Treasure or Time Capsule?

Inspired by boyhood stories and dreams of sunken treasure, Donald Knight searched nearly two decades before he found the ruins of California’s deadliest shipwreck: the steamship Brother Jonathan.

With the aid of historical archives and the latest technology, the underwater explorer led a 1993 expedition that discovered the mud-covered hulk sitting peacefully on the ocean floor four miles from shore--just as it had since 1865.

For three hours, he and an associate rode in a tiny submarine 180 feet below the surface, videotaping and plucking artifacts from the wreck to prove that it was the long-sought vessel.

Knight had hoped to strike it rich with the discovery, salvaging gold and artifacts from the bottom of the sea.

But what might have been a happy ending to his quest has proved to be just the beginning of a prolonged battle over what should be done with the historic ship--and treasure on board rumored to be worth as much as $50 million.

While historians celebrate the discovery of what is essentially a time capsule from the Civil War era, gold fever has struck here--bringing with it acrimony and charges of greed.

Within months of the wreck’s discovery in the far reaches of Northern California, Knight was cut out of the action by his three partners. They were treasure hunters experienced in salvaging shipwrecks who had acquired majority control of Deep Sea Research, the company they all had formed to find the ship. With the blessing of a federal judge, they plan to search for gold on the Brother Jonathan as early as this spring.

“Leaving a wreck in place for the future is not the sensible thing to do,” says Harvey Harrington, a partner in Deep Sea Research. “We have the technology right now to do the Brother Jonathan.”

State officials and independent archeologists, however, argue that private operators who, they say, are motivated primarily by the pursuit of sunken treasure should not be given free rein to salvage a historic shipwreck. Although the Brother Jonathan may be hidden from public view, it remains a valuable part of California’s early history.

Seeking to supervise any salvage operation, the state last month asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to give the State Lands Commission ownership of the wreck.

“It belongs to all of us, not just the treasure salvors,” said Donald Shomette, a maritime historian and independent archeologist. “It is no less important in California than any of the historic sites on land, whether it is a Russian fort or a Native American pueblo. To have it destroyed for the sake of profit is unbelievable.”

The outcome of the dispute could affect the state’s ability to protect about 1,600 other shipwrecks in California coastal waters--from the Spanish galleon San Augustin, which sank in Drake’s Bay north of San Francisco in 1595, to the steamer Los Angeles, lost off Big Sur in 1894.

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As underwater technology improves, the state’s offshore wrecks have become increasingly accessible to salvors. But none is as important historically--or believed to hold as much wealth--as the Brother Jonathan.

In its day, the three-masted, side-wheel steamer was one of the premier ships plying the Pacific from Panama to Canada, ferrying Gold Rush prospectors, immigrants and supplies.

In July 1865, three months after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the heavily loaded ship was heading north past Crescent City and the treacherous St. George Reef when it encountered winds and waves so strong it could make no headway.

The 220-foot vessel turned back but struck a partially submerged rock and sank within sight of land. Only one lifeboat, with 19 people aboard, made it to shore.

Some of the West’s leading citizens were among the 223 believed to have died. They included Anson G. Henry, the newly appointed governor of the Washington Territory and Lincoln’s friend and physician; Gen. George Wright, commander of U.S. forces in the West during the Civil War; and James Nesbit, a prominent San Francisco newspaper editor.

For weeks, bodies and debris--including the corpse of a U.S. Army camel--washed up along 120 miles of coastline from Humboldt Bay to the Rogue River in Oregon.

The ship’s demise was widely attributed to its owners’ desire to haul as much cargo as possible. As it was sinking, Capt. Samuel De Wolf reportedly shouted to one survivor: “Tell them if they had not overloaded us, we would have got through all right, and this would never have happened.”

The uncharted rock--known today as Jonathan Rock--gouged such a large hole in the hull that passengers and crew had only 45 minutes to save themselves before the vessel sank. With 20-foot swells hitting the ship, most of the lifeboats were smashed or swamped the moment they were lowered, dumping dozens of people into the swirling, frigid waters.

