High Court to Weigh Claims to Steamer Wrecked in 1865

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday that it will revisit one of the worst maritime disasters in California history: the sinking of the Brother Jonathan, a Gold Rush-era paddle steamer that went down off the North Coast with the loss of 147 lives July 30, 1865.

The court will decide whether the shipwreck is the property of the state of California or the diving company that discovered it four years ago embedded in the sea bottom a few miles off Crescent City.

The ruling, expected early next year, will probably have a broad impact on those who search coastal areas for sunken ships in hopes of salvaging their treasures. State lawyers said there are about 5,000 such ships along the nation’s coastlines or lying at the bottom of the Great Lakes.

It is unclear whether “finders keepers” or state ownership is the law.

With technological advances in undersea exploration, more wrecks have been discovered and exploration teams have gone into business looking for salvageable ships.

In response, Congress and the California Legislature moved to claim ownership of sunken ships with historic or cultural value. Legislators said they want to protect these valuable historic sites from being plundered.

In the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987, Congress gave the states control of abandoned, historic wrecks in their coastal waters. Two years later, California legislators passed a measure to lay claim to shipwrecks older than 50 years “to preserve and protect the underwater cultural resources of the state.”

But the small, privately held diving company that found the Brother Jonathan in 250 feet of water maintains that the ship is not legally abandoned.

The company, Deep Sea Research, contacted two San Francisco insurance companies that paid claims on the lost cargo in the 1860s and bought their ownership rights. Because the insurers had not officially abandoned the wreck, the explorers said, they now own a wreck that was not abandoned.

The Brother Jonathan was en route from San Francisco to Puget Sound when it was caught in a storm and dashed on a submerged rock. Newspaper reports of the time said it was carrying a shipment of $2 million in gold. Recent estimates by salvagers have placed its value between $25 million and $108 million.

A federal judge in San Francisco and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the explorers. Because California could not show that the wreck was abandoned, its claim under federal and state laws could not stand, the appeals court said.

Lawyers for the diving company defended this decision as just and fair. “To date, the almost 100 individual investors, mostly people of modest means . . . have yet to see a single penny of return on their investment. Although the state touts itself as the guardian of the Brother Jonathan, the state admits it has done nothing to protect the wreck.”

But lawyers for California appealed to the Supreme Court and were joined by 15 other states and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. They argued that the government has the right to control the fate of historic wrecks and this should not be left solely to private explorers.

The justices announced that they will hear the case (California vs. Deep Sea Research, 96-1400) in the fall.

The wreck of the 220-foot paddle steamer is said to be in remarkably good shape. A videotape taken by a manned submersible and played during a court hearing showed the ship sitting upright on the sea floor.

“At least three-quarters of the ship’s hull and all of its surviving superstructure, floors, galley, cabins and other portions of the vessel, are clearly visible above the surface of the ocean floor,” said the judge who heard the case.