic about her accommodations,
cuisine and personnel. Carrying 3000 tons of freight and 51
first class passengers, of who seven are booked for Havana.”
|
 In
February 1921, Pacific Mail Steamship Company transferred
Cuba to a new service the San Francisco - Cristobal
route. Cuba ran alongside Pacific Mail Steamship
Company’s steamers Newport, City of Para, San Juan,
and San Jose. Combined the four small cargo-passenger
liners offered a service every 15 days between Panama, Mexico
and California.
|
|  In
September 1923, Cuba departed the Panama Canal
Zone en route to San Francisco. The steamer reached Mazatlan,
Mexico and after a brief stopover the ship departed the
Mexican port on September 3rd. Working up the coast the
passenger steamer encountered thick fog and was forced to
navigate by dead reckoning for the next three days. The
ship’s radio was not working and there were no spare
parts onboard the steamer to fix the problem. On September
7th, Captain Charles J. Holland, master of the Cuba,
retired for the night leaving orders to be roused if visibility
became less than five or six miles, and in no case later
than 3 a.m. in order to take soundings. Second Officer John
Rochau was now in command. First Officer Wise arrived in
the wheelhouse to take the watch at 4 a.m. and discovered
the visibility had reduced to less than four miles. Realizing
that the second officer was still in charge and there was
no sign of the captain, Wise immediately went to get the
captain. The radio operator recalled the moment the captain
entered the wheelhouse, “the captain was already on
the bridge, his shoes merely slipped on, with his suspenders
hanging over his hips, and was taking charge of the vessel.”
Captain Holland directed an immediate turn to port (westward),
and at that very moment the vessel struck a reef about one
quarter mile off Point Bennett, San Miguel Island. Captain
Holland then ordered reverse engines and the Cuba
briefly re-floated, but was swung around by the seas and
ran onto the submerged reef stern first, demolishing the
twin propellers. The steamer now was now listing to port
in rough seas, which caused complications in launching the
starboard lifeboats, which had to be dragged across the
vessel to the port davits.
|
 Cuba’s
cargo included silver bullion, so Captain Holland,
the purser, steward, and eight crewmen remained aboard to
guard the cargo, while the rest of the crew and passengers
took to the lifeboats. While most of the lifeboats were
put upon the beach at Point Bennett with no loss of life,
the lifeboat of First Officer Wise headed east along the
south side of San Miguel Island then through the San Miguel
Passenge entering the Santa Barbara Channel. Their lifeboat
had a brief encounter with some troublesome whales, but
eventually the crewman hailed the Standard Oil tanker W.
F. Miller, which transported them to San Francisco.
The second officer was in charge of one of the lifeboats
and was traveling due west out to sea rather than towards
the mainland, due to a compass reversal. Fortunately the
USS Reno, part of Destroyer Squadron 11, was on
a high-speed endurance run en route to San Diego from San
Francisco and had slowed its speed when encountering visibility
less than one half mile. At 2:15 p.m. the USS Reno
quartermaster spotted lifeboat No. 1 heading to sea and
then lifeboat No. 2. Both boats were rigged with sails and
heading west.
|
 USS
Reno sent out a dispatch reporting
Cuba’s stranding to Destroyer
Squadrons 11 & 12, a flotilla of destroyers
that were heading south to San Diego but were
still further to the north of Cuba’s
position. Commander Walter G. Roper of the destroyer
USS Kennedy radioed Captain Edward
H. Watson commander of the destroyer squadron
who was onboard the lead ship USS Delphy
and requested permission to take his entire
division at full speed to the Cuba’s
assistance. Captain Watson refused. USS Reno
went on to locate lifeboats No. 4 & 5 ashore
with 25 survivors including more than a dozen
women and 3 children. Those who had arrived
on the beach at Point Bennett recalled seeing
vessel wreckage from earlier shipwrecks and
human remains that were most likely from eroding
Chumash burial sites.
|
|
 At
9:00 p.m. that same evening the southbound destroyer
squadrons would encounter fog and make a navigational
error that would result in the total loss of
seven destroyers and the lives twenty-three
sailors. Ironically, the navy officers first
thought they had overshot the west entrance
to the Santa Barbara Channel and were aground
on San Miguel Island. In reality, when the destroyers
made the course change intending to enter the
channel, the squadron was too far north and
went aground at Point Pedernales. There is speculation
that due to the additional radio traffic during
the Cuba rescue, that the transmissions
may have played a role in the destroyer’s
error in navigation since the navy was using
RDF (radio direction finder). This event is
still on record as the U.S. Navy’s worst
peacetime disaster.
