Harvard

After her launch in 1907, the turbine-powered Harvard served as a passenger liner on the route between Boston and New York for the Metropolitan Steamship Company.

Acquired by the U.S. Navy at the start of World War I, she was renamed the U.S.S. Charles, crossed the Atlantic and ferried American troops between Southampton, England, and Le Havre, France, until the war’s end in 1918. 

Brought to the West Coast after the war, she – and her twin sister, the Yale – were popular coastal passenger steamers that plied the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco on a four-trips-a-week schedule for the Los Angeles Steamship Co., a subsidiary of the San Francisco-headquartered Matson Navigation Co.

She was steaming at 20 knots on her 972^nd trip on the clear morning of May 30, 1931, when she went aground and settled on an even keel on the rocks only 100 yards off Point Arguello, about 60 miles north of Santa Barbara, California.

Capt. Lewis Hilsinger, who was filling in for the Harvard’s regular master, ordered a distress call sounded and an SOS sent out immediately.

Several ships responded including the freighter San Anselmo, which altered course to come to her aid, took her 500 passengers off and safely transferred them to the cruiser U.S.S. Louisville. 

The entrepreneurial rancher who owned the property on the bluff immediately fronting the wreck saw an opportunity to make a fast buck and reportedly made quite a killing by charging 50 cents a carload to curiosity seekers wanting to view the stranded ship.

According to one account, between 20,000 and 30,000 cars took him up on his offer. 

Theories abounded as to why the Harvard was wrecked with a negligent lookout, faulty steering gear, an exceptionally strong inshore current topping the list

Some theorists even claimed that the ship’s log had been altered to cover the fact that she was too close to shore before she was wrecked.

Whatever the case, the Harvard, once the pride of California’s coastal passenger fleet, soon broke up and was no more.

For her war service, the Harvard was awarded corporal’s stripes, which were affixed to her forward funnel and remained there to her loss abd, in an ironic footnote, the Harvard’s initial distress call was sounded on a steam whistle that had been salvaged from the Santa Rosa and installed on the Harvard’s aft stack.

The Santa Rosa, another popular coastal California passenger steamer, had been wrecked 20 years earlier also, ironically, at Point Arguello.