The Sibyl Marston was a wooden schooner

Schooner

A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....

 cargo ship built by W.A. Boole & Sons of Oakland CA and belonging to the Sibyl Marston Co. The Sibyl Marston sank off of the coast of Lompoc, California on January 12, 1909.

Overview

On Jan. 12, 1909, the Sybil Marston, the largest steam schooner built on the west coast, struck the rocks near Surf Beach, California and ran aground in a storm. She was carrying 1100000 board feet (2,595.7 m³) of lumber. Two crew members were killed in the disaster.

Shortly after the Sybil Marston disaster, Lompoc residents salvaged lumber and used it to begin a town lumberyard. Several houses built in Lompoc used lumber from the shipwreck.
Surf Beach and its adjoining coastal area was a dangerous place for ship travel in the time before radar navigational systems made seafaring safer.

There are about 30 recorded shipwrecks along the Surf Beach coast.

Location

Sibyl Marston is located at 34.653474°N 120.61747°W.

The shipwreck

Shipwreck

A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

 is located 1 miles (2 km) south of the Surf Amtrak Station in Lompoc, California.

Sources

• 19th Century Shipbuilders on the Pacific Coast (retrieved February 15, 2010)

External links

• Photograph of Sibyl Marston under construction
• Steamer driven ashore, The Ogden Standard, Jan. 13, 1909
• Inheriting a piece of history, Lompoc Record
• YouTube video with details of construction, 8 min.
• Left for San Pedro, Tues. Oct. 20, 1908 Capt. Schillinsky