NOAA and the U.S. Navy have announced the discovery of the USS Conestoga (AT 54) in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary off San Francisco, 95 years after the Navy seagoing fleet tugboat disappeared with 56 officers and sailors on board, NOAA said in its news release.
When it left San Francisco on March 25, 1921, Conestoga was en route to Tutuila, American Samoa via Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. But the ship never made it. For months, Conestoga’s mysterious disappearance gripped newspaper readers across the country. Unable to locate the ship or wreckage, the Navy declared Conestoga and its crew lost on June 30, 1921, the last U.S. Navy ship to be lost in peacetime without a trace.
Then in 2009, NOAA's Office of Coast Survey documented a probable, uncharted shipwreck around the Farallon Islands. A further investigation, including a two-year study to document historic shipwrecks in and near the sanctuary by NOAA and the Naval History and Heritage Command, confirmed it was the Conestoga, solving a 95-year old mystery.