A Ship Lost and an Era Forgotten

Any film noir fan knows that during Prohibition, pleasure seekers in search of “dolls, drinks and dice” thronged the glittering floating casinos anchored off Los Angeles’ waterfront. Others came to the harbor in pursuit of more prosaic quarry, though as it turned out, they were in peril of losing more than their shirts.

Coincidentally, the most tragic chapter in this little-known local maritime tale began in the storied 19th century Belfast shipyards of Harland and Wolf, the same works that later would produce the ill-fated liner Titanic.

In 1877--35 years before the Titanic’s maiden voyage--Harland and Wolf completed a full-rigged, 312-foot, 1,766-ton iron sailing ship, christened the Star of France. The vessel carried lumber, coal, jute and agriculture products for almost half a century before making her last trek from San Francisco to Alaska, carrying 400 fishermen and workers to the Alaska salmon canneries in 1925.

That same year, Norwegian-born Joakim Andersen ended his restless career as a sea captain when his wife decided to moor him closer to home in Los Angeles. Here, the cigar-chomping Andersen, who wore his seaman’s cap and long underwear year-round, formed the Hermosa Amusement Co., whose assets consisted of three decrepit ships he turned into fishing “barges.”

The first in his fleet of three aging vessels, called the Olympic, was moored off Hermosa Beach. The Kohala, riding at anchor off Redondo, would later meet its own unfortunate end.

Andersen bought the Star of France to serve as his premier fishing barge. Re-christened Olympic II, it replaced the original Olympic off Hermosa Beach. Andersen moved the original Olympic to Newport Beach before it fell victim to time, salt and pounding waves.

Dwindling business in Hermosa forced Andersen to move the Olympic II and anchor it near two other fishing barges--Rainbow and Point Loma--at Horseshoe Kelp, a well-known fishing ground that was dangerously close to the shipping lanes leading into Los Angeles Harbor. Each of the three barges--a quarter-mile apart--had its own distinct clanging bell.

Hundreds of sure-footed anglers stood on nearby piers each day, waiting to be ferried out to the hulks, on whose slippery decks flopped more than a million pounds of mackerel a year.

The Olympic II--admission a buck a head--attracted the more upscale anglers, who usually came aboard in white shirts and ties. The ship was a popular spot for bachelor and civic parties. Overnight guests could be accommodated in seven staterooms, when they weren’t availing themselves of the concession stand, restaurant, nickel and two-bit slot machines or card games.

Andersen catered to local political, Hollywood and sporting types, including recalled mayor Frank Shaw and soon-to-be-mayor Sam Yorty, Zasu Pitts, Andy Devine and the New York Yankees.

Beckoning radio listeners to “Come on Down,” Andersen, always ready to pitch a story in his heavy Norwegian accent, was often heard on local radio station KNX, hooking anglers on the “Donut Show” with comedian Morey Amsterdam, according to Steve Lawson, a researcher and writer in Laguna Hills who is writing a book on the saga of the ill-fated ship.

Tragedy struck the Olympic II in the fog-shrouded early morning of Sept. 4, 1940, when the vessel was rammed by the inbound Japanese freighter Sakito Maru. The impact sliced a hole 23 feet wide by 27 feet deep.

Reversing its engine and backing clear, the freighter caused the Olympic II to plummet to the bottom within two minutes. Eight fishermen died and 17 were rescued.

Amid waves and wreckage, recovery workers found the bodies of the barge’s heroic “captain,” Jack Greenwood--actually a barge master and mechanic--who saved several lives that morning before drowning; concessionaire Joseph Karsh, 50, who had ushered his two panic-stricken teenage daughters to safety; Peter McGrath of Lynwood and his 9-year-old son, James, who were sucked into the hole in the ship; and three local teenage boys, Curtiss Johnson, Peter Mayo and Joe Culp. The body of 64-year-old fisherman John Sylvester was never found.

Andersen, the only legally licensed captain of the Olympic II, was not aboard at the time of the wreck.

Investigating the accident, the Coast Guard, the Department of Justice and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department found that those who died were victims of the seafaring equivalent of a reckless driver, citing the freighter’s operator for “extreme negligence” because he had been speeding along at about 10 knots in patchy fog.

Although the freighter returned to Japan within a few days after bond was posted and its captain was not criminally charged, more than $400,000 in claims were filed against the Japanese shipping company. Five years later, Andersen’s company received a total of $1,500 and the families of the eight victims received small judgments.

The whole incident soon was caught up in wartime hysteria. Wild rumors circulated that the Sakito Maru deliberately ran down the iron vessel so that it could be used as a decoy or magnetic anomaly to hide a Japanese submarine.

Less than a month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Kohala--which Andersen had sold years earlier--became a victim of war.

On Christmas Eve in 1941, Submarine 1-19 of the Imperial Japanese Navy surfaced off Long Beach, and, in sight of dozens of onlookers, sent a torpedo into the lumber freighter Absaroka. The merchant ship managed to limp into the harbor with heavy damage and one dead crew member, as U.S. military aircraft scrambled to intercept the raider.

The following day’s headlines screamed: “Army Flyer Sinks Coast Raider. Air Filled With Debris as Nippon Submarine Is Destroyed.”

The debris turned out to be the remains of the Kohala, the innocent victim of friendly fire by American warplanes. The sub was long gone, and escaped to fight on for two more years before being sunk near the Marshall Islands.

Southern California’s last remaining fishing barge, Isle of Redondo, a fixture in South Bay waters for nearly two decades and the sole survivor of a fleet of 110 aging vessels that at one time dotted the coast from San Diego to Santa Barbara, was sold last year to a Florida-based company that plans to turn it into a floating casino in the Gulf of Mexico.

And despite the 59 years it has spent under 100 feet of murky water, the lure and the lore of the Olympic II’s hulk continue to attract scuba divers.