King Philip shipwreck
Encyclopedia
The King Philip shipwreck is the wreck
Shipwreck
A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....
of the King Philip, a 19th century clipper
Clipper
A clipper was a very fast sailing ship of the 19th century that had three or more masts and a square rig. They were generally narrow for their length, could carry limited bulk freight, small by later 19th century standards, and had a large total sail area...
ship—a fast commercial three-masted sailing ship—which was named after an Indian chief. The wreck of this ship is only rarely visible; very infrequently the timbers can be seen protruding from the sands of Ocean Beach
Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California
Ocean Beach is a beach that runs along the west coast of San Francisco, California, United States, at the Pacific Ocean. It is adjacent to Golden Gate Park, the Richmond District and the Sunset District. The Great Highway runs alongside the beach, and Cliff House and the site of the former Sutro...
, on the Pacific Ocean coast of San Francisco, California. The wreck is the "most complete remains of an American medium clipper
Medium clipper
A Medium clipper is a type of clipper designed for both cargo carrying capacity and speed. An evolutionary adaptation of the extreme clipper, the medium clipper had been invented by 1851, when the hull type appeared in U.S. shipyards...
."
Clipper’s history
King Philip was built in Alna, MaineAlna, Maine
Alna is a town in Lincoln County, Maine, United States. The population was 675 at the 2000 census. Home to the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway Museum, Alna includes the early mill village of Head Tide, noted for its historic architecture.-History:...
in 1856. Seven years later she was being advertised as "a strictly first-class clipper ship with quick dispatch" and "well-known to shippers as one of the best and most reliable vessels in the California trade. Stands A-1 for seven years". With a wooden hull
Hull (watercraft)
A hull is the watertight body of a ship or boat. Above the hull is the superstructure and/or deckhouse, where present. The line where the hull meets the water surface is called the waterline.The structure of the hull varies depending on the vessel type...
and three masts
Mast (sailing)
The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall, vertical, or near vertical, spar, or arrangement of spars, which supports the sails. Large ships have several masts, with the size and configuration depending on the style of ship...
, she was a medium-sized clipper displacing 1,100 tons. She was named for Metacomet
Metacomet
Metacomet , also known as King Philip or Metacom, or occasionally Pometacom, was a war chief or sachem of the Wampanoag Indians and their leader in King Philip's War, a widespread Native American uprising against English colonists in New England.-Biography:Metacomet was the second son of Massasoit...
(who was known to the English as "King Philip"), a war chief or sachem
Sachem
A sachem[p] or sagamore is a paramount chief among the Algonquians or other northeast American tribes. The two words are anglicizations of cognate terms from different Eastern Algonquian languages...
of the Wampanoag Indians. Metacomet was the Wampanoag's leader in King Philip's War
King Philip's War
King Philip's War, sometimes called Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–76. The war is named after the main leader of the...
.
The ship carried cargo from the Eastern United States to San Francisco, and called at Baker Island
Baker Island
Baker Island is an uninhabited atoll located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean about southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia, and is a possession of the United States. Its nearest neighbor is Howland Island, to the north.Located at...
for guano
Guano
Guano is the excrement of seabirds, cave dwelling bats, and seals. Guano manure is an effective fertilizer due to its high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen and also its lack of odor. It was an important source of nitrates for gunpowder...
. The route required going around Cape Horn
Cape Horn
Cape Horn is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island...
, which is famous for its enormous storms. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years...
has called this kind of ship "the noblest of all sailing vessels." The fastest-ever clipper ship, Flying Cloud, once sailed from New York City to San Francisco in only 89 days; the King Philip, although fast, was not as fast.
