The USS Conestoga left the Navy yard at Mare Island, Calif., on Good Friday, 1921, bound for Pearl Harbor, with a complement of 56 sailors.
It cleared the Golden Gate at 3:25 p.m. and steamed into the Gulf of the Farallones in heavy seas. The Conestoga was a rugged oceangoing tug that had once hauled coal barges for a Pennsylvania railroad.
But 17 years after its launch in Baltimore, it had undergone hard use and had a reputation as a “wet boat,” one that took on water easily.
At 4 p.m. that day, as the San Francisco light ship recorded big waves and gale-force winds, the Conestoga passed Point Bonita and was not heard from again.
On Wednesday, 95 years later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Navy announced that the wreck had been found a few miles from Southeast Farallon Island, just off the California coast.