The Ships and Their Fate

Although the Channel Islands National Park Service does not yet offer cruises to its historic shipwrecks, divers can contact commercial dive boat operations to visit them. Weather conditions are ideal during the late summer and early autumn. Parts of the Winfield Scott, Aggi and Goldenhorn can be viewed from the surface by snorkelers.

Anacapa Island:

The Labor, a 22-foot tuna fishing boat used in the 1920s, drifted into rocks on the south side of the island when its anchor broke in 1924.

The Winfield Scott remains off the island’s northeast shore. The 225-foot wooden-hulled steamship was carrying miners to the East Coast when it wrecked in a storm in 1853. Passengers lost nearly $2 million in gold bullion to the waves.

Santa Barbara Island:

The Adriatic, a 60-foot sardine fishing boat based in Los Angeles, struck a log and sank five miles off Santa Barbara Island in 1930.

Santa Cruz Island:

The Grumman AF-2W Guardian was a Navy plane, not a boat, but it’s considered one of the park’s historic wrecks. The anti-submarine plane, which crashed near the island in 1954, was searching for a missing jet aircraft when it developed engine trouble.

San Miguel Island:

The Comet, a 144-foot three-masted lumber schooner, fell victim to the fog in 1911 and wrecked in the island’s Simonton Cove. It is one of the few known wrecks in which a crew member died.

The Cuba, a passenger freighter and the largest of the wrecks at 307 feet, crashed into the rocks about one-quarter mile off Point Bennett in 1923 as it traveled through fog into the Santa Barbara Channel with a cargo of silver bullion, coffee and bootleg whiskey.

The Kate and Anna was licensed for fishing, but it earned a reputation for smuggling Chinese immigrants and opium into California. The 36-foot schooner was on a seal-hunting trip in 1902 when its anchor chain parted and it wrecked in the island’s Cuyler’s Harbor.

The J.M. Colman, a 157-foot lumber schooner, wrecked on the rocks at Point Bennett in 1905 after fighting the fog for 36 hours.

The Watson A. West, a 192-foot lumber schooner, was also wrecked in the fog, in 1923. Its exact site has not been located.

Santa Rosa Island:

The Aggi, a 265-foot steel-hulled cargo carrier, lies in 20 to 60 feet of water near the island’s Talcott Shoal. Transporting 2,500 tons of barley and 600 tons of beans, the vessel ran into a severe storm and ran aground in 1915. Anchors and anchor chains are visible in about 15 feet of water.

The Dora Bluhm crashed near the southwestern portion of the island when the captain of the three-masted lumber schooner lost control of his 133-foot vessel in a heavy gale in 1910.

The Goldenhorn, a 268-foot iron cargo carrier, hauled coal on its last voyage from Australia to San Pedro and wrecked in 1892 off the island’s southwest coast due to heavy fog.

The Jane L. Stanford, a 215-foot lumber carrier, was rammed by a larger steamer in 1929 and floated for several weeks before the Coast Guard destroyed it by placing 94-pound TNT mines in the hulk.