Introduction
I can finally report: On November 7th, 2024 we successfully dove the US Coast Guard Cutter McCulloch.
I am confident that we are the first team to dive the wreck.
NOAA / USCG found the wreck in 2016 and there have been a few videos released from ROV footage, but I haven’t seen any evidence that a diver has ever been on the wreck. The dive team consisted of Mike Wynd, DJ Mansfield, and myself and we dove with Danny Graham and Triton Diving.
This dive has been 3+ years in the planning. Other than the HMHS Britannic, the USCGC McCulloch wreck has been at the top of my “wish list” for wreck dives. In my annual Top 10, I have hinted at it for the past 3 years.
In my 2023 Top 10, I wrote:
A Super Secret Wreck – This has been on the “wish list” for 2-3 years now. I have a feeling that 2024 might be the year. Stay tuned, it will be amazing if/when it happens.
In the 2022 Top 10, I wrote:
I have a local “pet project” that Ray and I are working on that I’ll keep under wraps for now. I thought we might have been able to dive it in 2022 but that didn’t happen so it will carry over into 2023.
In my 2021 Top 10 list, I also hinted at this wreck with:
In addition, I have a “pet project” that Ray and I are working on that I’ll keep under wraps for now, although a few people already know about it. If we do get the right conditions and the stars align, I’ll be the first person to dive it.
It was an epic task.
I will detail below how this project came to be, provide a lot of historical information on the vessel and pictures from our historical dive. I will also provide detailed information on the dive itself and the detailed planning that went into it.
Below is a “Table of Contents” for the primary sections in this post since it is quite long.
- McCulloch History
- Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request
- Dive Planning Challenges
- Dive Day Planning
- Diving the McCulloch
- Photos & Videos
- Next Steps
- Thanks To…
- References
The McCulloch History
There is a lot of information online about the McCulloch but I think it is worthwhile to include some of it here in this article as a point of reference for what follows and to set context.
The ship was originally the United States Revenue Cutter (USRC) McCulloch and was launched on 15 December 1896. In the tradition of naming revenue cutters after a Secretary of the Treasury, she was named after Hugh McCulloch (1808-1895) who was the Secretary of the Treasury under US Presidents Abe Lincoln and Andrew Johnson an then later also under Chester Arthur and Grover Cleveland.
At the time, she was the largest cutter ever built and was 220 feet long and had a beam of 33 feet. She was equipped with four 3-inch (76mm) guns mounted in sponsons (2 on the bow, 2 on the stern) and a single 15-inch torpedo type in the center of the bow.
You can see the torpedo tube at the centerline of the bow in the photo below:
At the time, the McCulloch was an engineering feat. From the launching document I located:
She had one triple-expansion steam engine and also a Barkentine rig with three masts to extend the range. I think, at the time, she was the only cutter with three masts. She had a top speed of 17 knots which was quite fast for the period.
She had a single screw and a large rudder. Note the name on the stern of the ship in the photo below:
Below is the cover page of the specifications for the McCulloch. Note the spec requirement of 16 knots which she exceeded in trials.
The hull was composition construction with wood planks mounted over steel framing (keep this in mind for the photos below).
As a Revenue Cutter, she was responsible for customs enforcement and, over time, became responsible for some military missions. The Revenue Cutter Service was operated under the Department of Treasury (hence, it made a lot of sense to name her after a Secretary of the Treasury).
She was on her shakedown cruise in 1898 from Philadelphia through the Suez Canal and the Far East before reporting to San Francisco. While in Singapore, she was called to duty when the United States declared war on Spain. She participated in the ensuing Battle of Manila Bay whereby all of the Spanish warships were destroyed.
She later arrived in San Francisco in early 1899 and patrolled the West Coast from Mexico to Oregon on law enforcement and lifesaving duties. She was tasked with enforcing fur seal regulations in 1906 in the Bering Sea and later returned back to San Francisco area in 1912 where she re-established patrols on the West Coast.
She was overhauled in 1914 at Mare Island. Her boilers were replaced, fuel tanks installed, and she underwent modifications to her mainmast and bowsprit and the barkentine rig was removed. The three masts were now two military style masts. The photo below shows the ship after the retrofit:
(Photo By : USCG Historian’s Office)
In January 1915, the Revenue Cutter Service merged with the Life-Saving Service to form the United States Coast Guard and she was renamed as the USCGC McCulloch. She served in the Coast Guard until World War I broke out and she was transferred to the U.S. Navy for wartime service on 6 April 1917 and served as a patrol vessel and renamed once again to USS McCulloch.
