Shipwrecks of the California coast: wood to iron, sail to steam

More than two thousand ships have been lost along California's840 miles of coastline-Spanish galleons, passenger liners, freighters, schooners.

Some tragedies are marking points in U.S. maritime history. The City ofRio de Janeiro, bound from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1901, sliced thefog only to strike a rock and sink in twenty minutes, sending 128 passengers towatery graves.

Seven U.S. Navy destroyers, bound on a fateful 1923 night from SanFrancisco to San Diego, crashed into the rocks at Honda Point on thetreacherous Santa Barbara County coast, killing 23 sailors in one of themilitary's worst peacetime losses.

Join author Michael D. White as he navigatesthe shoals of shipping mishaps with both salvage stories and elegies to thedeparted.