Steamer Golden Gate...

[jeff k]

I've done some research on the Golden Gate, and I believe there still may be enough gold coins on the site/surf to make the casual diver/beach hunter happy.

The wooden side-wheel steamship GOLDEN GATE was built for the Pacific Mail Steamship Co by William H. Webb, New York (hull #56); keel laid 1 July 1850, launched 21 January 1851, along with the sailing ship ISAAC BELL (for Fox & Livingston) and the clipper GAZELLE (for Taylor & Merrill). 2067 tons; 262 feet x 40 feet x 30 feet 6 inches (length x beam x depth of hold); 2 funnels, 3 masts, 3 decks, round stern, round tuck, spread-eagle head; mean draft 10 ft 2 in, load draft 13 ft 8 in; two oscillating engines (Novelty Iron Works): bore 85 inches, stroke 9 feet, steam pressure 18 psi, approximate ihp 1150, 14 revolutions per minute; wheel diameter 33 feet 6 inches, float width 10 feet 6 inches.
2 August 1851, maiden voyage, New York - Rio de Janeiro - Valparaiso - Panama (arrived 16 October) - San Francisco (arrived 19 November 1851; her passage from Panama to San Francisco of 11 days, 4 hours, stood as a record until 1855). The GOLDEN GATE entered the Panama-San Francisco service, where she proved a fast, but unlucky vessel: in 1852, an outbreak of cholera aboard resulted in 84 deaths; in May 1853, she nearly collided with the Vanderbilt steamship SIERRA NEVADA off the Mexican coast; 1854, engine breakdown and grounding at Point Loma; October 1857, broken shaft. 24 July 1862, sailed from San Francisco for Panama. 27 July, about 15 miles from Manzanillo, Mexico, fire was discovered in the engine room, and the vessel was headed for what is now called Playa de Oro, in order to beach her. Many of the passengers sought refuge in the stern, but the flames spread in that direction, and when boats were launched in the heavy surf the occupants were crushed against the ship or drowned; the ship broke up in the surf. Between 175 [Dunbaugh and Thomas] and 223 [Kemble] passengers and crew lost their lives, together with the baggage, mail, and nearly all the cargo of $1.4 million in specie (gold valued at $300,000 was recovered from the wreck and brought to San Francisco by the Pacific Mail steamship CONSTITUTION in February 1863).

I don't have the exact coordinates, but my "X" on the map shows the general location.

[Mackaydon]

Jeff:

The beach at Playa de Oro is marked on maps. It can be reached by a dirt road that runs perpendicular to the highway. It is nearly impassable in rainy weather (don't think I'd even take a 4-wheeler in there).

What is interesting is that the beach is still 'virgin'; there are only houses further north of the 'wreck location'. What makes the site nearly impossible to work is the constant high surf that can be heard sometimes from over a mile away. It breaks close to the shore.

At the turn of the last century, one paper (NYTimes??) reported the succcess of a hard hat diver with extra weights working in that area and recovering part of the manifest (gold).

There exists online a large picture (Currier and Ives) of that beach vessel all aflame; quite impressive. There is also available a great narrative regarding how the survivors made it back (south) to town, walking through the jungle.

It's a great challenge yet the reward could be staggering. The caveat is (I believe): Taking treasure out of Mexico is against the law; some 'agreement' would first have to be made with the authorities.

I walked on that beach about 6/7 years ago. What I remember most was the sand was like quicksand; as if you were walking down a sand dune. With that much instability and the intensity of the suft, no telling how deep the target might be today.
Did someone just think cofferdam?
Don...........

[chipveres]

Before you get too far into this; look for a resort motel not far away built by an American expat diver. You need to subtract what he recovered & used to build the motel from a possible recovery.

Chip V.

[jeff k]

Chip... That American is mentioned on the link below. I still think a little beach/surf detecting could prove rewarding. At the least, it looks like it would be a nice vacation.

http://www.gomanzanillo.com/beaches/index.htm

[Mackaydon]

I believe you are both referring to Bart Varelmann. In his autobiography, INNKEEPER he notes that he arrived in Manzanillo about fifty years ago "with a dream and an Aqua Lung (the prototype of the scuba gear I use today) to locate a shipment of gold that went down off the coast near Manzanillo in 1862."
Instead he found a tiny inn on the beach for sale (cheap) which had been devastated by a killer hurricane in 1959. A great base of operations for his search for the gold, he figured, but the real treasure turned out to be the little hotel.

I believe that popular hotel is called La Posada and that he invested his savings, not proceeds from the sale of Golden Gate treasure, to obtain his hotel. NWS, I don't think anyone will disagree that at least part of that treasure of gold is still there--waiting.
Don.......

