On the evening of August 2, 1910, the Rolph embarked from San Francisco with a cargo of general freight, lime, hay, and 14000board feet of lumber for sugar plantations in Hana, Hawaii on the island of Maui when the ship was swept by currents in San Francisco Bay in heavy fog. At 10 in the evening, the ship, blinded by the fog, sailed close to the shore, crashing into rocks at Point San Pedro in Pacifica, grounding 50 feet from the shoreline. The Rolph was grounded at the same spot where the four-masted bark Drumburton had been lost previously in 1904. The Rolph's crew managed to reach shore safely without any injuries or loss of life, yet the vessel could not be pulled off the rocks. Tugboats attempted to haul the Rolph free but to no avail.
The Rolph was later stripped of usable fittings by salvage crews and abandoned.