US Navy's 'Ghost Ship of the Pacific' Is Found

The only US Navy destroyer captured by Japanese forces during World War II has been found in a deep, watery grave off the coast of California. The USS Stewart was stationed in Manila in 1941 to help repel Japanese attacks after the one on Pearl Harbor. But after it was damaged in the Battle of Badung Strait in February 1942, it became trapped in a repair drydock on the Indonesian island of Java as enemy forces moved in, according to a release. A year later, Allied pilots reported seeing an old US destroyer as part of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Then dubbed Patrol Boat No. 102, the ship gained the nickname "Ghost Ship of the Pacific," per CBS News.

After the war was over, the ship was discovered in Hiro Bay near Kure, Japan, and recommissioned into the US Navy. Towed to San Francisco, it gained another nickname: RAMP-224, combining the acronym for Recovered Allied Military Personnel and the ship's navy hull number. "It's clear [the sailors] thought of Stewart more like a shipmate than a ship," says Russ Matthews, president of the nonprofit Air/Sea Heritage Foundation. The ship's final act of service was as a target ship, "absorbing fire from aerial rockets, machinegun, and naval guns for more than two hours before sinking" on May 24, 1946, marking the end of "a remarkable globe-spanning odyssey," the release adds.

More than 78 years later, a team of investigators located the wreck 30 miles off the coast of Northern California while mapping the 1,286-square-mile Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, per KTXL. Marine technology company Ocean Infinity used three underwater drones to scour the ocean floor on Aug. 1. They returned the "stunning and unmistakable image of a sunken ship 3,500 feet below the surface," per the release. The team notes the ship is "largely intact" with a "nearly upright" hull. "A powerful symbol of the Pacific War's complexity," it "represents a unique opportunity to study a well-preserved example of early twentieth-century destroyer design," says Dr. James Delgado, senior vice president of archaeology firm SEARCH. (More shipwreck stories.)