Cuba’s entire crew and passengers
were saved along with the cargo of mahogany,
silver and coffee. Second Officer John Rochau
was blamed for the Cuba’s stranding
by a court of inquiry. His license was suspended
for ninety days. Contemporary salvage efforts
occurred for the locals who were daring enough
to navigate their boats around the treacherous
reefs of Point Bennett. Insurance collected
by Pacific Mail Steamship Company on account
of loss of Cuba as of December 31,
1923, was $275,684.44. The USS Selfridge
arrived on September 9, 1923 picking up the
remaining crew and silver bullion from San Miguel
Island. The steamer Venezuela eventually
transported the silver bullion and passengers
onto San Francisco.
|
Shipwreck
At the submerged site, eighty years after the
Cuba’s stranding, the two triple-expansion
steam engines still sit up right 14 feet (4.26
m) off the sea floor, with the 15’ 6”
(4.72 m) diameter Scott boilers still in position
in front of the steam engines. The Cuba
site is the most consolidated and organized
off all the major shipwreck sites in the sanctuary
and park with much of her deck and deck equipment
in place such as the cargo and anchor handling
winches, capstan, hawse pipe, mooring bits,
anchor, propeller blades and even ceramic tile
flooring. The shipwreck site is monitored annually
to record environmental or human impacts. Sanctuary
and park staff working with the Coastal Maritime
Archaeology Resources organization conducts
the annual surveys at the site.
|
Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary
and
the Santa Barbara
Maritime Museum have partnered
together in the development of interactive shipwreck
exhibits. These exhibits provide the public
with the unique opportunity to learn about the
region's rich maritime history through historic
shipwrecking events and what archaeologists
and historians are learning from current field
research at the sites. Currently On Exhibit
at the Maritime Museum
Cuba Shipwreck Exhibit
Underwater Archaeology Exhibit
Visit the web page of the submerged site of
the shipwreck Cuba and plan a visit
to the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum to see
the Cuba shipwreck exhibit. Additional
history on the shipwreck Cuba may be
obtained from the Channel Islands National Marine
Sanctuary’s West
Coast Shipwreck Database.
References
Blohm and Voss. 1897. Blohm and Voss Shipbuilding.
Vessel Plans for Coblenz. Hamburg, Germany
Hansen, C. 1991, Passenger Liners from Germany
1816-1990, Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.
Hauptlinien, I. 1911. Flotte des Norddeutscher
Lloyd in Bremen
Kemble, J. 2003. Exhibit "A", Haskins
& Sells to Pacific Mail Steamship Company,
San Francisco, 7 June 1924. Manuscript. Pacific
Mai Collection, John Kemble’s Ships
Vessel Cards, Huntington Library, San Marino,
California
Lockwood, C. and H. Adamson. 1960. Tragedy
At Honda. Chilton Company. Philadelphia and
New York
Morris, D. and J. Lima. 1996. Channel Islands
National Park and Channel Islands National
Marine Sanctuary Submerged Cultural Resources
Assessment. Submerged Cultural Resources Unit
National Park Service. Santa Fe, New Mexico
P.M.S.S.C.O. 1920. Pacific Mail Steamship
Company Publication
Rinder, J. 1920. The “Cuba” Comes
In. Pacific Mail Steamship Company
Schwemmer, R. 1999. Channel Islands National
Marine Sanctuary: Presenting The Past Through
Cooperative Interpretation. Underwater Archaeology.
Society for Historical Archaeology
Schwemmer, R. 2000. Paddle-Wheels To Propellers
Forty-Seven Years In The Evolution Of Steam
Propulsion (1850-1897). Society for Historical
Archaeology. Paper Presented at 33rd Conference
on Historical and Underwater Archaeology,
Quebec, Canada.
Schwemmer, R. 2003. Channel Islands National
Marine Sanctuary West Coast Shipwreck Database
(Online), Available http://www.channelislands.noaa.gov/shipwreck/dbase/cinms/cuba.html
Schwemmer, R. 2003. U.S. Pacific Coast Shipwreck
Database, Santa Clarita, California
|
|
|
|
.pdf