Coast Guard Plans to Hitch a Legal Anchor to Wandering SS Catalina

The U.S. Coast Guard is seeking a legal remedy to the problems of the restless 310-foot SS Catalina, the Great White Steamer, which has strayed from its moorings in Los Angeles Harbor twice within two months.

Lt. Cmdr. Michael Barrier, assistant legal officer of the 11th Coast Guard District, said Thursday the U.S. attorney’s office is expected to bring suit in Admiralty Court for salvage claims to meet costs incurred by the Coast Guard because of what he called owner negligence.

“They’ve failed to do anything they should do as an owner of a vessel in the port here,” Barrier said.

While Barrier considered legal steps, the Coast Guard prepared to have the former Santa Catalina Island ferry boat towed back to its mooring buoy, just west of the Long Beach Naval Station, sometime this afternoon.

Tanker Threatened

The SS Catalina slipped free late Wednesday afternoon, drifted toward the motor vessel Panamax Venus and threatened the tanker Exxon Washington before being taken into tow by the San Diegan, a tugboat that just happened to be in the area.

The tug shepherded its aging charge to the Coast Guard base at Terminal Island, where it was moored, and the ship’s owner, Beverly Hills developer Hymie Singer, and Gene Webber, president of the SS Catalina Steamship Co. Inc., were notified.

After taking a long-term lease on the ship in 1983, Webber announced plans to resume service on the 2,200-passenger vessel, which ferried 25 million passengers to Santa Catalina Island from 1924 to 1975. But that has never materialized.

Neither Singer nor Webber could be reached for comment Thursday on the possible legal action or the latest incident involving the steamship. In December, the vessel somehow slipped its moorings and ran aground on a man-made peninsula at the Long Beach Naval Station.

Recalling that earlier incident Thursday, Barrier said that the Coast Guard had the ship towed to the Coast Guard dock, informed Singer and Webber and gave them a deadline to remove the vessel.

The deadline came and went, he said, and the Coast Guard arranged for a contractor to tow the Catalina back to its moorage, but Singer and Webber “did nothing,” he said. “They didn’t pay any of the expenses,” he added.

And, when he told them by telegram and telephone after Wednesday’s incident, Barrier said, he got a “very negative” reaction.

“Both wanted to blame the other or wash their hands of it,” the commander said.

Investigators examined the Catalina’s moorings Thursday, but a Coast Guard spokesman said it was not immediately apparent why the vessel broke from its buoy.