City’s unsinkable sub draws crowds
Pampanito sees more visitors than before pandemic
“We were anticipating 20 or 30% of our normal attendance. We were amazed.”
Darlene Plumtree, CEO of the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association
With everything and everybody packed into narrow spaces, a submarine is not an attractive environment during a pandemic.
So when the battlehardened World War II floating museum Pampanito opened to visitors on Fisherman’s Wharf last month, its operators did not expect attendance to be what it was before COVID19.
Their hunch was right. It isn’t the same. It’s better. On Sunday, paid attendance passed 5,000 in just one month. Compared to the same month in 2019, it is up 14%, or around 500 tickets.
“It blew my mind the first day when we opened the gate,” said Pampanito volunteer Rich Pekelney, as he stood on Pier 45 and watched a steady stream of curious pedestrians walking toward him to line up for a selfguided smart phone tour. “It was so normal after a year and a half of not being normal.”
One aspect that has not returned to normal is foreign tourists, who make up half the usual annual attendance. With far fewer of them, due to travel restrictions, and with the slow rebooting of the tourist economy, “we were anticipating 20 or 30% of our normal attendance,” said Darlene Plumtree, CEO of the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, which owns and operates the Pampanito as a National Historic Landmark. “We were amazed.”
The association took advantage of the COVID19 lockdown by sending the Pampanito into dry dock in Alameda. It was its second trip in five years, following a major overhaul in 2016. Managing director Aaron Washington described this trip as “a shave and a
haircut,” but it was more than cosmetic.
The boat, which survived 697 dives while torpedoing six enemy ships during the war in the Pacific, was attacked again in its berth. First a shed on Pier 45 burned down in a conflagration in May 2020, threatening both the Pampanito and its mate the Jeremiah O’Brien, a World War II liberty ship that shares anchorage on Pier 45. Two forklifts used in the boats’ maintenance were lost in the fire.
Then came the ferocious windstorm of January 2021. A gale blew down from Vallejo and “she dragged her moorings into the pier,” Pekelney said. “The challenges this year were not just COVID, which meant no income. “We had a fire and a storm slam into the pier.”
The shave and haircut ended up taking six weeks and costing $800,000, covered by a combination of a $175,000 Maritime Heritage Grant, which the Pampanito’s boosters were able to match, and an insurance settlement. The crew took advantage of the sub’s time under repairs to remount its most powerful gun, a 5inch, 25caliber cannon, to its original placement on the rear deck. A pair of 40mm machine guns were also restored and mounted in their original positions for the the first time since decommissioning in 1945.
“When we got the boat in 1982, there were no weapons on it,” said Pekelney. “It’s been the dream since the museum opened to get all the right deck guns in all the right places.”
The Pampanito was towed back to its mooring in San Francisco and reopened without fanfare or even an announcement. On June 17, its first first full day of operation, 220 visitors paid the $20 admission fee, up from the average weekday attendance of 175, and it has held steady.
“Since we reopened we’ve had a lot of ‘climate change’ tourists,” said Pekelney, a member of the Board of Trustees who works on the machinery. “People from Redding, Lodi, Stockton, Chico and all over the Central Valley coming to the city to escape the heat.”
He’s also noticed more San Franciscans than before. They are the ones who say, “I didn’t know you were here.”
Mike Morgan, a visitor from Fort Worth, noticed the Pampanito and its guns while driving along the Embarcadero with his family.
“I wanted to shoot the guns,” he said at the ticket booth. “They said it was fully operational.”
To get on board, visitors climb down a steep ladder below the water line and into the belly of the boat. From there they travel 311 feet and through six watertight doors that require ducking down and stepping through. It is a gauntlet nearly impossible to travel without either banging your head or tripping or both. Most people reach out and grab the same surfaces that everybody else reaches for in order to get a handhold.
Masks are recommended but not required. A hand sanitizer is at the exit.
Michal Camarena came from Fresno with his four kids, all under age 12.
“I felt claustrophobia and a little seasick,” he said after going through the boat, “but COVID never crossed my mind.”