The recent announcement of the Royal Australian Navy’s discovery of the battle-battered wreck of the USS Edsall (DD-219) in approximately 18,000 feet of water in the Indian Ocean was a powerful reminder of the role of destroyers and the “tin can sailors” who served in them in World War II. (See “Naval History News,” p. 4.) The Edsall came to a heroic end as she fought a valiant but doomed fight on 1 March 1942. Alone and facing a Japanese force of larger battleships and cruisers, the Edsall’s captain and crew battled for more than two hours until dive bombers crippled her and the Japanese ships sank her with gunfire. The discovery of the Edsall brought closure to the families of the lost, as these discoveries often do.
The Edsall announcement came right on the heels of another exciting deep-water discovery—of one of the Edsall’s sister ships, no less: the four-stacker, Clemson-class destroyer USS Stewart (DD-224). Both destroyers were part of a group built between 1919 and 1920 at the Philadelphia shipyard of William Cramp & Sons as part of a post–World War I buildup of the U.S. Navy in response to the rise of the submarine as an effective weapon in that conflict.
A diverse team of undersea investigators located the wreck of the Stewart off the coast of Northern California during a recent collaborative expedition undertaken by Ocean Infinity, the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, SEARCH, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and the Naval History and Heritage Command.
The wreck of what was once known as “the Ghost Ship of the Pacific” was found approximately 30 miles from shore, within the boundaries of the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary and in an area consistent with historical accounts of her final disposal. The Stewart was deliberately sunk on 24 May 1946 as part of a naval exercise in the post–World War II era, seemingly bringing the story of this historic vessel to its close after a remarkable globe-spanning odyssey.
The Stewart represents a unique opportunity to study a well-preserved example of early 20th-century destroyer design. Commissioned in September 1920, she would be fated to have a unique career, earning the unusual distinction of serving under both U.S. and Japanese flags during World War II.
Her story, from U.S. Navy service to Japanese capture and back again, makes her a powerful symbol of the Pacific war’s complexity.
The Stewart, like the Edsall, was in Far Eastern waters when Japanese attacks brought the United States into World War II. The Stewart’s moment in extremis came with the Battle of Badung Strait on 19–20 February 1942.
As part of a larger force of U.S., British, and Dutch ships, the Stewart faced a Japanese invasion fleet heading for Bali in that nighttime battle. The Allied ships fought hard but lost the destroyer Piet Hein, and the cruiser Tromp and the Stewart both were badly damaged. The Stewart, “as full of holes as the top of a salt shaker,” battered and partially flooded, was placed in a floating dry dock at Surabaya for repair.
But the Stewart fell off the keel blocks as the dry dock lifted her out of the water. Subsequent damage from a Japanese bomb hit made any repair impossible. As the Japanese advanced and the Dutch East Indies fell, dockyard workers scuttled the dry dock with the wreck of the Stewart still wedged in it.
Navy Communique #57, issued on 18 March 1942, reported: “Early this month the U.S. destroyer Stewart was demolished in the drydock at Sourabaya to prevent her from falling into the hands of the enemy. Previous efforts to put her in serviceable condition had failed.” The Navy struck the Stewart from the Navy List on 25 March 1942.
Behind enemy lines, however, after the Japanese occupied Surabaya, they raised the dry dock and the sunken Stewart in February 1943. Rather than scrap her, they repaired and modified her for use as a patrol boat under the guidance of senior naval constructor Shizuo Fukui.
The resurrected destroyer, now IJN Patrol No. 102, retained her depth-charge racks, but all other armament was replaced, and she was fitted with a trunked funnel and a tripod foremast. This gave her a hybrid appearance, reflecting both her American origins and Japanese refitting. She served as an escort for Japanese convoys throughout the rest of the war. In one action, on 24 August 1944, the patrol boat was part of an escort group when her consort, the antisubmarine vessel CD-22, attacked and sank the submarine USS Harder (SS-257) with all hands.
As Rear Admiral G. van Duers wrote in the June 1955 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, “The Japanese used her for the rest of the war, but always kept her well away from Allied surface forces. Sometimes aviators or submariners back from a long patrol reported an American four-stacker deep in Japanese waters. Invariably they were told they had been seeing ghosts, for no such ship could exist in the Inland Sea or off the coast of Kyushu.”
Admiral van Duers’ account of the “Ghost Ship of the Pacific” noted that, in August 1945, occupying U.S. forces discovered the former Stewart at Hiro Wan near Kure, Japan. “Her own flag was run up and she was recommissioned in the U.S. Navy” as “DD-224 without name,” according to the admiral. With that, the Navy ordered the ex-Stewart sent home for decommissioning.
The voyage home was difficult; the machinery kept breaking down, and finally, the USS Wesson (DE-184) and a progression of Navy tugs towed the veteran hulk to the West Coast, arriving at San Francisco on 5 March 1946. In a striking reminder of how the crew and their officers viewed the old ship and her final service, the ex-Stewart did not sail without a name. Drawing on the term for liberated prisoners of war, “RAMP (Recovered Allied Military Personnel),” the ship proceeded home as RAMP-224.
