One of Washington state’s most enigmatic landmarks has been identified as the result of a short-lived experiment on boats made of concrete more than a century ago.
The ‘concrete ship’ abandoned on a sandbar outside DuPont has baffled visitors to the area since the 1960s.
Split into two pieces after decades of being battered by the waters of the Nisqually Reach, the massive hulk still attracts curious tourists who can walk up to it at low tide.
But the 100-foot ship was launched as part of a bold attempt to build concrete “tanker ships” to transport fresh water along the United States coast in the years after World War I.
“The general conditions at the time, which led to the American concrete shipbuilding program, were a wartime shortage of ships, combined with a shortage of steel,” wrote bloggers Richard Lewis and Erlend Bonderud.
“We are under no illusions that we are extremely, compulsively and quite eccentrically obsessed with this topic.”
‘Cement ship’ abandoned on sandbar outside DuPont has baffled visitors to the area since the 1960s
But it began life in 1919 as part of a fleet of offshore concrete ‘tanker ships’ designed to transport fresh water along the US coast.
The ship was named Captain Barker and was one of five built by the Great Northern Concrete Shipbuilding Company in the spring of 1919.
They cost $80,000 each ($1.4 million in today’s money) and were designed to carry 52,000 gallons of fresh water each.
They could be built quickly, but their heavy construction meant they remained underwater and only two of them survived more than a year and the rest sank in storms.
“Portland sailors flashed ‘I told you so’ smiles today when they learned of the disasters that befell the Army tug Slocum and its escort of concrete barges off the Oregon coast,” the News-Pilot reported in January from 1920.
The stone ships were not properly built for sea travel and the coastal voyage should never have been made, ship captains commented.
The first experimental ships made of concrete were built in 1848 and the British Navy built and launched 64 immediately after the First World War.
The United States built 104 during World War II as it struggled to ramp up naval production after the attack on Pearl Harbor, seven of which remain afloat today.
The 491-ton Captain Barker was launched on March 3, 1919, but was quickly docked for repairs after her first sea trials revealed steering problems.
The fleet was also affected by the lack of internal deflectors that allowed sea water to slosh over the already unstable ships.
Captain Barker was towed by the Slocum from Vancouver to Astoria in January 1920 with Captain Enos Crawford in charge.
It went on sale in October when its manufacturer declared bankruptcy.
And it was more than 18 months before she found a buyer in the Rouse Towboat Company, which renamed her Foss 103 and used her as a sludge disposal barge.
Her ignominious career came to an end in the 1960s, when she was scuttled off the coast of Nisqually Reach, where she lies to this day.
Her only surviving sister ship, the Captain Bootes, had been sunk in the 1950s off Everett.
But the remains of both ships have spent half a century serving as valuable breakwaters, protecting their respective coastlines from tidal erosion, according to Chris Staudinger, co-founder of Pretty Gritty Tours.
Split into two pieces after decades of pounding in the waters of the Nisqually Reach, the massive hull still attracts curious tourists who can walk up to it at low tide.
“This was especially favorable for the action because it was concrete,” he told the News Tribune.
“They knew it was going to last longer.”
“While on our concrete boat research trip, we realized that the Internet is literally riddled with urban myths, half-truths, fantasy and fiction about concrete boats,” Lewis and Bonderud wrote on their blog thecretefleet.com.
‘We are always looking for the slightest clue as to where a concrete ship that we know was built is located today. “We have found literally hundreds of them.”