The M.S. Sierra — Forty years in the mud

Forty years ago this week, Grays Harbor was dealing with an exceptionally strong winter storm. For days, tides had stacked one atop the other and powerful winds kept the water in the bay. Pounding rains saturated the soil and added to the general misery.

In east Grays Harbor county, mudslides took out one lane of Highway 109 west of Montesano, and five feet of muck covered a 50-foot stretch of the railroad tracks west of Elma. Streets in downtown Aberdeen were flooded, leaving intrepid Christmas shoppers with damp feet, but that was nothing new. At the Wishkah Mall — the first such shopping facility in the area at that time — Christmas shoppers were busily purchasing gifts, merrily oblivious to a drama brewing on the Chehalis River just yards away.

For the origins of the story we must first go back to August 1916 when Matthews Shipyard in Hoquiam launched the wood-hulled, 225-foot, twin-screw motor ship Sierra built for Aberdeen’s E.K. Wood Mill and the first diesel powered ship built for use in the West Coast lumber trade. The Sierra was used to ferry lumber between Hoquiam and Bellingham. In one month in 1920, she carried a shipment of 1.2 million board feet of lumber out of Bellingham.

Over the next seven years she proved herself to be a reliable workhorse, moving lumber all along the West Coast and as far south as Valparaiso, Chile, with only one close call. In the early morning hours of Feb. 7, 1923, the Sierra was on an uneventful trip, laden with a full load of lumber. At 4:15 that morning, 20 miles off the coast of California, the passenger liner Wilhelmina loomed out of the darkness and fog. Steaming toward San Francisco carrying 100 passengers and a large cargo of sugar from Honolulu, the Wilhelmina, one of the largest passenger ships plying the waters between San Francisco and the Hawaiian Islands at the time, had been specially built to carry pineapples and sugar, with ample space for passengers.

The captain of the Wilhelmina was on the bridge when he spotted the smaller lumber schooner crossing his path. In an attempt to avoid the impending collision, the engines were ordered full-astern which likely saved the Sierra from being sliced in two by the much-larger ocean liner.

When the two vessels struck, the Sierra was left dead in the water and listing heavily. The crew was taken aboard the liner which suffered little more than a dented bow. Meanwhile, the hold of the Sierra filled with water and she gradually righted herself, remaining buoyant thanks to the full load of lumber she was carrying. The tug Fearless took the Sierra under tow and made a slow journey to San Francisco where she underwent $150,000 in repairs.

In 1926, the Sierra caught fire at Berth 77 in the Port of Los Angeles. It was the first fire fought by the fireboat Los Angeles City No. 2. She was sold in 1927 and equipped with refrigeration equipment to carry reindeer meat from Alaska for the Arctic Transport Company. During World War II, the U.S. Army operated the Sierra as a training ship, and after the war, the ship was assigned to the Maritime Commission reserve fleet at Olympia, then later sold and transferred to Lake Union.

The early 1960s found the Sierra deteriorating on the tidal flats of Lake Union, and the new owner began restoring it to its original, lumber-carrying configuration. Ten years later, a Seattle architect named Mart Liikane purchased the ship and continued restoration of one of the only two motorized lumber schooners remaining on the West Coast. Hoping to find more support for his efforts than he was getting in Seattle, he had the ship moved to Aberdeen in 1975 and moored at a decaying dock behind the Wishkah Mall, then under construction. Liikane soon found that while the public appreciated his intentions of making it a floating restaurant and seafaring museum, the City of Aberdeen and the Port of Grays Harbor were far from enthused. Both entities petitioned for its removal citing a potential risk to navigation and a drawn out court saga began with the owners of the mall joining in to have the hulk removed. In an effort to highlight the vessel’s history, the Sierra was added to the Washington State Historical Register in 1978. In 1979, Liikane’s appeal to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a permit was denied and the ship was ordered removed. Failing to comply with the order, Liikane appealed and a hearing was set for February 1980.

The Sierra creaked and groaned at her wharf on December 18, 1979, awaiting to learn her fate in courts, but days of foul weather had proved too much for her. At about noon on that fateful day, the Sierra parted her moorings and like a ghost ship sailed down the river, passing under the Chehalis Bridge before getting stuck sideways in the open Northern Pacific railroad bridge, essentially stranding two cargo ships loading at the Weyerhaeuser dock and closing all navigation on the Chehalis for the foreseeable future.

The next day, three Allman-Hubble tugboats with full crews pushed and pulled at the wreck, but were stymied as the stern was firmly jammed in the murky water under the bridge. With the railroad bridge out of commission, trains were rerouted to serve customers in South Aberdeen. Things were looking bleak. On the morning of the 20th, four Allman-Hubble tugs were assigned to the project along with a barge crane. By this time only the cabin and a small section of the bow of the waterlogged vessel were visible above the waterline. In gray, drizzly weather, workers secured lines to the hulk and, after two hours of persistent pulling and maneuvering, the Sierra was pulled free of the railroad bridge by the tug James T. Quigg. Once clear of the bridge, the ship was taken up stream, turned around with the help of two other tugs, and escorted south through the Union Pacific bridge and beached on Port of Grays Harbor intertidal property in South Aberdeen west of the Saginaw Mill. The railroad bridge suffered $70,000 in damage but was back in service by the next day. In the summer of 1982 some trespasser thought it smart to set fire to the wreck, burning off the cabin and leaving the hulk we see today. A rather ignominious end to a vessel that served admirably during her years as a coastal lumber carrier.

Roy Vataja is the son of Finnish immigrants and recalls the saga of the Sierra vividly. It added some excitement to the monotony of a fifteen-year-old living in little Aberdeen.