Historical Marker · No. 497
S.S. Emidio
Crescent City, Del Norte County · California
Erected by State Department of Parks and Recreation; Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus, Eureka Chapter 101, 1982
The bronze counts five crewmen killed and names none. A printed memorial nearby does: ordinary seamen Stewart S. McGilliveray and Frederic W. Potts, third assistant B. Winters, fireman Kenneth K. Kimes and messman R. W. Pennington. Three of them were launching a lifeboat off Cape Mendocino when a shell from the submarine I-17 struck it. The survivors rowed through rain to the Blunts Reef lightship. The empty tanker, hit again by a torpedo, drifted some eighty-five miles north before it broke up on the rocks off this shore.
What the plaque says
S.S. Emidio Nearby are portions of the hull of the General Petroleum Corporation tanker S.S. Emidio, which on December 20, 1941 became the first casualty of the Imperial Japanese Navy's submarine force action on California's Pacific Coast. The ship was attacked some 200 miles north of San Francisco and five crewmen were killed. Abandoned, the vessel drifted north and broke up on the rocks off Crescent City. The bow drifted into the harbor, where it lay near this marker until salvaged in 1950. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 497 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the Eureka Chapter 101 of E Clampus Vitus, July 4, 1982.
Where it stands
41.75058, -124.19657 · Directions
More markers nearby
- Battery Point Lighthouse — 0.6 mi
- Brother Jonathan Cemetery — 0.8 mi
- Site of Old Indian Village at Pebble Beach, Crescent City — 1.4 mi
- Crescent City Plank and Turnpike Road — 4.6 mi