But after heavy storms brought about by El Nino created an extra low tide, the infamous shipwreck has emerged from the sand right in front of the El Camino Tower of the Coronado Shores condos.
On January 1, 1937, according to the Coronado Eagle & Journal, the 300-foot “sin ship,” a floating gambling casino, was anchored three miles off the coast of Coronado Beach, in international waters, outside the boundary of state and federal law. A violent storm caused the anchor to lose its hold and the ship broke up and sank after drifting three miles to shore.
Luckily, there were only two caretakers on board, and they both were able to get off the ship safely. But people on shore had a field day the following morning. Slot machines, furniture and a mess of whiskey bottles were strewn across the beach and beachcombers helped themselves to the liquor and slot machines.
Now that El Nino has stripped away the sand that obscured all but the remains of the ship’s outline, never-before-seen parts of the ship’s structure are visible. Joe Ditler has been studying the wreck for 30 years. He told NBC San Diego a bit about the infamous ship’s history.
As Ditler recounts the story, during prohibition, people would take small boats out to the ship, anchored in international waters to avoid the law. The pleasure palace offered gambling, prostitution or bootleg whiskey. It is even reported that Mae West and Clark Gable gave the sin ship their patronage.
But local Evangelists took no pleasure in the pleasure palace a few miles off the coast. “Evangelists throughout San Diego County and Southern California devoted their whole sermons to sin ships, ‘May God let forth His wrath!’” Ditler explained. “When it did break moorings and crashed, they took credit.”
Ditler says the ship continues to hold a certain amount of irony, even today as it regularly is exposed by the tides. “Coronado is prim and proper, and here’s this gambling ship, this sin ship, that crashed on the beach in the 1930s and they can’t get rid of it,” he says.
The gambling ships of the pacific Coast
In the dark and mostly dry days of the depression, the SS Monte Carlo, along with as many as 10 other gambling ships dotted the coast between San Diego and Long Beach. All of them were renovated working ships, redesigned strictly for gambling, prostitution, and drinking.
Ships with past lives before they became “sin ships” included “military vessels, five-masted barkentines, lumber schooners and even a former Alaska Packer ship, the four-masted Star of Scotland,” according to The Coronado Eagle & Journal. To entice customers onshore, the ships offered free boat-taxi rides, a free drink and sometimes, a free dinner, just to get people in the mood to gamble.
Of course, there were rumors, supposedly true, that the money behind the operation was the gangster, bootlegger, and gambler Tony Cornero. There were even accounts of Al Capone visiting Coronado, raising speculation he had a stake in the gambling ship, or at least, wanted a stake. But to be sure, the people who came on board to gamble didn’t go away with any big money.
The SS McKittrick was an experiment in ship construction
The ferrocement (reinforced concrete) SS McKittrick was built in Wilmington, North Carolina for the military as a government sponsored experiment in ship building. Launched in 1921, the ship held the distinction of being the first ship to be launched on its side.
The SS McKittrick served two years with the U.S. Quartermaster Corps, and was known as Tanker No. 1. The ship was sold in 1923 to the Associated Oil Company of San Francisco and renamed the SS McKittrick. The ship worked along the Pacific coast for almost 10 years. Then in 1932, she was sold and converted into a gambling ship and renamed the SS Monte Carlo.
