Glimpses of the magical, forest-filled schooner La Merced can be caught by thousands of tourists headed to the San Juan Islands as they near the ferry terminal in Anacortes.
Lying on the shore of Fidalgo Island, the 232-foot, four-masted schooner once traveled as far away as Australia as part of the Standard Oil Company’s fleet. It later became a floating salmon cannery in Alaska.
About 450 such four-masted schooners were built along the eastern seaboard, while about 100 were built on the Pacific coast. The quarter-million-dollar La Merced, launched in 1917, was among those built in the west.
Only four remain of this once-common vessel. Of these, the La Merced boasts the best preserved hull, according to a form filed with the National Register of Historic Places. The ship was added to the register in the 1990s.
As part of Standard Oil’s fleet, the vessel shipped metal containers of petroleum products. Then, in 1926, it switched assignments, joining the salmon boom as a floating cannery.
About 40 years later, it was stripped down and its masts cut. It was then moved to Lovric’s Sea-Craft shipyard and placed as a breakwater.
The ship, which remains watertight, now lies nestled in fill and rock rip-rap. Its hull, once filled with oil, then canned salmon, is now packed with sand, mud and a forest of trees.
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Isaac Stone Simonelli is CDN’s enterprise/investigations reporter; reach him at isaacsimonelli@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 127.
