Harvard

The Harvard – 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 Matson Navigation Co.

    The turbine-powered ship served in World War I as the U.S.S. Charles ferrying troops between Southampton, England, and Le Havre, France.   

   For her war service, the Harvard was awarded corporal’s stripes, which were affixed to her forward funnel and remained there to her loss on May 30, 1931.

   She was steaming at 20 knots on her 972^nd trip at 3:30 that clear morning 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 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 alleged that the ship’s log had been altered to cover the fact that she was too close to shore.

   Whatever the case, the Harvard, once the pride of California’s coastal passenger fleet, soon broke up and was no more. Fifteen years before she was wrecked, she had rammed and sank the steam schooner Excelsior in San Francisco Bay.  

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 passenger steamer, had been wrecked 20 years earlier also, ironically, at Point Arguello.