She continued to patrol the West Coast of the US and was steaming north from San Pedro to Mare Island with 90 US Coast Guard and Navy personnel on board. On 13 June 1917, she was proceeding carefully due to the heavy fog off Point Conception. Early that morning, they heard a fog signal from a large passenger steamship the SS Governor which was southbound from San Francisco to San Pedro with 429 people on-board. They heard the signal from the McCulloch and ran full astern but it was too late.
The SS Governor ran into the starboard bow area of the McCulloch which tore a big hole in the hull and she quickly started to sink. She sank bow first as can be seen in the photos below. It is amazing to me that they caught the sinking on film. Note the heavy fog.
The Governor suffered no casualties and all 90 people were rescued from the McCulloch before she sank — 35 minutes after the collision. One person who was injured in the collision died three days later in a hospital in San Pedro. The Governor was found at fault and ordered to pay $167,500 to the US Government.
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request
One problem with diving the McCulloch: the location is not published.
After NOAA / USCG found the McCulloch in 2016 and announced it in 2017, it was entered into National Register of Historic Places in 2021. I decided to file a Freedom of Information Act request in July 2021 under the grounds that, as a US Citizen, I should be allowed to visit a National Historic Place. The FOIA was filed with NOAA under DOC-NOAA-2021-001889.
I received a response in August 2021 that said they were going to extend the deadline due the need to consult with the US Coast Guard and that they needed additional information from me. I had a couple calls with NOAA and then I heard back in October that the request was denied on grounds of the National Historic Preservation Act.
I spoke with somebody about it and they explained that if they gave me the location under a FOIA that they would have to give to everybody.
I completely understood and replied something to the effect of “okay, but I’m going to find it and dive it at some point.” I requested a formal response for my records which they provided. Above are the rejection letters from the National Park Service and the US Coast Guard.
Dive Planning Challenges
Assuming you can even find the wreck, diving the McCulloch presents numerous challenges — any one of which makes it almost a non-starter. The proverbial “the stars have to align” is true in this case.
The first challenge is the location.
Is is near Point Conception which is reasonably far from any commercial port or diving operation. The closest port is Santa Barbara. We left from Oxnard and it is about 70 miles each way to the wreck. This makes the logistics of diving the wreck tough since there isn’t any easy place to depart from. It also means that you are relatively remote if anything goes wrong.
The second challenge is also related to the first but due to the weather conditions in that area.
Point Conception is often called the “Cape Horn of the Pacific” and for good reason. On a typical day, it receives 20-30 knot winds and 10 foot swells. We dove the wreck on Thu, 7 November during a very small weather window.
Below is the swell forecast for the day preceding our dive on 6 Nov:
That large swell had an impact on the conditions on our dive in terms of particulate matter in the water. However, it is hard enough to get a window of 1-2 days much less 3 or 4 days when that isn’t happening so the ocean settles down. Note how sheltered the Los Angeles and San Diego areas are. This is why we generally have nice conditions. Point Conception acts as a “break” and shelters the area to the south and west from the weather.
The third challenge is the depth and conditions.
The wreck is in about 300 feet of water which is a serious dive no matter what — especially in cold-ish waters in the open ocean.
When you are in the cold Pacific Ocean (our dive was about 59F) in an area where the weather can turn nasty in literally an hour or two and a planned runtime of three hours, you need a LOT to go right. There is no chamber nearby and no easy rescue. You also obviously need a boat and crew that you trust along with a dive team that you trust.
To complicate all of the above, most dive boats are booked weeks (or months) in advance on the weekends which means you generally need to plan for a weekday dive. And finding dive partners that you trust that are capable of making that dive that can be available literally on a 24-48 hour notice on a weekday is almost impossible.
When you combine the above factors, this is why it took 3+ years to dive the wreck.
Dive Day Planning
The “season” to dive the wreck is generally Sept-Nov. There are other times of year when the conditions work out, but that is typically the best time of year. We had a couple chances to dive the wreck but literally had to cancel within 36 hours of departing due to changing weather. Even when you think you will have a weather window, the conditions and forecast often change.
We started tracking Nov 7th or 8th about 8-9 days beforehand based on the long term forecast and I sent out a note to potential dive partners. This was the wind forecast for Nov 7th as of Nov 2nd (that white dot is not where the wreck is but just in the general area):
Our plan was to leave Port Hueneme at 5am and get on-site around 9am, splash around 10am with a planned runtime of 3 hours which would get us out of the water at 1pm. The winds generally pick up in the afternoon so I was watching the forecast for 2pm. Below is the detailed forecast a few days before our scheduled dive on the 7th:
We made a final “go” decision on Wednesday morning 6 Nov — less than 24 hours prior to the planned “splash” time of 10am on 7 Nov.
