the end of a long line of ships

[c.captain]

The last operating WWII US built, flagged and operating cargo vessel still carring cargo is no more. The MV SPIRIT OF GRACE (ex PEMBINA, KATHLEEN PEACY, RESOLUTE, PEMBINA) has been scrapped at Brownsville.

Her last years were spent carrying humanitarian cargoes for MercyShips of Lake Charles but up until 1994 was sailing on charter to MSC carrying breakbulk ammunition between US bases in the Pacific.

Old, tied, dirty and uncomfortable, she still had personality and character which new ships lack and in the end sailing as cheif mate and later master on her at the end of her commercial career was something I look back on with fond memories.



The good news is that there are the five museum merchant ships left from the war one can visit and get a direct sense of what it was like to sail on them but to actually be at sea or handling 1000# bombs in West Loch Pearl Harbor was the real deal.

Anyone else here ever have the chance to have sailed on her once upon a time!

[studbuzzar]

I have recently had the good fortune to visit the American Victory ship over in Tampa Bay to train for my Lifeboatmans course. It was awesome to walk around and through. I met a couple guys who actually worked on the Victory ship back in the day. They were doing repairs on the vessels as it still runs out to the sea bouy once or twice a year. Their stories were the highlight of the trip. The walk back in time was very enjoyable. They even had a neat display about pirate history on board.


http://www.americanvictory.org/default.asp


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4nV6wqrRUk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw8LTYFI3UA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DhRRAB_Ryg

Here is one that is just beautiful to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I1vdu_6Rn4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKEOcbP97_o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sexpP0decXM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH70EUeM8Jk

[Jacob]

Hi there. I had the privilege to do a fair bit of work on the Spirit of Grace between 2005-2008 as I worked with Friendships Unlimited as an AB and later Bosun of one of their other vessels, the F/V Mersea. Spirit of Grace is a beautiful ship and I wish she could be saved as a working museum ship. She is every bit as cool (and very similar) to vessels I have toured such as the USS Jeremiah O'Brien and the USS Lane Victory, with the exception that she is actually Diesel, which was rare for a large ship in those days! Though I did not get to sail on the Grace, I would have liked to. Many of my friends took her to Israel and back in 2006/2007. That would have been cool on such a neat old ship. Before Friendships Unlimited sold her, a couple different nights we went down into hold 1 and set up a big screen and watched some of the movies she starred in... Amongst others she was the Russian ammo ship in the Schwarzenegger movie "Eraser" and some surfer movie titled "In God's hands". There were more too, though I can't remember them right now. She was also apparently the vessel that carried the arms involved in the Iran Contra affair, as the M/V Kathleen Pearcy, and honorably served the US in WWII as the USS Pembina, the Korean War, as the USNS Pembina, and in the Vietnam war as the USAT Resolute. She has more history than any Vessel I know of, so it would really be the least we could do to turn her into a museum. She's done so much... Coolest of all of course is the thousands or millions of tons of relief supplies she has brought to the worlds hurting and needy as the M/V (F/V, actually) Spirit of Grace.

[wildscot]

"My dad was the Chief Engineer on the Kathleen Pearcy (aka Pembina) for several years in the late '80s/early '90s. Her cargo was mostly military weapons. I got to sail on her on short voyages in the San Francisco Bay (e.g., Concord Naval Weapons Base to Alameda) and my husband sailed aboard her also as an oiler. When the Kathleen Pearcy was sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge and out to sea, my mom, my kids and I would go to the Marin Headlands and watch her sail out into the ocean. We could see crew members waiving at us (and we were jumping around making as much of a spectacle as we could). We would watch until the ship was just a tiny dot disappearing into the mist. The kids loved playing on her when the ship was docked in the Bay Area.

