Ship Hull Off Laguna Beach Is Bit of Sunken Treasure for Local Divers

The first indication of something awry is the menagerie of metal beams scattered eerily across the ocean floor like the skeleton of some huge dead sea creature.

Follow them and you come to an oblong shape half submerged in the sand, a sort of partial tunnel wedged on its side.

Welcome to Foss 125, the most popular of Orange County’s handful of shipwrecks. Its location: about 175 yards offshore at Laguna Beach’s Cleo Street in 60 feet of water.

“Sometimes going through there is more like crawling than swimming,” said Steve Rich, a scuba instructor who’s been diving these waters since 1975 and has been inside the wreck many times.

Not much is known about the old Foss. The 432-ton vessel, a 130-foot steel barge once used for ferrying Coast Guard supplies along the shore, was built in 1943 at the Terminal Island shipyard by the Foss Launch & Tug Co. of Tacoma, Wash.

Records indicate that the ship went down in November 1958, although details are sketchy as to why. Some say the vessel sank in bad weather. Others have rumored for years that some sort of insurance scam was involved.

What is fairly certain is that there was no loss of life and that the ship sits today on the ocean floor as the county’s most accessible wreck for the novice diver.

Occasional explorers of its watery innards have come up with some interesting finds. One diver recovered a brass deck hatch in a frame embossed with the ship’s name. Others found a beautiful brass masthead light and brass valves and handles.

But the biggest lure is the large amount of sea life that now congregates in and around the ghostly hull. A variety of fish including calico, sand bass, rockfish and halibut swims through the wreck, and many lobsters have made their homes there. And not too far away, near the large concrete sewer drainpipes that were on board when the ship went down, the devoted underwater hunter can find scallops and even an occasional abalone.

The wreck can be entered, local divers say, but it’s not recommended unless you are an experienced wreck diver or are with one. Lone novices should stay outside the wreck. And hunt-happy spear-fishermen, they say, should steer clear because there might be unseen divers behind thin metal walls.

Another underwater wreck is a few miles north, off Crystal Cove. There lie the remains of a Navy Corsair plane believed to have crashed sometime in the 1950s. And in about 20 feet of water just south of Laguna Beach is the final resting place of the Charles Brown, a 72-ton schooner that was built in 1904 and sank in a storm in 1932.

Little remains of either wreck, however. And for several years, experienced wreck divers have found it almost impossible to find even those scanty remains.

“I knew a guy who said he’s been on it,” said Rich. “He claimed that he saw a wing.”

And the Charles Brown? “I swear it’s gone,” Rich said. “Friends say it’s basically a pile of rubble right now.”

So for those wishing to see a shipwreck off Orange County, Foss 125 is pretty much it. Just park your car on Coast Highway near Cleo Street and walk to the stairway leading to the beach. From there, take a compass bearing of 220 degrees and follow it straight out about 175 yards out and swim like heck.

“It’s kind of like throwing a scrap heap out into the water and then diving on it,” Rich said. “But for a first-time wreck diver, it’s well worth seeing.”