Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary: Submerged Cultural Resources Assessment

This report gathers together historical and archeological information on vessels that wrecked within the boundaries of Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary before 1980, when the two preserves were established off the southern coast of California. It summarizes, as well, a series of archeological investigations of wreck scatters in this area that began in the early 1980s with Dan Lenihan's dives on the Winfield Scott and continued after 1985 under the direction of the senior author. The latter work, which located and documented several large wreck scatters, is summarized here for the first time. Although major gaps remain in our knowledge of the shipwrecks and submerged cultural resources, considerably more information is now available to the Channel Islands staff than was known in the mid-1960s, when a request for information about wrecks from a dive group drew the response, "There are no shipwrecks at Anacapa Island. "