The tides have again exposed portions of an 1878 shipwreck of the three-masted freighter King Philip at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach (near the west end of Noriega Street). The wreck was last seen in 1980.

The SF Chronicle reports:

The sea, a thing of infinite mystery, was up to its mysterious ways Monday on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.

At high noon, in the middle of low tide, two large pieces of a wrecked 19th century clipper ship decided to poke out above the sand and reveal their long-hidden selves to the world.

It was a little piece of maritime history and a great big puzzle. Just the thing for a beachcomber to ponder on a warm and sunny spring day, instead of going to work.

“I don’t know what happened here, but it’s interesting,” said lifeguard Sean Scallan, who got out of his dune buggy to check the wreckage, all the while keeping an eye on the nearby swimmers, that being what lifeguards do.

The visible parts of the shipwreck were nothing more than two 10-foot-long arrangements of lumber in the shape of a V, poking about a foot or so above the shoreline near the end of Noriega Street, and separated by about 200 feet of sand. One V was the bow of the ship and the other V was the stern.

That was it. Everything else was up to the imaginations of passers-by.

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