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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 2022
Natalie St. John/Chinook Observer
The R/V Hero sank near Willapa Bay.
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, AUG. 27, 2022 • B1
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Ghost ships
The troubled tales of wrecked and derelict vessels
By RON BALDWIN
For The Astorian
H
istory is strewn with accounts
of those who have squandered
their labor, fortune, and yes,
even their lives to the dream of
owning a beautiful boat. Sometimes,
that dream has a way of becoming a
nightmare.
Many of those with high hopes have
underestimated the time, labor, and
fi nancial resources required to main-
tain those boats, especially historic
vessels.
I discovered just such a craft on a
dank, foggy night, moored on the south
fork of the Palix River as it enters Wil-
lapa Bay near Bay Center, Washington.
That vessel turned out to be the R/V
Hero, a 125-foot research and supply
ship that was once a fl oating laboratory
for the Palmer Research Station at the
edge of Antarctica.
The Hero’s mission demanded a
heavy-framed ship that could break ice
and operate in the severe condition of
the continent’s inshore waters. At 125
feet in length and 30 feet in width, Hero
fi lled the bill. “She was hell for stout,”
a former crew member commented.
Rigged as a motor ketch, the ship
could run silent for sensitive research
missions. The Hero served from 1968
to 1984 and was sold at auction for a
mere $5,000 in 1985. From there, its
story twists with more dreams and
aspirations.
Two harbors on the Oregon Coast,
fi rst Reedsport, then Newport, saw
eff orts to use the Hero as a tourist
attraction. Both ended in the ship fl oat-
ing at the dock, rusting and rotting
away. Another owner operated the ship
for a time as a tourist attraction, but he
too disappeared. The craft was soon
abandoned in Yaquina Bay, a ghost
ship without a home.
After some legal dust settled, the
Hero became the property of yet
another dreaming owner, a resident
of Bay Center, Washington, and was
towed to its fi nal berth on the south
fork of the Palix River in 2003. Even
then, local oyster growers were wary
of the risks the ship posed to the oyster
industry in Willapa Bay.
Plans for the future of the vessel
were murky at best, and the Hero con-
tinued to languish at the dock. As years
passed, the ship’s story was repeated,
and it sat still as the channel gradually
fi lled in.
Then, in 2017, the unthinkable hap-
Lissa Brewer/The Astorian
ABOVE: The Tourist No. 2 sits in the Columbia River after capsizing in late July.
BELOW: The sunken Hero poses a mess for crews.
Ron Baldwin
pened: The Hero sank at its mooring.
Multiple agencies were on-site quickly,
notifying the U.S. Coast Guard of the
sinking.
At fi rst, the Coast Guard and the
Washington Department of Ecology
discounted the ship’s pollution risk,
but a salvage company soon moved
to the site, pumping the ship out and
removing fuel and lubricants.
Still, the vessel remained on the
bottom for the next fi ve years, as own-
ership confl icts stalled cleanup eff orts.
In late July of this year, the Washing-
ton Department of Natural Resources,
which ultimately became responsi-
ble for the wreck, directed crews from
Ballard Marine Construction to begin
a removal eff ort under their Dere-
lict Vessel Removal Program. A barge
began a removal process that will see
pieces shipped to a waste site.
The Hero story is not an unusual
one. Every maritime state has problems
with derelict vessels, and the North-
west region certainly has its share.
Though both Oregon and Washing-
ton states have publicly-funded pro-
grams for abandoned and derelict ves-
sels, the astounding costs of one project
often take an entire year’s budget.
“She’s down,” read a text from a
colleague weeks ago. “The Tourist No.
2 went down!” I could only hear the
collective chorus of my fellow marine
enthusiasts.
The echoes of other failed recovery
projects for large historic vessels that
I have followed over the years echoed
along: “it’ll make a great tourist attrac-
tion” and “we don’t own it,” to name a
few. With few exceptions, a restoration
project for a historic vessel, especially
a wooden ship, is doomed to failure
without extensive funding.
Even with signifi cant fundrais-
ing, maintenance and operation costs
are astonishing. Ultimately, the pub-
lic often ends up funding cleanup
eff orts, as in the case of the Hero. The
$2.5 million removal project used up
practically all of Washington’s two-
year removal budget. Tourist No. 2 is
already coming in at over $1 million.
With more old, wooden-hulled
vessels disappearing, dreamers have
shifted their sights to iron, fi berglass,
aluminum and even cement vessels,
each continuing on with the life cycle
of a ship, some bound to drift toward
trouble.
Ron Baldwin is a musician, photog-
rapher and writer living in Chinook,
Washington.