Princess Louise Declared Total Loss by Owners; Future Unclear : Shipwreck: A number of groups with widely different plans have indicated interest in the sunken San Pedro landmark.

A month after it capsized without warning at a San Pedro shipyard, the former cruise ship Princess Louise has been declared a total loss by its owners, the Bank of San Pedro.

“We’ve declared it a total loss, and we believe that’s what the (insurance) surveyor is going to do,” bank President Lance Oak said. According to Oak, the 67-year-old ship is insured for $1.5 million.

A fixture in Los Angeles Harbor after it was converted into a restaurant in 1966, the Princess Louise suddenly listed to starboard and capsized on Oct. 30 as it was being readied for sale at Southwest Marine of San Pedro. The cause is still unclear.

Since then, the half-sunken ship has attracted the interest of a range of groups with strikingly different plans for its future.

Several salvage companies have proposed to carve the ship up and send the pieces to scrap yards. But Los Angeles scuba divers are hoping to get the 360-foot vessel refloated and then scuttled off the Palos Verdes Peninsula for use as an underwater recreational attraction.

And a Washington state steamboat enthusiast would like to return the ship to its original home port, Vancouver, Canada. The Princess Louise, he argues, is the last 1920s-era West Coast cruise liner left intact.

“It is to West Coast coastal liner history what the Delta Queen is to river boat history,” said Loren Herrigstad, who said he will try to raise money for the project through a group he founded recently called the Steamship Preservation Trust. “She deserves the same care and recognition.”

Oak said he has received proposals from nine salvage companies interested in being hired to remove the ship, which is resting on its starboard side in the slip where it was moored.

Only three of the proposals provide for refloating the ship, he said. The rest would involve scrapping it. But Oak said he would not rule out refloating the ship, saying cost estimates supplied in some proposals indicate that the method “might be economical.”

“Economics is the major question,” Oak said. “ . . . I have a responsibility to my shareholders.” He declined to elaborate or to reveal the estimated costs of the proposals.

One group keenly interested in refloating the Princess Louise is the Greater Los Angeles Council on Diving, which has been working with the state Department of Fish and Game to find a ship for an artificial reef.

Last month the California Coastal Commission approved the department’s plans for the project: to tow a vessel about a mile off Point Vicente and scuttle it. The plans still must be considered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the State Lands Commission.

David Lee, president of the diving group, said a sunken Princess Louise would create a new habitat for marine life and an adventurous atmosphere for divers.

“It would provide an opportunity for recreational sports scuba divers to visit a shipwreck,” Lee said. “It would be wonderful.”

Herrigstad of Olympia, Wash., said members of his U.S. and Canadian preservation group believe it would be a great historical loss to scuttle the Princess Louise, which cruised the Alaskan straits from Vancouver to Skagway, Alaska, for more than 40 years.

He said the ship is the only remaining example of the ocean liners that plied West Coast waters between the world wars.

“Many trains and locomotives have been preserved in steam museums, but the Queen Mary is the only ocean liner,” Herrigstad said. “The maritime heritage of the ‘20s has been grossly neglected.”

Asked about this point, Lee said that if Herrigstad can arrange to save the Princess Louise, he would “certainly be supportive.”

“But if he can’t, and it’s going to end up being ground up and made into Toyotas, I would much rather have it as an artificial reef,” he said.

Herrigstad and Lee have notified the Bank of San Pedro of their interest in the Princess Louise, but Oak said that there is unlikely to be a decision on the vessel’s fate for two weeks to a month.

BACKGROUND

Princess Louise, the 67-year-old former cruise ship that suddenly capsized in October in a San Pedro shipyard, had been a fixture in the port area since 1966, the year it was converted into a restaurant. The wreck’s owners have declared it a total loss, but a number of proposals for making use of it have been made by others.