“As we came around the stern we saw a boat swamped which was full of women; and one boat capsized, with a man on her bottom, and also another one stove to pieces,” Quartermaster Jacob Yates, one of the survivors, reported when he reached shore. “Our boat was so full we could not take another soul in it.”

Witnesses said Wright had found a place for his wife in the one surviving lifeboat, but she refused to go when she realized that he was staying behind. The couple were last seen embracing on deck.

As the vessel was sinking, Nesbit, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, sat calmly on the deck, making out his will and writing notes to loved ones. The documents, wrapped in oilskin, were found on his body when it washed ashore.

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The wreck of the Brother Jonathan was such a national calamity that it prompted passage of laws prohibiting the overloading of ships and inspired construction of the country’s most expensive lighthouse, St. George Reef Light Station, on a rock island three miles from Jonathan Rock.

Over the years, the legend has grown that the ship was carrying a wealth of cargo: gold to pay Indians under a treaty; wages for soldiers in the Northwest; gold for the Canadian government, or gold supposedly being transported by a Wells Fargo courier.

Harrington, 63, director of salvage operations for Deep Sea Research, said he believes that the treasure is there and estimates its value today at $25 million to $50 million--more than enough to finance the treasure hunt and pay for the salvage of relics.

“The gold and silver is the protection for the artifacts,” Harrington said by phone from his home in Florida. “That’s what gets the artifacts off the bottom.”

But state officials and historians question whether any of that treasure ever existed. Newspaper accounts at the time put the cargo’s worth at $48,112; only a third of it was insured. Since the wreck’s discovery, Wells Fargo has expressed no interest in filing a claim to recover property from the steamer.

Shomette, a former Library of Congress staff member who has studied numerous shipwrecks, suggests that the real value of a ship like the Brother Jonathan is in its history--and the real profit for treasure hunters comes from raising money from investors.

It is not unusual, he says, for salvors to mount an expensive operation and dismantle a wreck in search of reported treasure only to find a few coins amid the artifacts.

“I think [the treasure] probably doesn’t exist,” Shomette said from his home in Maryland. “My suspicion is this is like any one of hundreds of speculative ventures floated every year.”

Within months of its sinking, rumors of gold prompted treasure hunters to search for the wreck, and countless expeditions were launched in the years since.

Knight, 53, recalls his father, a commercial fisherman, telling the story of snagging something solid on the bottom near Jonathan Rock. His father was sure that it was the Brother Jonathan.

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As Knight grew up, his fascination with the tale of the wreck grew. He earned an anthropology degree from Cal State Fullerton and began searching historic records for clues to where the ship went down.

In 1991, he founded Deep Sea Research and teamed up with Harrington, a charismatic commercial diver who also was searching for the ship. Harrington had done work on a dozen major shipwrecks, including discovering and helping to salvage the De Braak, a celebrated British warship, off Delaware in the mid-1980s.

When they finally found the Brother Jonathan in the fall of 1993, it was not what Knight expected: Rather than breaking into pieces and sinking near Jonathan Rock, the wreck had drifted two miles south and remained essentially intact.

With the video and recovery of six items from the ship--including a plate, wine bottle and medicine bottle now in a Crescent City museum--Knight proved that it was the coveted vessel.

But his idea of getting rich from sunken treasure began to change, he says, as he surveyed the hulk draped with old fishing nets. This was an underwater cemetery, he realized; finding any treasure must be done sensitively, without pulling the wreck apart and violating its victims’ final resting place.

“It may be that some of the dead talked to me in the 3 1/2 hours I sat there, saying, ‘If you protect us, we will give you everything we have,’ ” he recalled.

Soon after, Knight says, he began having disagreements with Harrington and others in Deep Sea Research about how to salvage the ship. Within months, he was ousted from the company by Harrington and two other partners who controlled the majority of stock.

“What we have down there is a shipwreck that is a graveyard, that is extremely valuable from an archeological and an historical standpoint,” said Knight, who lives in Diamond Bar. “I put 20 years of my life into this, and I feel like I’m the real loser.”

