New details about 1941 sinking of Montebello to be shared in Cambria lecture
A free Dec. 22 lecture in Cambria will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Montebello, offering new details about the tanker that was torpedoed and sunk off Cambria by a Japanese submarine on 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 acknowledgment that a site is historic and worthy of protection.
The lecture, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at Rabobank, 1070 Main St., is sponsored by the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The talk will include new information unearthed during research for the National Register nomination.
The speaker is Robert Schwemmer, West Coast Regional Maritime Heritage coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
Schwemmer has spoken before in Cambria about the historic wreck, and he brings a wealth of personal knowledge to the topic, including the discovery of the new details he found while researching for the nomination.
He knows the Montebello well. Schwemmer was part of the scientific team for the first Montebello shipwreck survey in 1996, served as a principal 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.
This story was originally published December 13, 2016 at 1:41 PM with the headline "New details about 1941 sinking of Montebello to be shared in Cambria lecture."