That is just the way things go when diving that location. You literally have to wait, wait, wait, hope, hope, hope and then jump at the chance when it arises. Below is the swell (left) & wind forecast (splash / pickup times) for the day of the dive:
There was a heavy Santa Ana wind condition in Oxnard and a raging brush fire in Camarillo which all added to a feel the night before of a Zombie Apocalypse! Check out the short movie clip below:
Anybody hoping to fly into California to dive the wreck will likely be very disappointed. You either need a month-long window to wait or get very lucky or live here and be able to drop everything to dive.
Diving the McCulloch
We loaded all of our gear on DV Triton the night before in order to make a quick exit off the dock at 5am.
The dive team was Mike Wynd, DJ Mansfield, and myself. Danny Graham captained the DV Triton and Joe Honsey co-captained and helped out on the deck. You MUST have a professional dive boat operation for this type of dive. There are only three boats in California that I would personally conduct this dive from.
We got on-site around 9:15am after a little over 4 hours of steaming and we didn’t even know if our target was correct.
We could have found rocks!
We got over the target and started looking at the sonar with hopeful eyes. We got a good signature, but I honestly thought it would be bigger given the size of the ship. She sits on her port side, but it is still a pretty big target and the sonar return seemed smaller than I expected.
We were relatively sure we had the wreck, but we honestly did not know until we actually got into the water and dove it.
Our plan was 5 minute descent, 25 minutes on the wreck, and a planned runtime of no more than 3 hours. For technical divers who care, my on-board diluent was 8/60 and my bailout tanks were 16/54, 20/39, 50, and 100%.
The dive went well but conditions on the bottom were not great. The swells and winds the previous days had definitely stirred up the ocean and there was a ton of particulate matter in the water. Also, the bottom is very, very silty and one small fin kick results in a silt cloud. It was so dark that it was a night dive.
Mike Wynd got a video of me on the wreck. I was having drysuit bottle inflation problems and my buoyancy was complete crap on the entire dive which did not help with the visibility problems. In the video below, you can see how dark the conditions were as I have two very powerful lights on my camera rig setup:
Danny had placed the downline only about 10 feet from the wreck but I saw fish before I saw the wreck. Definitely dark. The downline was placed on the hull side of the wreck as he had hoped to do to avoid getting it caught.
I went to the right towards the bow to get pictures of the torpedo tube opening and starboard bow gun. I couldn’t see the strobes we put on the line given the conditions so I re-traced my path and visited a bit more of the ship until I saw the strobes. I then went towards the stern and saw the engine cover and skylights but didn’t want to stray too far from the downline since time was running short. Unfortunately, I did not get to the stern or to see the aft steering station.
There were a TON of very large fish on the wreck including rock fish and ling cod. I even caught a wolf eel popping its head out of a small hole.
Danny had recently built a deco station trapeze which he installed while we were on the bottom portion of the dive. It was really nice to have that for our extended deco. He had clipped the station to the downline at about 70 feet deep. Mike was the last guy up the line so he unclipped it and we drifted while doing deco. Danny picked up the downline and then followed us.
I took a short video when I got to the first deco bar at 20 feet. You can see Mike coming up below us and then DJ on the 20 foot bar next to me. It also gives you and idea of how bad the vis was shallow which stopped almost all sunlight from getting down to the wreck.
DJ got a photo of my doing some deco on the line:
We all got back on board safely and then took the obligatory dive team photo (left to right: Mike Wynd, DJ Mansfield, Brett Eldridge, Danny Graham).
We had fantastic conditions both on the dive and the way home. Almost no wind and very little swell.
Danny chilling out for the long journey home:
Photos / Videos
Below are photos & videos by the dive team. I mainly took photos of the bow and amidships. Luckily, DJ had started towards the stern and got some GoPro photos and videos of that area which I didn’t get to.
The conditions were very, very hard for photography so quite a few the photos are dark and have backscatter. Such is life when diving in that location at that depth.
Steve Lawson was kind enough to send me the blueprints for the McCulloch which I’ve included a few below to help direct readers to where the photos and/or videos were taken. I will generally cover bow to stern. I marked these up with red fonts but couldn’t get them to save as red so the markups show up gray.
Photo 1 : Torpedo Tube
The McCulloch had a very interesting torpedo tube. It was a single 15″ tube in the bow.
Photo 2 : Bow
The ship had a very sharp bow. Also note the rivets that held on the composite steel & wood construction. I’ve also included a close-up of the rivets to provide an idea of the depth / thickness of the wood over the hull structure.
