Ship Ashore

Sep. 28, 2016: The former Ship Ashore gift shop and museum in Smith River, California.

Just south of the Oregon border, along U.S. Highway 101, sits the “Ship Ashore.” The former 500 ton, 1920s yacht was a combination billboard, gift shop and museum, but closed about five years ago.

In 1965, a dozen tractors pulling cables in unison, dragged the vessel a quarter mile inland. The dry land voyage took ten hours.

The “Ship Ashore”  started as the Caritas, a private yacht built in 1925 at Krupp Iron Works in Kiel, Germany.  Purchased by U.S. Navy on December 1, 1941, the Caritas became the USS Garnet, a coastal patrol yacht numbered PYc-15.  Armed with a three inch gun, machine guns and depth charges, and a crew of 50, the USS Garnet spent the war conducting patrols around Hawaii.

In 1946, the Garnet was sold and ending up as a restaurant in Smith River, California. In 1965 she made her last voyage - on dry land.

An April 20, 2015 article in Super Yacht World online magazine offered up the former Caritas as a “restoration opportunity” for someone with several million dollars of loose change.

My flickr album: 2016 Ship Ashore