San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Choppy waters for storied sub
On Easter weekend in 1944 in the Pacific, the brand new American submarine Pampanito dived deep to get away from two enemy destroyers. It was the Pampanito’s first patrol, and nearly its last. The submarine had attacked a Japanese convoy, and warships escorting the convoy dropped depth charges. The submarine went down well below the margin of a safe dive. The pressure on the hull was tremendous, 20 tons per square foot. Light fixtures broke. A piece of machinery set up an ungodly howling. The depth charging went on for hours.
One sailor cracked and started yelling and foaming at the mouth. Another tried to get away from the pounding by hiding under his bunk. It was terrifying. “We said our prayers,” one officer remembered years later. The Pampanito made six wartime patrols. It was not the most famous American submarine but it had a unique record. In fall 1944, the Pampanito rescued 73 Australian and British prisoners of war, survivors of a sunken Japanese prison ship. The last of those men, a onetime Australian soldier named Harold Martin, died this spring at the age of 103. He was 28 when he was rescued, covered with oil and facing certain death. The Pampanito gave him 75 more years of life. And the Pampanito had more life in it as well. After the war it served as a training vessel and then began a new life as a floating museum at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. It survived the big fire at Pier 45 last month.
But now the Pampanito’s survival is in question. “We are sending out an SOS — save our submarine,” said Paul Roesler, president of the nonprofit San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, which operates the boat as a memorial to the U.S. Navy’s submarine service.
The problem this time is not depth charges, but the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The Pampanito has been a successful museum, attracting 100,000 yearly visitors — more in a good year. Roesler said admission revenue generated $100,000 a month on average, enough to subsidize the association’s other operations, including publications and an awardwinning education program.
“That’s all gone,” Roesler said. “We are in dire straits. We are on life support.”
The association suffered a double economic blow this spring when the schools closed. That ended the “Age of Sail” program that provided an introduction to the Bay Area’s maritime heritage aboard ships at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. On the same day all of the city’s museums and tourist attractions were shut down.
The association had to cut staff. “We had to lay off 80% of our employees,” Roesler said. Some of them had been there for years.
In the meantime, the submarine has to be maintained. One of the conditions the U.S. Navy set when it offered the Pampanito to the association is that the boat be maintained to Navy standards. So they still have a small staff for oversight, maintenance and security. “We have to get down to bare bones,” Roesler said. Attempts to get government help have not been successful. “It’s a matter of survival,” he said.
It is an ironic turn for the Maritime Park Association, which was founded as the San Francisco Maritime Museum Association in 1950 to start a maritime museum and save historic ships, most notably the 1886 sailing ship Balclutha. The association’s efforts led to the establishment of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, and the association is a selffunding park partner.
Scott Newhall, then the executive editor of The Chronicle, was one of the founders of the museum association. There the tale becomes personal. Newhall got me interested in the ships. I wrote a book on the Pampanito and its crew, and while writing I met an association staff person who later became my companion and the Sailor Girl. But that’s another story.
San Francisco Bay has a unique mix of maritime artifacts — from the nation’s only floating national park but also a fleet of other ships operated by separate nonprofit corporations. There’s everything from an aircraft carrier to a landing craft support ship, nicknamed a “mighty midget.”
Other Bay Area legacy ships operated by nonprofits seem to be surviving. The Liberty Ship Jeremiah O’Brien, which narrowly escaped last month’s fire at Pier 45, apparently has barely enough reserves to get through the year. The aircraft carrier Hornet, based in Alameda, is rethinking its operations. Mike McCarron, who just stepped down as the Hornet’s executive director, is optimistic. Once when doing research on the Pampanito, I complimented Russell Booth, then the sub’s manager, on the excellent condition of the boat. It looked as if it were ready to sail. “Do you think it can still dive?” I asked him. He gave me a small smile. “Oh yeah,” he said. “It’s getting it back up again that’s the problem.”
The Pampanito survived that first patrol, but just barely. That’s the hope this time. To cut expenses even more to what Roesler calls “the absolute bare bones minimum. And sit tight.” And wait for better times.