Unconfirmed sightings and a drifting lifeboat with the letter “C” that was found shortly after the Conestoga vanished led to intense searches near Hawaii and Mexico, but it turned out the ship barely made it 24 hours from San Francisco before sinking in a storm. The wreck was initially located in 2009 as a sonar target in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, during a survey of the many shipwrecks in the area.