Photo 3 : Starboard Bow Gun
The McCulloch had four guns (two bow and two stern) that were in very interesting sponsons. You can see the sponson in the drawing above and in the photo below.
DJ got a good video which really shows the sponson that the gun sits in:
Photo 4 : Anchor chain
Photo 5 : Boilers
The McCulloch had a triple-expansion boiler system. Below are various parts of the system that are visible since a lot of the outer wood hull has decayed away.
Photo 6 : Engine Room Skylight
One area that I had noticed on the NOAA photos and wanted to see and visit is the engine room cover and the ports in the skylight. I didn’t quite get the photos I wanted and some fish got in the way, but you can get an idea. 🙂
Photo 7 – Ventilation Cowling
This cowling would funnel fresh air to the crew quarters.
Photo 8 – Portholes
I believe these portholes went to the cabin area near the area just aft of amidships.
Photo 9 – Prop & Rudder
The McCulloch had a four bladed prop that is largely buried in the sand. The photo below is from DJ Mansfield and shows one blade of the prop that sticks above the sand.
The short video clip below shows the rudder assembly. It is buried in the sand quite a bit but you can see the pivot points and rod.
Miscellaneous Artifacts
Because the wreck location is unknown and there have never been any divers on it, all of the original ship is there. There are some very cool and interesting artifacts including portholes, vent covers, ammo, etc. Some of the original wood remains as well. Below are pictures of just a couple interesting things.
Ammo Stacks
There are a lot of the shells for the 4 x 3″ guns scattered throughout the wreck. In the above left group is a photo I took and a short GoPro clip from DJ is below:
Next Steps
I’d like to dive the McCulloch again but hopefully under better conditions.
That would probably require 3-4 days of no wind and low swell up in the area of the wreck which definitely doesn’t happen often. Potentially I will return next year around the fall timeframe when those conditions can occur. Now that we know where the wreck is and I know the layout of the wreck, I could be more efficient and take more photos.
At one point I had a thought about building a photogrammetry model which would be absolutely epic. However, given how much of the wreck is debris, the size of the wreck, and the depth, I don’t see that happening. I think, with the proper ROV and equipment, it would be possible.
Thanks To…
Any project of this magnitude has a lot of help and encouragement. In no particular order, I would like to thank:
- My wife – she puts up with a lot of my raving on about wrecks. I’ve been talking about the McCulloch for years. I think we are both glad that I finally was able to dive it. 🙂
- The people who helped with the potential target location. I won’t name anybody here, but you know who you are. I owe a big debt.
- My dive partners DJ Mansfield & Mike Wynd (sorry I kicked up some silt!)
- Danny Graham at Triton Diving Adventures and Joe Honsey. It takes a very knowledgeable and proficient crew to support a dive of this magnitude in this location. I trust Danny implicitly.
- Ray Artnz @ Sundiver – Ray was the original inspiration for me for diving this wreck. We were planning to do it on his boat, but the timing just didn’t work out. Thanks, Ray.
- Steve Lawson for providing the plans of the McCulloch and his help for identifying some specific areas in the photos.
References
I’m sure there are others I have forgot over the years that I have been working on this and collecting information, but here are a few of the resources I used
The nerve of those rockfish to be on the wreck when you were trying to photograph the engine cover!
In all seriousness, this was a fascinating expedition and fascinating to read and see your documentation of it. Congrats to everyone.
Haha. Thanks for reading and for your comments!
Wow, fantastic find! Very interesting read. Awesome photos. Congrats!
Thanks, David!
Just want to leave a note of correction: the caption on the photo of the ship in port with an Alaskan mountain in the background reads “Steward, Alaska”. I thought that was a misspelling of “Seward” as in “Seward’s Folly”, named for the American Secretary of State behind the 1867 purchase of the territory from Russia.
Copilot backed me up.
This is the sort of error that AI is prone to. Has a ways to go before it can confidently replace human editing / proofreading.
Thanks for the correction, it was my typo on the caption. It is Seward, Alaska. I’ve made the change. No AI in any of my posts. 🙂
Very cool, Brett! Good for you, DJ and Mike!
Thanks, Anton!
Wow you did it! I am impressed. I have browsed your dive logs a few times, this time just stumbled on this log. I am the Nathan Perry that made the ROV videos of McCulloch you linked above. I found and filmed this wreck back in 2018 and have been back 3 times with my personal ROV equipment. Would love to chat sometime and hear how you reverse engineered the location… It took me a bit of time to figure out, and ole NOAA was not super happy to see I had found her =) I do think your the first diver on it, congratulations!
Nathan
Thanks, Nathan! I will reach out to you separately.