{"id":89,"date":"2026-03-08T16:34:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T00:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ded3590.inmotionhosting.com\/~lostships\/?p=89"},"modified":"2026-03-13T12:58:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:58:01","slug":"harvard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":"Harvard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Harvard<\/em> \u2013 and her twin sister, the Yale<\/em> \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Harvard\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

 <\/strong>   The turbine-powered ship served in World War I as the U.S.S. Charles<\/em> ferrying troops between Southampton, England, and Le Havre, France.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

   For her war service, the Harvard<\/em> was awarded corporal\u2019s stripes, which were affixed to her forward funnel and remained there to her loss on May 30, 1931.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   She was steaming at 20 knots on her 972nd<\/sup> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   Capt. Lewis Hilsinger, who was filling in for the Harvard<\/em>\u2019s regular master, ordered a distress call sounded and an SOS sent out immediately. Several ships responded including the freighter San Anselmo<\/em>, which altered course to come to her aid, took her 500 passengers off and safely transferred them to the cruiser U.S.S. Louisville<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

   Theories abounded as to why the Harvard<\/em> was wrecked with a negligent lookout, faulty steering gear, an exceptionally strong inshore current topping the list. Some theorists even alleged that the ship\u2019s log had been altered to cover the fact that she was too close to shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   Whatever the case, the Harvard<\/em>, once the pride of California\u2019s 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 <\/em>in San Francisco Bay.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an ironic footnote, the Harvard<\/em>\u2019s initial distress call was sounded on a steam whistle that had been salvaged from the Santa Rosa<\/em> and installed on the Harvard<\/em>\u2019s aft stack. The Santa Rosa<\/em>, another popular coastal passenger steamer, had been wrecked 20 years earlier also, ironically, at Point Arguello.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flying the houseflag of the Los Angeles Steamship Company, the sleek coastal liner Harvard, and her sister, the Yale, plied the coast on overlapping sailings connecting San Pedro and San Francisco. The Harvard, once the pride of the coastal passenger liner fleet, was wrecked when she went aground on an even keel at Point Arguello, California, on the clear morning of May 30, 1931. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostships.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}