Day cruise takes passengers back to World War II

Docked in San Pedro, the Lane Victory has long been designated a historic landmark for its service in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and World War II.

But the hulking 455-foot-long gray cargo ship rarely sees open water these days.

So when the vessel pulled out of the channel Saturday morning and headed toward Santa Catalina Island, Ralph Wetterhahn declared that the Lane Victory was now alive.

“Seeing this thing go to sea — when you crank up those boilers and those props start to turn — she’s got life,” said Wetterhahn, 69, a Vietnam War veteran who helped with Saturday’s trip. “This ship has soul, it has a heartbeat from those boilers, and it’s alive again.”

The Lane Victory set out Saturday as part of its annual summer Victory at Sea cruises with about 800 passengers. It included a mock WWII-era fighting scene onboard.

One of the actors played an officer capturing a German spy who has leaked the ship’s location to the enemy.

“I got the spy!” the officer yelled, escorting the man around the ship’s hull.

“Throw him overboard!” someone shouted while others booed.

As part of the scene, the spy was supposed to call for fighter planes to destroy the ship. Because of overcast skies, however, the planes scheduled to participate in the show were canceled.

But other actors fired off blank rounds from the huge guns on deck at imaginary fighter planes anyway. Spectators shuddered at each crack of fire.

There was also a band that played swing and other music as actors in sailor uniforms danced and twirled women in crisp skirts.

Others assisting with the cruise answered questions about the ship and its WWII service.

“We tell the stories of what it was like” during wartime, said 42-year-old firefighter Fred McDowell, who was dressed in a green paratrooper uniform and carrying an old M1 Garand rifle.

The passengers, McDowell said, are “people from all walks of life. There’s preschool children and people in their 90s.”

Friends Mike Jacobs, 41, and Ryan Gardner of Northridge said they went on the cruise simply because they enjoy history and thought it would be a good way to spend the day. Others were there for reunions with veterans they had served with, or because they had friends or family members who once served or volunteered on the Lane Victory or other vessels.

Jack Ward, 82, who lives in Hawaii, said he came with his family to join other Navy officers he served with on the attack transport ship Lenawee during the Korean War.

Ward said being aboard the Lane Victory made him think about those he fought alongside, and about what he hoped his grandchildren would take away from Saturday’s experience.

“I wanted them to know something about what it’s like to be on a ship like this,” Ward said. “I’m not trying to get them necessarily to become a military person, just to appreciate what I — in a selfish way, I suppose — went through and what others go through who serve our country.”

For Air Force veteran Jana Hammond, 62, Saturday’s cruise was a way for her family to memorialize her recently deceased father, who served in the Merchant Marines during WWII and later in Vietnam. He also volunteered on the Lane Victory when he got older.

She said her father — 88-year-old Harry Ray Gahring — decided to help on the Lane Victory about a decade ago because “he just loved the sea. He always wanted to go back to sea.”

Hammond, who had been on the cruise before, and other family members held a short service at the back of the ship and dropped Gahring’s ashes into the water.

“We’re three generations of veterans,” Hammond said: Her son is a Navy SEAL and recently returned from Afghanistan.

Several of her grandchildren were also with her.

“I hope they learn to appreciate our veterans,” Hammond said.

ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com