Berthing Pains : Merchant Seamen’s Floating Memorial Unwelcome at Port

The merchant ship Lane Victory, a hulking, 455-foot-long, 7,000-ton vessel that had been mothballed near San Francisco for two decades, has made its grand entrance at the Port of Los Angeles, where it is tied up at Berth 55 and is creating quite a stir.

The Los Angeles Harbor Department doesn’t want it there.

But that hasn’t stopped a feisty bunch of crusty old seamen who are trying to convert the former cargo ship into a museum that would honor their comrades who died at sea. Last week, the group, members of the U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans World War II, defied port officials and arranged for their ship to be towed to Los Angeles Harbor, knowing they had no place to berth it.

“They were towed down from San Francisco, essentially without a place to go,” Harbor Department spokeswoman Julia Nagano said. “They had no prior authorization.”

Confronted with the possibility of having a homeless, non-functional ship in port, the Harbor Department--aware of the public relations blunder it might create by turning the veterans away--told the seamen that they could use the temporarily vacant Berth 55 for a week.

The week was up Monday.

But the ship is still there.

And the veterans, claiming port officials are money-hungry and unwilling to make room for them, staged a press conference on board the Lane Victory on Tuesday to call attention to their campaign.

“We’re going to stay right here,” declared 76-year-old Joseph B. Vernick of North Hollywood, the president of the group. “We have no place to go. We’re orphans.”

Replied Nagano: “It is unfortunate that the port is being accused of being insensitive to this project. We’re sympathetic to their needs and we are concerned, but we do need to maintain the efficient operation of the port.”

The standoff between the Harbor Department and the veterans was resolved, temporarily at least, when the department told the seamen that they could have until this coming Monday to move. As of Wednesday afternoon, the seamen were still on board the Lane Victory and Vernick was working the phones, trying to drum up political support and arrange for a negotiating session with harbor officials, in an attempt to buy the ship even more time.

Such tactics are nothing new to the Long Beach-based U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans World War II, a nationwide group of nearly 7,000 merchant seamen. This week’s dispute with the Harbor Department is just the latest twist in a battle that the tenacious merchant seamen have been waging for years from a cramped office on the fifth floor of the U.S. Post Office building in Long Beach.

In 1982, the veterans began trying to persuade the federal government to give them a ship that they could convert into a floating memorial. Last year, after U.S. Rep. Glenn Anderson (D-San Pedro) took up their cause, Congress finally agreed. What the seamen got was the 44-year-old Lane Victory, built at Los Angeles Harbor and used to ferry supplies and ammunition to U.S. troops during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

The ship’s interior is remarkably intact. The bunks are still made up with blue blankets and white pillowcases, and the file cabinets are full of interesting finds--including a nearly complete set of invasion plans, marked “top secret,” for Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the Japanese Islands, and 20-year-old letters of reprimand in which AWOL merchant seamen had their pay docked at the rate of $22 a day.

“This here is a treasure trove,” said Fred Ripley, a volunteer with the Los Angeles Maritime Museum who has been working with the merchant seamen.

And so what if its hull is a little bit rusty and its engine doesn’t work? “Cosmetics, that’s all cosmetics,” Vernick insists. “It’s a cream puff.”

While that may be overstating things, Vernick and his fellow seamen--most of them retired--believe that they will have no trouble refurbishing the ship themselves. They want to open the Lane Victory to tourists within a year, in much the same fashion as their counterparts in Baltimore and Northern California have done with other merchant marine ships, such as the Jeremiah O’Brien, which is berthed at Ft. Mason, near San Francisco.

But first, Vernick’s group must find a berth. That’s where the Los Angeles Harbor Department comes in.

The seamen have demanded that harbor officials give them Berth 87 at the Port of Los Angeles as a permanent home for their ship. That berth, in San Pedro, is near the Los Angeles Maritime Museum and a statue that honors merchant marine veterans, as well as other tourist attractions, such as the port’s World Cruise Center and Ports O’Call Village.

To the seamen, Berth 87 is the perfect--indeed, the only--site for the memorial, which Vernick said will be “dedicated to the thousands of merchant mariners that perished fighting for freedom to make this harbor what it is today.”

Port officials, however, are trying to lease Berth 87, which is now unoccupied but houses a cargo container terminal. The terminal brings about $2 million a year in revenue to the port, according to Mark Richter, assistant director of property management.

“But the compensation is not the point,” Richter said. “The point is that we are short of cargo space and we’re hardly in a position to declare a terminal of this kind surplus.”

“It is out of the question,” Nagano added. “Not a possibility.”

Port officials want the seamen to consider a berth in Wilmington, but Vernick and the others won’t hear of it. They say the Wilmington site, in an area that is slated for redevelopment, won’t be ready for tourists for at least another five years.

Offer of Free Tow

The aging veterans don’t want to wait. As Vernick said recently: “Let’s face it. I want to see the ship down here before I kick the bucket.”

So last week, when the seamen received an offer to have the Lane Victory towed from Suisun Bay to Los Angeles free of charge, they took it. “Greatest thing that ever happened to us,” Vernick said, although he acknowledged that he is not quite certain what will happen next.

Port officials say they know what will happen: If the Lane Victory is not gone from Berth 55 by Monday, they will tow it out into San Pedro Bay and anchor it.

Vernick, however, remains confident that compromise is coming, both on the short-term use of Berth 55 and the long-term use of Berth 87. “Ultimately,” he said, “we’re going to win out. There’s no question in my mind.”