Land's End and the Ships That Didn't Make It
Near San Francisco, California
The stretch of coastline at Lands End is one of the most treacherous approaches to a major Pacific harbor in the world. The rocks just below the surface are invisible in fog. The tidal currents through the Gate run at four and a half knots. The shipping channel between the headland here and the Marin bluffs across the water is the narrowest navigable entrance to any major Pacific harbor. The price of that geography is recorded in a ship count that runs into the hundreds over the Gold Rush era alone.
At low tide, when the surf is right, wooden hull ribs are visible just offshore. At least thirty ships have gone down at Lands End specifically. The total in the broader channel approaches three hundred by some estimates, from the Gold Rush era through the turn of the twentieth century.
The most deadly single incident on record here was the sinking of the passenger steamer City of Rio de Janeiro on February twenty-second, nineteen oh one. The ship struck the rocks near Fort Point in heavy fog on a direct approach from Hong Kong. It sank in eight minutes. Approximately one hundred thirty of the two hundred ten people aboard were killed, including the captain. The ship was rumored to carry a cargo of gold and silver. Divers have searched for it ever since.
The Golden Gate was also the entrance to fortune. Every ship that came through in the Gold Rush years was carrying people who had left everything they knew for a chance at something different. The rocks had no opinion about the motive. At low tide you can see what the rocks thought of the ships.