In San Francisco, one of the more poignant moments came with an unpublicized visit to the ex-Stewart by Lieutenant Commander Charles Lewis Best, who had served as the Stewart’s commanding officer from 1924 to 1926.
Stripped, rigged for scuttling, then decommissioned on 23 May 1946 after being “condemned by a board of inspection and survey,” according to Admiral Duers, the old destroyer was pulled out to sea by the tug USS Algorma (ATO-34). An aerial rocket attack damaged the hulk’s superstructure and set the bridge on fire—but did not sink her. The USS PC-799 opened up with 40-mm and 4-inch shells. Still burning, the ex-Stewart sank after rolling onto her port side.
The San Francisco Examiner’s account of the sinking stated that the “stubborn old ‘can,’ which survived both terrific Jap shelling and an American scuttling early in the war” was “finally sunk by 18 4-inch projectiles aimed at point blank range . . . even then, the 25-year-old ship held out 15 minutes before she dipped forever under the waters.”
The story of the Stewart is a rare example of a World War II naval vessel captured and reused by an enemy, but what struck me as an historian and archaeologist was that, resting in the darkness of the Pacific, the wreck represented a decision to honor the destroyer’s past service, to treat her as a RAMP, as a prisoner of war. In bringing her home to be laid to rest, a ship that had “died” on that return home was sunk to give her an honorable burial at sea.
My quest to relocate her for a brief inspection, to officially mark that grave with precise coordinates, and to share her story began more than a decade ago while I was serving as the director of NOAA’s Maritime Heritage Program. The position of the wreck was not known other than a reference to her being “fifty-five” miles off the Golden Gate. The wreck likely lay, given the coordinates of the SINKEX (sink exercise), within the waters of NOAA’s Cordell Banks National Marine Sanctuary. With my colleagues Russ Matthews, president of the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, and deep-sea archaeologist Michael Brennan, who later would join me at SEARCH, we placed the Stewart on a list of priority targets for focused ocean exploration.
We waited for years for the right “cruise of opportunity” in which a research vessel with the right equipment would transit Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. That opportunity came thanks to our colleagues at Ocean Infinity. Needing a large expanse of ocean and seabed to survey and test systems, Ocean Infinity’s ship Island Pride would be working out of San Francisco. Working with NOAA and with the Naval History and Heritage Command, we secured a permit for survey operations. We used the coordinates from the USS Algorma’s log, thanks to Russ Matthews’ research in the archives, as the center point of a large survey “box” to scan with the Island Pride’s HUGIN autonomous underwater vehicles.
On 1 August 2024, three of those HUGINs spent 24 hours on the bottom before returning with high-resolution sonar data of the sea floor—and the stunning and unmistakable image of a sunken ship that was the right size. The wreck had all the characteristics of a substantially intact Stewart. We then linked, via satellite, as the Island Pride team launched a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). From around the country, our team watched and helped guide the robotic vehicle in a two-and-a half hour inspection and documentation of the Stewart. There was no mistaking her identity, even though the aerial rocket attack had blasted the superstructure, toppled the mast, and smashed the single Japanese trunked stack.
Preliminary sonar scans revealed that the Stewart is largely intact and that her hull—which remains sleek and imposing—rests nearly upright on the sea floor. This level of preservation is exceptional for a vessel of her age and makes her, potentially, one of the best-preserved examples of a U.S. Navy “four-stacker” destroyer known to exist. The wreck’s condition offers invaluable insights into early 20th-century naval architecture and technology.
Following the initial discovery, the team conducted an additional high-resolution sonar survey then launched a detailed visual inspection of the site using a camera-equipped ROV. The video feed was transmitted live from the sea floor using a virtual satellite link to experts and various stakeholders on shore.
This group included Matthews and me, as well as National Marine Sanctuaries Chief Historian Willie Hoffman, SEARCH maritime archaeologist Dr. Michael Brennan, and others, who all worked closely with the highly skilled crew members as they explored the deep-sea wreck in real time. Also participating in the dive was retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Samuel Perez Jr., the executive chairman of Ocean Infinity America. Admiral Perez’s insights as a former surface warfare officer were invaluable in assessing the wreck and the damage caused by the bombardment that sank the ship.
In addition, the data collected by Ocean Infinity during the survey will be provided to NOAA’s Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary to support future environmental assessments. The high-resolution sonar, oceanographic data, and video imagery will offer vital information for habitat characterization, helping NOAA’s scientists monitor and assess marine life in this sensitive area, as well as its ongoing ecological changes.
The technology that led to this discovery is part of an ongoing revolution in effective and focused ocean survey. Increasingly faster, sharper, and more cost-efficient, this equipment, the means of deployment, and the expertise of those who deploy it are all part of a game-changing means to reach into the depths for a variety of reasons: economic, scientific, military. Finding ships like these allows us to briefly shine a light on them, and in that, to remind this generation of the struggles and sacrifices of previous generations—and that a great museum of our naval and maritime history rests below as monuments to those who served.
