The SS City of Rio de Janeiro was an iron-hulled steam-powered passenger ship, launched in 1878, which sailed between San Francisco and various Asian Pacific ports.

This proved unprofitable, and she was sold to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in 1881 and refitted to serve as an ocean liner, traveling between her home port in San Francisco to Honolulu, Hawaii, Yokohama, Japan and Hong Kong.

[4] In early March 1896, she ran out of coal while on passage between San Francisco and Hawaii, only reaching Honolulu by burning her wooden topmasts and deckhouses as fuel.

On 22 February 1901, while trying to pass through the Golden Gate in heavy fog, en route to her home port of San Francisco, the City of Rio de Janeiro collided with rocks, reportedly on the southern part of the straits at or near Fort Point, and sank stern first.

Much of the entire underside of the vessel had been ripped open by the collision, allowing seawater to rapidly fill the cargo holds and engine room.

The lookout at the Fort Point Lifesaving Station, only a few hundred yards away, was unaware of the situation for two hours, until a lifeboat was sighted emerging from the fog.

Among those lost in the wreck was Rounsevelle Wildman, the US Consul General at Hong Kong, and his wife and two children, who had been en route for Washington DC to participate in the inauguration of William McKinley.

[8][9] Divers engaged by the Pacific Mail Line immediately began a search for the ship but failed to find any traces of it due to the depth of the water in the area, well beyond the diving or salvage capabilities of the time.

For several years after the disaster, bodies washed up on the beach near Fort Point, including, in July 1902, the remains of Captain Ward, which were identified by the watch chain wrapped around his rib cage.

[9] In 1987, Gus Cafcalas, a San Francisco-area mortgage banker, announced that he and four other men had discovered the wreck the previous fall in 200 feet of water, half a mile west of the Golden Gate Bridge, aided by sonar and photographs taken by a robot submarine.