1st images of historic San Francisco shipwreck released

The first three-dimensional sonar maps and images of an immigrant steamship that capsized over 100 years ago in San Francisco, killing 128 people, mostly immigrants from China and Japan, have been released.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its partners released sonar maps and images of the SS City of Rio de Janeiro that struck jagged rocks near the present site of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and sank almost immediately on February 22, 1901.
Fishermen in the area, hearing the ship's distress calls, had rescued 82 survivors, many plucked from makeshift rafts and floating wreckage.

The dead included Chinese and Japanese immigrants as well as the US Consul General in Hong Kong, who was returning to America with his wife and two children. The entire family died in the tragedy.
NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries Maritime Heritage Programme is engaged in a two-year study to discover and document shipwrecks in Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and nearby Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
In November, Hibbard Inshore and Bay Marine Services donated a research vessel and crew, along with a high-powered remotely operated vehicle, to help NOAA find the City of Rio de Janeiro wreck site using three-dimensional sonar.

"This exploration of the San Francisco Bay is about our overall efforts to learn about the area's important marine heritage..," said James Delgado, director of maritime heritage for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

NOAA has so far plotted nine of nearly 200 ships including four never before found vessels.
California-based salvagers found the wreck in the 1980s, but its exact location was unknown as the coordinates they provided did not coincide with any wreck charted by NOAA through years of sonar work.
During this expedition, Robert Schwemmer, West Coast regional maritime heritage coordinator for NOAA, worked with Delgado, and multi-beam sonar expert Gary Fabian to locate the wreck site again.

They located the site in 287 feet of water, positioned inside the main ship channel, and largely buried in mud.
Schwemmer and the Hibbard team captured the first detailed sonar and three-dimensional images of City of Rio resting in the dark, muddy waters outside the bridge.
"The level of detail and clarity from the sonar survey is amazing," Schwemmer said. "We now have a much better sense of both wrecks, and of how they not only sank, but what has happened to them since their loss."
Most Americans whose ancestors came to the US from the Far East in the 19th and early 20th centuries to start a new life arrived on ships like City of Rio de Janeiro.