Ocean Beach

This guide to Ocean Beach in San Francisco tells the story of the clipper King Philip, driven aground and broken apart in the surf here on January 25, 1878, after its towboat was called away to another emergency near the Golden Gate. It follows what happened to the wreck afterward, from a businessman stripping it for scrap to the dunes being bulldozed over it in 1910, and how storms still occasionally uncover its buried timbers today. Watch the sand near the waterline after a big storm for a glimpse of the old ribs.