When I was a child, I sailed on freighters with my dad who was a Chief Engineer in the British Merchant Marine (We are Scottish, now American citizens). Officers in the British Merchant Marine got to take their spouses and kids with them, so we sailed on several ships for months at a time, and once even for a year. One of the voyages that I remember well was when we were in a violent storm in the Bristol Channel aboard the M.V. Ankobra River, a Black Star Lines cargo ship. It was a small ship, dwarved by huge tankers and carriers, and it was not new, to say the least. The engine crew was constantly facing challenges to diagnose and fix broken systems. In the middle of the night we struck a reef and took a hole in the hull. We shouldn’t have been anywhere near the reef – the crewman who was supposed to be on night watch got drunk and left his post. The hole was bad enough, but it was a far more perilous situation because the storm had grown in velocity and we were being relentlessly pounded by huge wave after huge wave. We were beam on to the swell and were unable to turn the keel to face the swell. We started to seriously list, more and more with each hit, recovering less and less to an upright position. We were sinking and taking water, and highly unstable because of the hole. The bilge pumps were failing. We suffering a huge pounding -- sometimes even airborne, sometimes submerged in the raging sea. My brother and I were told to lie down under the bolted down coffee table in my parents’ cabin and hang on to avoid being hit by flying objects. I can still clearly remember what it was like, gripping the coffee table legs as hard as I could while everything that wasn’t bolted down was flying around us – stereo components, furniture, soda pop bottles, etc. Luckily we got hit by only smaller objects, but my brother had a badly injured hand, as the door had slammed on his hand during a savage roll of the ship when he was entering my parents’ cabin. There was no time for crying, we had to focus on hanging on and dodging flying objects. I could hear men running (as best they could) down the hallways, frantically yelling (questions, commands, etc.) and the sounds of banging and hammering, as the crew tried desperately to stop the ship from sinking. My dad calculated (on his slide rule) how to balance the hull by either emptying or partially emptying a hull ballast tank (or tanks) in order to compensate for the hole and re-balance the ship -- and at the last minute, before we fully sunk, we managed to turn to the swell and weather the storm. I’m not sure exactly what happened to that crewman who left his post, but I remember being told he was in “a lot of trouble.” My dad (Larry Scott) is now 80 years old, but for several years now has been one of the volunteer chief engineers on the U.S. Navy flagship the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien, docked at San Francisco Pier 45. She is the only existing U.S Coast Guard certified Seaworthy World War II Liberty Ship. She is part of the regatta during Fleet Week and runs cruises that anyone can take throughout the year. The crew is manned entirely by genuine old salts, and anyone can go aboard for $5 and get full-on personal tours of the whole ship including the bridge and engine room. They’ll even light off the boilers for you."

The last operating WWII US built, flagged and operating cargo vessel still carring cargo is no more. The MV SPIRIT OF GRACE (ex PEMBINA, KATHLEEN PEACY, RESOLUTE, PEMBINA) has been scrapped at Brownsville.

Her last years were spent carrying humanitarian cargoes for MercyShips of Lake Charles but up until 1994 was sailing on charter to MSC carrying breakbulk ammunition between US bases in the Pacific.

Old, tied, dirty and uncomfortable, she still had personality and character which new ships lack and in the end sailing as cheif mate and later master on her at the end of her commercial career was something I look back on with fond memories.



The good news is that there are the five museum merchant ships left from the war one can visit and get a direct sense of what it was like to sail on them but to actually be at sea or handling 1000# bombs in West Loch Pearl Harbor was the real deal.

Anyone else here ever have the chance to have sailed on her once upon a time!

[c.captain]

Nice to see this thread return to life...it's too bad the PEMBINA can't come back but thank you wildscot for the stories.

That old ship was a tired, rusty, greasy bucket of a vessel, but she had personality and one hell of a story to tell. I even wrote a history of the ship with the intent to send it to Professional Mariner for hoped for publication but never did. I found that history just recently in a box of papers. Reading it again 17 years later brought back a bunch of memories.

Ironically, someone actually has this photo of the ship for sale right now on eBay.




