When the Baltimore clipper Frolic wrecked on the Mendocino Coast in 1850 while returning from China with a cargo of porcelain and silk bound for booming Gold Rush San Francisco, it came to rest in a cove north of today’s Point Cabrillo Lighthouse. As the crew abandoned ship, they gathered what provisions they could. Six sailors refused to leave the rigging and were left behind, while the remaining twenty boarded lifeboats and rowed six miles to the mouth of Big River. There the group split: the captain and six men continued by boat to Bodega, reaching San Francisco several days later, while the others set out overland and were never seen again. Over the years, the story of the “silk ship” lived on along the coast, even as the exact location of the wreck slipped into legend.
More than a century later, sport diver Jim Kennon rediscovered the Frolic entirely by accident. While spear fishing near Point Cabrillo, he sensed “something wrong” beneath him. “The rocks looked symmetrical, like there was a man-made pattern on the bottom, but it was completely covered with seaweed. I kept thinking about it, though, because it seemed so strange. At about 3:30 the next morning I woke up and thought that it had to be an old ship lying there on the bottom. Right then and there I decided to go back the next day for another look.”
Beneath the seaweed, Kennon and fellow diver Bill Kosonen found the remains of a ship and what looked like dishes, beads, and a mound of bricks they briefly hoped were silver. The “bricks” turned out to be cast-iron ballast, but the discovery was still extraordinary. Many years later, they would learn they had located the long-lost Frolic. Kennon continued diving the site for years, raising artifacts and bringing his children to see the wreck.
Others knew about the old wreck. Louie Fratis, whose grandfather had spoken of a “silk vessel” in the cove, raised one of the ship’s cannons in 1969. In the 1970s, San Diego diver Larry Pierson explored the site. “Of course, no one knew that it was the Frolic at the time… The first thing we saw was the preponderance of Chinese porcelain. At that point I knew we had a vintage wreck. We had been told that the wreck might have been a Chinese junk. The pieces of porcelain got larger as we got closer to the wreck. We saw the anchors and the capstan, then the ballast bars and the bilge pump. We weren’t sure what kind of a ship it was, but we knew right away that it wasn’t Chinese.”
By the 1990s, the Frolic was officially recognized as a historically significant Gold Rush-era wreck and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. As Louie Fratis later reflected, “I always felt it was part of the history here. I thought it could be related to that silk vessel my grandfather had talked about… I’m happy time has proven me right.”
“Thomas H. Petersen Master Shipbuilder” by Louis A. Hough. Thomas Petersen built about three dozen wooden vessels: sailing schooners, a barkentine, steam schooners, steam tugs and lighters. Based on Petersen’s memoirs. $20.