King Philip had a turbulent history, including at least two mutinies
Mutiny
Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...
or sailors' rebellions, with the ship surviving being set on fire on both of those occasions. Finally, on January 25, 1878, 22 years after she was built, the King Philip left San Francisco Bay under Captain A.W. Keller, bound for Port Gamble, carrying no cargo. A steam-powered tugboat
Tugboat
A tugboat is a boat that maneuvers vessels by pushing or towing them. Tugs move vessels that either should not move themselves, such as ships in a crowded harbor or a narrow canal,or those that cannot move by themselves, such as barges, disabled ships, or oil platforms. Tugboats are powerful for...
had towed her out of the Bay, in order to help her maneuver in the dangerous waters. At that exact moment, an accident caused the death of the captain of a ship that was nearby, and the tugboat crew was called upon to help out with that emergency. Left on her own without the tugboat to steer her, the King Philip dropped an anchor, but the anchor did not hold fast, and the clipper drifted with the current towards the breakers of the beach and ran aground in heavy surf, which caused the ship to break apart.
In its news article, the Daily Alta California described the scene:
All the members of the crew survived the shipwreck, it being so close to the sandy beach and dry land, but the clipper herself was a total loss. Right after the incident, what was left of the wrecked clipper was offered up for auction. The remnants were bought for $1,050 by a San Francisco businessman named John Molloy, who was able to salvage metal fittings and sails from the destroyed clipper. The rest of the wreck was blown up and abandoned.
Reappearing wreck
The wreck was partially visible when the schooner Reporter wrecked on the same site on March 13, 1902. Contemporary accounts noted that Reporter was "fast digging her own grave alongside the bones of the King Philip, whose ribs are still seen..." The wrecks of both ships were buried in 1910 when bulldozing of the sand dunes to build the Great Highway pushed large amounts of sand onto the beach.
The first documented more recent appearance was in 1982. The wreck was also visible in March 1983, when National Park Service archaeologist James Delgado documented the site with fellow archaeologist Martin T. Mayer. The wreck was exposed in May 1984 to a hitherto unseen degree, at which time Delgado and a larger team returned to document more of the hull. That project determined the ship was nearly half intact (45%) from the keel to the 'tween deck level, was still partially sheathed in "yellow" or Muntz metal
Muntz metal
Muntz metal is a form of alpha-beta brass with about 60% copper, 40% zinc and a trace of iron. It is named after George Fredrick Muntz, a metal-roller of Birmingham, England who commercialised the alloy following his patent of 1832....
, and was ballasted with rocks from San Francisco's Telegraph Hill
Telegraph Hill, San Francisco
Telegraph Hill refers to a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. It is one of San Francisco's 44 hills, and one of its original "Seven Hills."-Location:...
. Tangled wire rope and rigging elements as well as timbers from the schooner Reporter were also found mixed into King Philips hull.
After an appearance in 1985, the next time the wreck was visible was almost 22 years later, in May 2007. The subsequent construction of the Ocean Beach sewer outfall resulted in more sand being dumped onto Ocean Beach, which again buried the ship. It was exposed again in November 2010, three years after its previous appearance. In April 2011 the wreck again became visible, this time to the same degree that it had been in 1984.
Stephen Haller, the park historian for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Golden Gate National Recreation Area
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area is a U.S. National Recreation Area administered by the National Park Service that surrounds the San Francisco Bay area. It is one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States, with over 13 million visitors a year...
of the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
, says that the King Philip is the best-preserved wreck of a wooden ship in the San Francisco Bay area, which has a total of approximately 200 old shipwrecks. According to James Delgado, the wreck of King Philip is the only known structural remains of an American medium clipper
Medium clipper
A Medium clipper is a type of clipper designed for both cargo carrying capacity and speed. An evolutionary adaptation of the extreme clipper, the medium clipper had been invented by 1851, when the hull type appeared in U.S. shipyards...
, a prototype of the American downeaster
Downeaster
The Downeaster is a 116-mile regional passenger train service managed by the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority and operated by Amtrak, connecting North Station in Boston, Massachusetts, to Portland, Maine...
, the typical American wooden deepwaterman of the 19th century.
Because Ocean Beach belongs to the National Park Service and is federal property, the wreck of the old ship is federal property. The wreck is located at 37°45′5.48"N 122°30′35.29"W.