Gotta love them booms! Ships today just do not have a salty look to them like any old stickship did. I truly felt she was the end of the line for all of her kind just like the passing of the windjammers once had been and almost as brutal (ok, not really...but damned how much work it was to put up all that gear with wire lube on everything and everybody!)

ps...was your dad on her after she reverted back to her original name PEMBINA after Pearcy Marine went backrupt?

[jdcavo]

Spome other pics: http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/...+Grace&x=9&y=3

[c.captain]

Thanks JD...

You know, I never did find out why Friendships sent her to scrap. She had been operating as an uninspected vessel under a special arrangement with the USCG but I suppose that could not have lasted forever or perhaps no port state would accept a ship of her size calling at one of their ports without valid SOLAS safety construction and safety equipment certificates. I do know that she had been quite rusty and there was much wastage of decks, hatchcomings and saltwater piping when I was on her in the early mid 90's. Unless Friendships did a bunch of steel renewals (which I doubt) her hull was probably paper thin in many areas before she got cut up. Oh well, so it goes for old ships as it does for old men...we all have our day and then we fade away.

[wildscot]

Nice to see this thread return to life...it's too bad the PEMBINA can't come back but thank you wildscot for the stories.

That old ship was a tired, rusty, greasy bucket of a vessel, but she had personality and one hell of a story to tell. I even wrote a history of the ship with the intent to send it to Professional Mariner for hoped for publication but never did. I found that history just recently in a box of papers. Reading it again 17 years later brought back a bunch of memories.

Ironically, someone actually has this photo of the ship for sale right now on eBay.




Gotta love them booms! Ships today just do not have a salty look to them like any old stickship did. I truly felt she was the end of the line for all of her kind just like the passing of the windjammers once had been and almost as brutal (ok, not really...but damned how much work it was to put up all that gear with wire lube on everything and everybody!)

ps...was your dad on her after she reverted back to her original name PEMBINA after Pearcy Marine went backrupt?

Yes, she certainly did have personality -- and my dad just loved her. I had sailed on similar vessels when I was younger (e.g., The Ankobra River, the one we almost sunk in the Bristol Channel), and I felt at home aboard the Kathleen Pearcy. My kids and I (and my mom too) spent a whole lot of time aboard the Kathleen Pearcy/Pembina when she was docked in the Bay or sailing in voyages within the Bay. I remember when she went back to being called the Pembina, and my dad sail on her for some time then. After that, my dad was on aircraft carriers and other military ships before he retired (well, not completely, since he's one of the chief engineers on the Jeremiah O'Brien). You might be interested to know that I have a VHS tape recording that my dad and husband took on a voyage they made from SF to Thailand aboard the Kathleen Pearcy. That would have been around 1989. There are a whole lot of good shots of the ship. I should probably get that put on a DVD, now that I think of it.

[wildscot]

By the way, thanks for the links to pics -- brings back memories. I'm pretty sure my dad knows more about exactly what happened with the Kathleen Pearcy. My dad and an old Greek sea captain who was a good friend of his were considering BUYING the Kathleen Pearcy -- early nineties, I believe. I'll ask him about it.

The last operating WWII US built, flagged and operating cargo vessel still carring cargo is no more. The MV SPIRIT OF GRACE (ex PEMBINA, KATHLEEN PEACY, RESOLUTE, PEMBINA) has been scrapped at Brownsville.

Her last years were spent carrying humanitarian cargoes for MercyShips of Lake Charles but up until 1994 was sailing on charter to MSC carrying breakbulk ammunition between US bases in the Pacific.

Old, tied, dirty and uncomfortable, she still had personality and character which new ships lack and in the end sailing as cheif mate and later master on her at the end of her commercial career was something I look back on with fond memories.



The good news is that there are the five museum merchant ships left from the war one can visit and get a direct sense of what it was like to sail on them but to actually be at sea or handling 1000# bombs in West Loch Pearl Harbor was the real deal.

Anyone else here ever have the chance to have sailed on her once upon a time!