[allen_idaho]

about $500,000 worth was recovered in the early 1960's. I forget by who. However it was carrying around 1.6 Million in unrefined gold from the california gold rush at the time it went down.

[Mackaydon]

IMO, there is no 'wreck', only the site of where the burning vessel ran aground in the surf; the vessel is long gone.
Looking back over my comment of two years ago, I'll revise it to say the dirt road (as now shown on the map above) could be driven in dry weather, and makes an interesting side trip from Manzanillo.
Don..........

[jeff k]

I recently found this court case.

THE UNITED STATES v. THOMAS J. L. SMILEY et al. United States Circuit Court, District Of California, 1864.

(6 Sawyer, 640.)

The steamer Golden Gate left San Francisco for Panama on July 21, 1862, and had ou board " treasure " amounting to $1,450,000. On July 27, when three miles and a half from the Mexican shore, fire broke out, the steamer headed for the shore and went to pieces about two hundred and fifty feet from the shore, at a point fifteen miles north of Manzanillo, in Mexico. Of the money on board $1,200,000 were ultimately recovered in port by Smiley and his associates. The shippers and Smiley disagreeing about his share of the recovered treasure, he was indicted in March, 1864, in U. S. Circuit Court for plundering and stealing the treasure from the Golden Gate, under the ninth section of act of Congress of March 3, 1825 (4 St. L., 116) which provides "that if any person . . . shall plunder, steal or destroy any money, goods, merchandise or other effects from or belonging to any ship or vessel or boat or raft, which shall be wrecked, lost, stranded, or cast away upon the sea, or upon any reef, shore, bank, or rocks of the sea, or in any other place within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States," he " shall be deemed guilty of a felony," &C.1

1 This statement is substituted for that of the report. — Ed.

By the court, Mr. Justice Field. We are not prepared to decide that the statute does not apply to a case where the vessel has gone to pieces, to which the goods belonged of which larceny is alleged. It would fail of one of its objects if it did not extend to goods, which the officers and men of a stranded or wrecked vessel had succeeded in getting ashore, so long as a claim is made by them to the property, though before its removal the vessel may have been broken up. We are inclined to the conclusion that, until the goods are removed from the place where landed, or thrown ashore, from the stranded or wrecked vessel, or cease to be under the charge of the officers or other parties interested, the act would apply if a larceny of them were committed, even though the vessel may in the mean time have gone entirely to pieces and disappeared from the sea. But in this case the treasure taken had ceased to be under the charge of the officers of the Golden Gate, or of its underwriters, when the expedition of Smiley was fitted out, and all efforts to recover the property had been given up by them. The treasure was then in the situation of derelict or abandoned property, which could be acquired by any one who might have the energy and enterprise to seek its recovery. In our judgment the act was no more intended to reach cases where property thus abandoned is recovered, than it does to reach property voluntarily thrown into the sea, and afterwards fished from its depths.

But if the act covered a case where the property was recovered after its abandonment by the officers of the vessel and others interested in it, we are clear that the circuit court has not jurisdiction of the offence here charged. The treasure recovered was buried in the sand several feet under the water, and was within one hundred and fifty feet from the shore of Mexico. The jurisdiction of that country over all offences committed within a marine league of its shore, not on a vessel of another nation, was complete and exclusive.

Wheaton, in his treatise on International Law, after observing that " the maritime territory of every state extends to the ports, harbors, bays, and mouths of rivers and adjacent parts of the sea inclosed by headlands, belonging to the same state," says: "The general usage of nations superadds to this extent of territorial jurisdiction a distance of a marine league, or as far as a cannon-shot will reach from the shore, along all the coasts of the state. Within these limits its rights of property and territorial jurisdiction are absolute, and exclude those of every other nation." (Pt. 2, c. 4, sec. 6.)

The criminal jurisdiction of the government of the United States — that is, its jurisdiction to try parties for offences committed against its laws—may in some instances extend to its citizens everywhere. Thus, it may punish for violation of treaty stipulations by its citizens abroad, for offences committed in foreign countries where, by treaty, jurisdiction is conceded for that purpose, as in some cases in China and in the Barbary states; it may provide for offences committed on deserted islands, and on an uninhabited coast, by the officers and seamen of vessels sailing under its flag. It may also punish derelictions of duty by its ministers, consuls, and other representatives abroad. But in all such cases it will be found that the law of Congress indicates clearly the extraterritorial character of the act at which punishment is aimed. Except in cases like these, the criminal jurisdiction of the United States is necessarily limited to their own territory, actual or constructive. Their actual territory is coextensive with their possessions, including a marine league from their shores into the sea.

