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Remember the Shamrock?

Butch

poseur
Staff member
Super Moderator
Joined
Apr 5, 2002
Location
San Jose, bottom of dirty 130
Moto(s)
‘18 Alta EX006, ‘17 Alta MX019, 06R6, 05TM530 Black Dream, 01TM250 2T, ‘24 Yam Tenere 700
Name
Butch
BARF perks
AMA #: 1093637
On the beach, Santa Cruz 1972

On Oct. 7, 1972, another ship was stranded, this time right in front of the Boardwalk. The 125-foot Shamrock IV, an elegant two-masted schooner, was anchored near the wharf while the crew and captain left to get some parts to repair the engine. While they were gone, strong winds came up very quickly and pushed the boat towards the beach. She was soon resting on the bottom, with her 30-ton keel buried in 9 feet of sand. The boat was owned by a Dr. and Mrs. Jeremiah Wolohan of San Francisco and had a crew of 28.

Initial attempts by a Coast Guard cutter to pull the 100-ton Shamrock IV off the beach were unsuccessful. The wooden schooner soon ended up broadside on the beach and was being impacted by every breaking wave. Cracks began to appear in the hull from the continuous pounding by waves at high tides and then seawater started to flood the interior.

Her owner decided she couldn’t be saved and soon sold the salvage rights to the vessel for $5,000. The Shamrock became a local curiosity over the subsequent weeks with locals and the press coming to the beach, morning, noon and night, to watch the salvage operation, all anticipating that she could be extricated from the sand.

Salvage efforts went on for nearly a month, with two boats tugging from offshore and two bulldozers working from the beach, typically with dozens of spectators. I vividly recall watching from the beach one day around noon, with the action heating up at high tide. A heavy steel cable had been attached to the bow of the boat with the other end tied to a large bulldozer about 150 feet up the beach that was being used as a deadweight. The second bulldozer was pushing against the taut cable with its blade when each wave broke, with the cable looking exactly like a tightly drawn bowstring.

The bulldozer operator seemed to be enjoying the audience he had on the beach and wasn’t watching the cable closely. As he was pushing on the cable with his head turned toward the crowd assembled on the beach, the dozer blade was tilted a bit, and the very tight cable, under a whole lot of pressure, slid up over the top of the blade. Just like the release of a tight bow string, the cable flew backward, passing barely over the head of the driver. We all missed a near disaster.

But on Nov. 3, after 26 days of pushing and pulling, the 100-ton schooner was finally broken loose from its sandy grave and was pulled off the beach. Despite the cracks in the hull and all of the stress the boat had been through during the efforts to free her from the sand, the salvage crew felt the Shamrock IV was seaworthy enough to be towed to San Francisco for repairs. She was about 4 miles off Ocean Beach just south of the Golden Gate, when the three pumps that were laboring to remove water from the cracked hull began to fail, and combined with 12-foot seas, the Shamrock IV sadly sunk in 30 feet of water.

Gary Griggs is a Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. He can be reached at griggs@ucsc.edu. For past Ocean Backyard columns, visit http://seymourcenter.ucsc.edu/about-us/news/our-ocean-backyard-archive/.
 
sunken schooners suck

 
Before my time by a few years, but that sounds crazy.
I was quite the youngster, but I remember it well. Or I have memories that may or may not be accurate. It seemed pretty cool at the time.
 
Good old Parker Diving, invoices toothpaste as Hazardous waste 😂

We raised a big squid boat for the Alioto's about 25 years ago. Also pulled a J-46 off the beech. Those cables are deadly, thank goodness now for Kevlar and Dynema.
 
I was hoping this would inspire some stories from Thumper…
 
It’s time to start scanning some photos. Neither one of us will ever be recovered from the trauma of Katrina.
 
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