My picture of the entire breakwater -
My picture of the ex-navy ship Quartz which was nuked as part of the Bikini Atoll tests.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/46/46150.htm
Posted on 01/23/2017 11:57:29 AM PST by nickcarraway
The most famous concrete ship on the West Coast suffered yet another casualty of the explosive surf over the weekend thanks to brutal storms and record waves.
The stern of the SS Palo Alto was eaten by the ocean on Saturday off Seacliff State Beach, located east of Santa Cruz in Capitola, on Park Avenue off of Highway 1. While the ship is still there, it's now impossible to walk from the end of the pier to the tip of the ship.
"It's an icon," Aptos resident Chris White told NBC Bay Area on Monday. He grabbed his camera and took a photo of the "amazing" ship on Saturday. He was one of many photographers, including Gabriel DeVault , documented the continual destruction of the historic ship. Devault's drone video (above) shows the ocean waves spewing through the holes in the boat. Nicknamed “The Cement Ship,” the SS Palo Alto has been deteriorating for a while and has been used for years as an artificial reef for marine life. It used to be a fishing pier until it was closed about a decade ago. And the hulking ship is a favorite for beach photo backdrops.
But waves in that area on Saturday reached records heights of 34 feet, according to the National Weather Service, and they were too much for the former oil tanker built in 1919. The ship is still there. But as the Twitter account for Santa Cruz County stated: The Cement Ship “took quite a beating.”
According to the website concreteships.org, the SS Palo is the most famous concrete ship on the West Coast, and was built by the San Francisco Shipbuilding Company in Oakland.
The Palo Alto remained docked in San Francisco Bay for over 10 years until it was bought by the Seacliff Amusement Company of Nevada and towed to Seacliff State Beach in Santa Cruz County, according to the website. The ship was grounded in the bay and connected to the shore by a long pier. At one time, it was a party boat complete with arcade, dining room, dance hall and even a swimming pool. The Seacliff Amusement Company went out of business during the Great Depression.
James Delgado, a maritime archaeologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's who also used to fish off the end of the ship and camp alongside it on the beach as a kid, knows the the SS Palo Alto well.
He described it as a "local product of the government's program" to built a fleet of merchant vessels with different materials to offset losses to the German U-boats during World War II. He said there was a deep need to build ships as fast as possible, and so, U.S. ship builders used any materials they could: steel, wood and concrete.
The SS Palo Alto, he said, was one of the "emergency fleet" ships during and after the end of the war. Delgado remembered the hull was cracked about 1950, and it continued to break up, most significantly starting in 2005.
As add as it sounds, a ship made of concrete, the Museum of Unnatural Mystery says that ship builders took the idea of a Norwegian inventor to make a ship of concrete as long as the weight of the water it displaces is more than its own weight.
When the concrete is formed into the shape of a ship, much of the interior space contains empty air, which is less dense than water, the museum website notes. Since the total ship is a combination of air and concrete, the density for the whole ship becomes less than the water, allowing it to float.
The California State Parks said on its website that the ship is unsafe and closed to the public indefinitely, as is the pier for fishing until repairs can be made.
Never knew the name of the ship.
Stunning pics!
You might want to re-think the coating. The enthusiasts claim that concrete is one of the few materials that does not rapidly deteriorate from exposure to salt water.
The front fell off. Very funny YouTube video.
Yes, but once you get a crack in the cement and the saltwater gets to the steel inside you get rust jacking or spalling and then it only a matter of time until it all fall apart
My picture of the entire breakwater -
My picture of the ex-navy ship Quartz which was nuked as part of the Bikini Atoll tests.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/46/46150.htm
That is certainly a case for some form of sealant on the steel. By the way, I did not say or mean to imply that I was one of the enthusiasts.
I thought it was called Fort Drum?
Wow.
Lot of childhood memories fishing off that thing...grew up in Santa Cruz. When they fenced it off we’d sneak over the fence at night and drop a line in.
Same here.
I guess it worked out okay. After he used it for some years he donated it to the local university and they do oceanography with it! (Or - that's what they say, but maybe it is really for the University president's shin-digs).
Ft. Drum, in the entrance to Manila Bay was built on top of El Fraile Island.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Drum_(Philippines)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi7I324GpCA
There are a number of concrete ships forming a breakwater at Kiptopeake, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. They originally were placed there for the ferry terminal, which closed after the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel opened in 1964. It’s now a state park.
Remember seeing the concrete ship off Cape May, NJ:
http://www.concreteships.org/ships/ww1/atlantus/
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