This limitation of a marine league was adopted because it was formerly supposed that a cannon-shot would only reacli to that extent. It is essential that the absolute domain of a country should extend into the sea so far as necessary for the protection of its inhabitants against injury from combating belligerents while the country itself is neutral. Since the great improvement of modern times in ordnance, the distance of a marine league, which is a little short of three English miles, may, perhaps, have to be extended so as to equal the reach of the projecting power of modern artillery. The constructive territory of the United States embraces vessels sailing under their flag; wherever they go they carry the laws of their country, and for a violation of them their officers and men may be subjected to pnnishment. But when a vessel is destroyed and goes to the bottom, the jurisdiction of the country over it necessarily ends, as much so as it would over an island which should sink into the sea.

In this case it appears that the Golden Gate was broken up; not a vestige of the vessel remained. Whatever was afterwards done with reference to property once on board of her, which had disappeared under the sea, was done out of the jurisdiction of the United States as completely as though the steamer had never existed.

We are of opinion, therefore, that the Circuit Court has no jurisdiction to try the offence charged, even if, under the facts admitted by the parties, any offence was committed. According to the stipulation, judgment sustaining the demurrer will be, therefore, entered and the defendants discharged.1

1" In England and America, the jurisdiction is generally assumed over its citizens in reaped to all civil acts, transactions, rights, or duties done or arising abroad. This is true, even though the act be a tort, and though it amount to a breach of the peace. Tims a British subject is liable to a civil action in England for an assault and battery committed by him, say in Italy. The same would be true in the United States. But by a very ancient principle of the English common law. adopted in this country, all crimes are strictly local, and the offenders are justiciable only in the countries where the criminal act is done." Pomeroy's Int. Law, 205.

It is, however, true that in a few instances English and American courts take jurisdiction of crimes committed by their respective subjects and citizens beyond their territorial limits, other than on the high seas, but they do not, as is commonly the case on the Continent, try foreigners for offences against their municipal laws.

In Macleod v. Atti/.-Gen., 1891, A. C. 455, Halsbury, L. C, laid down as English law that "all crime is local. The jurisdiction over the crime belongs to the country where the crime is committed, and, except over her own subjects, Her Majesty and the Imperial Legislature has no power whatever."

" It is, however, a decided and settled principle in the English and American law, that the penal laws of a country do not reach in their disabilities or penal effects, beyond the jurisdiction where they are established. Folliott v. Oyden, 1 H. Black. 123, 135; Lord Ellenborough, Woljfv. Oxholm, 6 M. & S. 99; Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Green, 17 Mass. 514, 539^543; ScovilU v. Canfield, 14 Johns. 338, 440" (1 Kent, Com. 88, note b). See also, V. S. v. Pelican Ins. Co., 1887, 127 U. S. 285, 289-91 and Hall, Int. Law, 218-222. —Ed.

[Mackaydon]

From my memory, the surf normally pounds the shoreline--this was NOT a calm seas Bahamas-type dive site. The original salvor (around 1900) used weighted shoes to maintain some control and their ordeal is well documented in (I believe) the NY Times. Also, the survivors' comments are archived, probably in the San Francisco and Sacramento newspapers. Somewhere, I still have my file and, if found, I'll be more specific.
The "X" on the chart is where I searched; north of the road and south of buildings that stood about 500 yards north of the road--on the beach. I MD-ed the beach and never had the nerve to venture into that surf. Then again, during the week I was in the area there could have been just a storm at sea creating the surf; but the story of the survivors also relates the severity of that surf and that was fresh in my mind.
Don.........

[Mackaydon]

You may wish to take a look at Google Earth for a pic of what is there today.

And as Jeff reported above ("In this case it appears that the Golden Gate was broken up; not a vestige of the vessel remained.") I agree 100%

[jeff k]

You may wish to take a look at Google Earth for a pic of what is there today.

And as Jeff reported above ("In this case it appears that the Golden Gate was broken up; not a vestige of the vessel remained.") I agree 100%

Type "Estrecho, Mexico" in Google Earth. It looks like there are some new homes on the beach.

[gus]

Don't have the dates but CEDAM Mexico tried to work the site many years ago (50's or early 60's) I saw some photos in the CEDAM museum in Puerto Aventuras years back. Main thing was the sand was very deep and they felt any cargo likely had migrated down deep.

[Mackaydon]

Manzanillo is just a few klicks to the south and there are a couple of vacation beaches between the city and "Gold Beach". It still would be a good place to MD for a few days while keeping watch on the surf at Gold Beach and awaiting an opportunity to MD the area.
Don....