Commentary: Reader Report: In 1978, the ‘Great White Steamer’ got stuck in Newport Harbor. But its real fate lay elsewhere

It was a cool, sunny morning nearly 40 years ago as hundreds of onlookers lined the entrance to Newport Harbor to witness the heralded arrival of the world famous “Great White Steamer.”

The 302-foot SS Catalina, which had carried an estimated 25 million tourists between Los Angeles and Catalina Island since its maiden voyage in 1924 and retirement in 1975, held no passengers that day, April 25, 1978.

Towed by two tugboats from Wilmington, its home port, the 2,390-ton steamship was heading to the Balboa Bay Club, now the Balboa Bay Resort, to serve as the centerpiece for the fifth annual Newport Boat Show which was to open the following day at the Lido Village Marina.

Once tied to the Bay Club dock, the Catalina was scheduled to host a lunch, cocktail party and dinner for boat show exhibitors and their potential customers. Later that evening, it was to be moved to the show venue for public tours.

This was the first time that the 2,300-passenger ship had come to Newport, and it was the second-largest vessel ever to enter Newport Harbor. The largest was the SS Muskogee, which was two feet longer.

A U.S. Navy patrol frigate, the Muskogee, had sailed into the harbor in 1944 to serve as a recruiting tool during World War II.

As for the Catalina’s slow voyage up-channel that spring day in 1978, “something that we certainly hadn’t planned for occurred when the ship passed Bayshores and was preparing to dock at the Bay Club,” according to Duncan McIntosh Jr., the show’s promoter who had chartered the Catalina for the show.

“It got stuck in the mud in mid-channel about noon as it came abreast of the club,” said McIntosh, who continues to produce the yearly boat show and also owns several maritime publications and Editor & Publisher Magazine.

“What went wrong to cause the grounding? Well, a lot went wrong,” he said. “The Catalina’s trip from Wilmington was delayed for some reason I can’t remember and, thus, the old ship arrived too late to take advantage of the high tide. So it got stuck in the mud.”

And to add insult to injury, as the tugboats strained to push and pull the ship out of the muck, the wire cable attached to the Catalina’s bow and the stern of the tow tugboat snapped and knocked off part of the tug’s mast, McIntosh said.

“So there we sat mired in the middle of the channel,” he said. “The Catalina never did make it to the Bay Club.”

It wasn’t long before a helicopter-borne camera crew from Los Angeles television stations flew to Newport Beach to report the grounding, said McIntosh, who, as a youth, had spent years with his family living on Catalina Island, where he dived for coins tossed overboard by SS Catalina passengers when the steamship was tying up to its berth in Avalon Harbor.

Newspaper and news-service reporters also rushed to the scene, and the Daily Pilot published a page-one, four-column photo of the stranded ship under a headline that read, “Catalina Stuck After Grand Entrance.”

Doomsayers stationed themselves at the bar of the Balboa Bay Club and waited for their predictions to come true. But the high tide finally rose about 8 p.m. and the Catalina floated off the sand and arrived at Lido Marina Village about 9 p.m.

To rescue the steamer, a third tugboat helped the other two tugs slide the Catalina out of the mud and push and pull it to the boat show headquarters at Lido Marina Village, where it remained as the prime attraction until the show closed, McIntosh said.

When the Catalina was finally freed from the mud, the Pilot wrote, “They said it couldn’t be done, and they were wrong. The boat that almost didn’t make it to the boat show finally arrived.”

As for the fate of the SS Catalina, which was built for $1 million by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, who also owned most of Catalina Island, its days as the Great White Steamship had ended in 1975 when, because of old age, obsolescence, escalating labor disputes and the advent of smaller and faster ships, it made its 9,807th and final 26-mile L.A.-Catalina Island crossing and was pulled forever from commercial service.

Following lengthy ownership disputes, the steamer began a nomadic life, shuffling between Wilmington, San Pedro, Santa Monica Bay, Long Beach and San Diego until its owner had it towed to Ensenada in 1985 where he hoped to have it converted into a floating nightclub, restaurant, hotel or casino.

But none of these plans materialized, and the rusting and unkempt ship, which had been abandoned to the elements and beset by vandals and thieves who made off with most of its original artifacts, broke loose from its moorings in Ensenada Harbor just before Christmas Day 1997.

Unoccupied by guards or qualified seamen, the SS Catalina hit a sandbar on the harbor’s southeast shore, water poured into its propeller shafts and lower decks, it began to list and soon half-sank into the mud, with its upper decks, pilot house and smokestack exposed.

Despite efforts by volunteer groups to raise and restore the ship, the necessary funds were not forthcoming. The Mexican government in 2009 ordered the 85-year-old steamship dismantled and scrapped to make way for a new marina and container terminal.

The only remaining traces of the SS Catalina, which had carried three U.S. presidents, countless movie stars, scout troops and families between the mainland and Catalina Island and had transported 850,000 U.S. Army troops between San Francisco Bay-area ports for three years during WWII, consist of a small model of the ship displayed at San Pedro’s Maritime Museum, photographs of the vessel on display at the Catalina Island Museum and a few assorted artifacts that David Engholm, one of the heroic volunteers who tried to save the ship, maintains at his home in Coos Bay, Ore.

DAVID C. HENLEY is a Newport Beach resident and a contributor to Times Community News.