Article by California Gazette. Photo byTwitter user Friends of SJFF's SAN FRANCISCO -- One of the
windiest and rainiest storms in five years swept across the San Francisco Bay
Area on Thursday. Power was cut to the tens of thousands and delaying
travel by air, train and ferry. Pacific Gas & Electric is
reporting outages to over 70,000 across the Bay Area due to weather. The National Weather Service said," A storm an associated front off the West Coast will move inland to the
Northern Rockies/Great Basin and the Southwest by Friday evening. The
system will pull a plume of moisture into California that will produce
moderate to heavy rain over Northern California and parts of the Pacific
Northwest that will move southward to Southern California by Friday
morning. The rain will wane to light rain along the West Coast by Friday
evening. Moderate snow will develop over the Sierras late Thursday night
into Friday morning, waning to light snow by Friday evening. A band of
moderate to heavy rain will move farther inland, on Friday evening, to
parts of the Great Basin/Southwest, with an area of light to moderate rain
over the Northern Intermountain Region. Snow will also develop over parts
of the Northern Rockies by Friday evening, too.
Meanwhile, deep storm over the Northeast will slowly weaken and move out
over the Western Atlantic by Friday evening. The system will produce
light snow over parts of the Northeast that will wane to a band over parts
of the Northern Appalachians by Friday. Light rain will develop over
parts of New England Coast ending on Friday morning. Elsewhere,
upper-level energy and moisture flowing northward from the Western Gulf of
Mexico will produce rain with embedded thunderstorms over parts of the
Southern Plains into parts of the Lower Mississippi Valley on Thursday and
Wednesday."
The morning of February 22, 1901, was much like any other on San Francisco Bay.
A thick blanket of fog spread across the water as the steamer City of Rio de Janeiro
approached the Golden Gate, laden with passengers and freight from Hong
Kong, Yokohama and Honolulu. Returning to San Francisco after more than
two months at sea, the City of Rio’s cabins brimmed with the
hopes and dreams of Chinese and Japanese immigrants seeking a new life
in the United States. Up on deck, Captain William Ward and Pilot
Frederick Jordan steered what they thought to be a safe course into the
narrow mouth of the Bay, but could make out no landmarks through the
damp gray void. Present day photo at the entrance of the Golden Gate looking westward with Fort Point at the far left where the SS City of Rio de Janeiro struck the rocks and foundered on February 22, 1901.
(Photo: Robert V. Schwemmer NOAA)
Shortly after 5 a.m., with visibility still at zero, disaster struck.
The 345-foot steamer had veered too far south on its approach and
suddenly ground to a halt on the jagged rocks of Fort Point, tearing a
massive gash in its iron hull. A strong ebb tide soon pushed it back off
of the rocks and allowed the frigid winter waters of the Pacific to
rush into the engine room and cargo holds.Passengers and crew fought
their way to the deck, but confusion reigned on the rapidly sinking
ship. Within a matter of minutes, the City of Rio succumbed to its wounds and slipped beneath the waves, taking with it 128 of the 210 lives on board.
Now, with the help of several private partners and cutting-edge technology, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries has brought back the first-ever 3-D images of this long-lost shipwreck, which historians have called the “Titanic of the Golden Gate.” Multibeam sonar image at San Francisco's Golden Gate highlighting the shipwrecks City of Rio de Janeiro, City of Chester and Fernstream.
(Credit: Gary Fabian for NOAA)
This November, a joint archaeological expedition led by the Office of
National Marine Sanctuaries Maritime Heritage Program set out to
document the wreck as part of a two-year study of shipwrecks in Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and the surrounding area. Bay Marine Services LLC provided a vessel and crew for the mission, while Hibbard Inshore LLC and Coda Octopus equipped the research team with a high-powered remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and 3-D sonar array to aid in the search.
West Coast Regional Maritime Heritage Coordinator Robert Schwemmer
worked in cooperation with Maritime Heritage Program Director James
Delgado and sonar expert Gary Fabian to pinpoint the location of the City of Rio, which lies 287 feet below the surface just outside the Golden Gate, not far from where it ran aground in 1901. CodaOctopus 3-D Echoscope sonar images of the SS City of Rio De Janeiro.
(Credit: Coda Octopus/NOAA)
The 3-D model generated by the Coda Octopus “Echoscope” sonar also
gave researchers an entirely new perspective on the condition of the
wreck site. What they found was a crumpled, scarcely recognizable iron
hulk encased in more than a century worth of mud and sediment, lending
support to the narrative that the ship sank quickly before many of its
passengers could escape.
The expedition team also remapped the S.S. City of Chester,a second nearby wreck that was rediscovered in May 2013 by NOAA’s Office of the Coast Survey. In stark contrast to the City of Rio, the Echoscope revealed in great detail the surprising level of preservation of the City of Chester’s frame and propulsion machinery, telling a very different story about the circumstances of its sinking. Survivors from SS City of Rio de Janeiro after the sinking at Baker's Beach.
(Credit: San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park safr_21374_a11-14617_p)
Through advanced technology and innovative partnerships, NOAA is
breaking new ground in our quest to explore and understand our nation’s
maritime heritage. Shipwrecks once believed to be lost forever are now
within our reach, and those we have studied in detail continue to give
up new secrets with each subsequent expedition. This discovery is a
reminder of NOAA’s commitment to protecting the profound ties that the
nation has to our history lying beneath the ocean’s surface.