Harrington and his San Francisco attorney, Fletcher C. Alford, declined to discuss details of the split with Knight. But they insist that Deep Sea Research does not intend to cause harm to any human remains or artifacts.

Last fall, after Knight left the company, Deep Sea Research won a key ruling in federal court giving it the right to begin recovering items from the ship.

The firm argued that it was entitled to salvage the ship because it had found the vessel and acquired rights from an insurance company that had paid a claim for a small portion of the cargo.

Attempting to win the case on procedural grounds, the State Lands Commission contended that it automatically owned the ship because it is “embedded” on the sea floor within state waters. The commission argued that the case belonged in state, not federal, court.

But federal District Judge Louis Bechtel concluded that he had jurisdiction and ruled that Deep Sea Research has the right to begin salvaging the ship. The court will decide later who owns any recovered artifacts.

The state appealed the decision, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in February. But a decision could be many months away--well after the salvage has begun.

“We want to make sure it’s done in accordance with our rules and regulations, which protect the archeology and history,” said Peter Pelkofer, a State Lands Commission attorney.

“If they are allowed to go out and salvage it, they will have destroyed it. Even if we win [the appeal], we won’t have won anything.”

Because the weather off Crescent City is rough much of the year, the salvage company must wait until calm seas prevail before it begins operations--typically in late summer or fall. But Harrington said he hopes to start work as early as spring.

His plan calls for 12 divers using a diving bell to operate almost around the clock. Each diver will spend five hours at a stretch on the bottom collecting artifacts and searching for treasure. After a month, Harrington said, he will evaluate what has been recovered and decide how to proceed.

Of all the shipwrecks that he has worked on, Harrington said, the Brother Jonathan reminds him most of the De Braak, which capsized in 1798. The salvage of the British warship a decade ago, he said, is a model for the recovery of the Brother Jonathan.

For underwater archeologists, such talk is alarming. Some experts consider salvage of the De Braak one of the worst maritime archeological disasters in recent history.

Shomette’s exhaustive 1993 book, “The Hunt for HMS De Braak,” claims Harrington and others violated Delaware laws, destroyed artifacts, damaged the ship’s hull and carelessly handled human remains in their quest for a treasure that never materialized.

While crediting Harrington for finding the ship, Shomette writes that he brought up artifacts from the wreck--including 206 silver coins and doubloons--without a required state permit, then kept the hoard from authorities while using it to raise money from investors.

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Eventually, Delaware stepped in and budgeted money to save the hull and artifacts ranging from china plates to cannons that were not being properly preserved, said Shomette, who worked on the De Braak as a consultant to the state.

“The upshot was the state was left holding the bag,” he said.

Harrington, however, dismissed Shomette’s book as an incorrect portrayal. No charges were filed by the state.

“He was inaccurate almost 100%,” Harrington said. “We recovered 35,000 artifacts and they all went into preservation. I have stacks and stacks of letters of recommendations from people that worked on the project, and they don’t say the same thing [as the book].”

In Crescent City, a struggling fishing and timber community about 18 miles from the Oregon border, there is great hope that salvage of the Brother Jonathan will bring fame and tourists, perhaps even leading to the establishment of a Brother Jonathan museum.

“Certainly, this being the major shipping disaster of the West Coast, it has potential for helping our economy,” said City Manager Stephen Casey. “This could put the city on the map.”

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1865 Shipwreck

California’s worst maritime disaster occurred in 1865 when the three-masted steamship Brother Jonathon hit a partially submerged rock off Crescent City. Among 223 people believed killed were the newly appointed governor of the Washington Territory and the top U.S. Army general in the West. For more than a century, treasure hunters searched for the ship and as much as $50 million in gold rumored to be on board. The wreck was found in 1993, sitting in 180 feet of water about four miles offshore. A private salvage company has won the right to comb the wreck for treasure despite objections from the state that the vessel is too important historically to be turned over to treasure hunters.