Montebello’s sinking will be topic of lecture

A Dec. 22 lecture in Cambria will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Montebello, a tanker that was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Cambria by a Japanese submarine Dec. 23, 1941.

The wreck of the tanker rests on the Pacific Ocean sea floor west of Cambria. It was listed this year on the National Register of Historic Places, which is governmental acknowledgement that a site is historic.

The lecture, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at Rabobank, 1070 Main St., will be given by Robert Schwemmer, West Coast Regional Maritime Heritage Coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

He was part of the scientific team for the first Montebello shipwreck survey in 1996, served as a principle investigator during a 2003 expedition by the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary’s team, and was a NOAA resource consultant during a U.S. Coast Guard survey in 2011.

His lecture is to include some new information Schwemmer unearthed during his research for the National Register nomination.

This story was originally published December 7, 2016 at 8:32 AM with the headline "Montebello’s sinking will be topic of lecture."