All the discussion about military ships visiting Olympia during FLODfair, coupled with how some people think the incredibly beautiful and unfairly maligned Capitol Center Building detracts from the scenic Olympia view of Budd Inlet and the Olympics, got me to thinking about the Mothball Fleet. As mentioned in an earlier post, a buddy and I used to give the Mothball Fleet guardians a nice chase now and then as we weaved through the ships in my pal's motorboat. Today, of course, we would be machine-gunned into tiny little pieces for such an act. But back in the pre-Bush II era it was just good clean fun.

Imagine over 100 big military ships lined up off of Gull Harbor, a wall of gray metal in the middle of the water. The Reserve Fleet, veterans of WWII, were stationed in Budd Inlet from 1946-1972. Some of the ships were removed and used in the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, and the Vietnam War. They were also used, for a more peaceful purpose, as storehouses for wheat in the 1950s. The ships were such an Olympia fixture for so long that even today I look out at Budd Inlet and expect to see them.

Here's an article from the June 27, 1972 Daily Olympian during the twilight of the Mothball Fleet.

That's All There Is
by Jack Laughlin

The storied ships are are gone. The wavelets of Gull Harbor ripple on the green waters of the Sound. And the colors of Olympia's Reserve Fleet are about to strike for the last time.

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The phase-out is final. And for 14 of the last 17 Maritime Administration employees at the Budd Inlet graveyard for the ghost ships of three wars, retirement will be their next tour of duty.

Among those who find an ending will be a beginning in a new way of life will be Carl H. C. Johnson, superintendent at the Reserve Fleet installation since April, 1956, and a veteran of 34 years in the Navy and Maritime Administration combined.

When he directs activities at the 2 p.m. closing out ceremonies Wednesday (tomorrow) at the Fleet's headquarters, it will be with a mind-filled with the memories of 310 ships of the fleet which have come and gone (some several times) during the Reserve Fleet's life at Gull Harbor.

It will be a wistful time of memory because there will be only 17 left on the Fleet payroll and only 10 of them at work since the others are on annual leave, and Johnson may think back to the time when at peak operation 185 personnel reported daily to maintain and "keep house" in the ship cluttered harbor.

"That was the peak employment, 185," he said this morning. "There were more during the time we stored grain for the Agriculture Department, but the extra help for that operation was paid for by the Ag people."

Olympia's Reserve Fleet was born in March, 1946, and was designated as a storage area for ships of all sizes, ages and uses ... warships, landing craft, Victory ships, Liberty ships, carriers, tankers, and patrol boats.

Many of the craft were propelled during the Fleet's early years right into the storage area under their own power. Later, it became the practice to tow the ghosts of the fleet to Gull Harbor from Seattle or Bremerton.

After their hooks were dropped in the Budd Inlet storage area, Supt. Johnson's crews took over. It was their job to preserve the ships and keep them seaworthy.

"We tried to maintain them in a condition equal to that which existed when they arrived," he said.

In some ships, they de-humidified the interior of the craft-- sucking out all the moisture and leaving a vacuum-vessel afloat, dry and ready for immediate restoration. In other cases, they preserved the craft by spraying, painting, flooding and dipping the entire vessel with a contact coating designed to resist the onslaught of salt-water corrosion.

That the work was successful was testified to when the U.S.S. Salisbury Sound, a seaplane tender equipped as a flagship for a fleet admiral or unit commander, was hauled away to the scrapper.

When the Salisbury Sound was towed away last July, it's hatches were opened and it seemed that only the day before the staterooms, the wheelhouse, the communication centers and companionways could have teemed with Navy men doing their thing in an operation off Okinawa, Korea or Vietnam. The Salisbury Sound had been there and the feel of historic sea action was about her, particularly the last foray of the great ship in the Gulf of Tonkin and the strife-worn waters of the early Vietnam conflict. When the lid was popped on the Salisbury Sound, it was seaworthy and ready. But it went to the salvage yard.

Johnson recalls that numbers of merchantmen of World War II vintage were pressed into service during the Vietnam conflict to serve as supply vessels hauling the necessities of life to Uncle Sam's DEW line (Distant Early Warning) defenders in the Arctic.

Still other merchantmen were used as storage places for wheat during the bumper crops of the late 1950s. A shortage of shoreside elevators and storage facilities for grain had developed and the Reserve Fleet was pressed into service. As the grain was exported, the storage bin ships were towed to Seattle or Tacoma where the wheat was transferred to other merchantmen for overseas transport.

And during the early part of the heavy conflict in Vietnam, four T-2 tanker ships went back into action from the Reserve Fleet, sailing under their own power to the Orient. There they were used to supply electric power from their 10,000 horsepower generators to Vietnamese coastal communities which had lost their power production to the fortunes of land war.

Many of the Reserve Fleet ships went to Seattle and Portland salvagers, but about a dozen in the close-out of the Ghost Ships have been consigned to Taiwan where they will be put to the scrapper's torch and used in the burgeoning steel economy of the Chiang Kai-Shek kingdom.

One of the last craft to go, Johnson noted, was the LST Clearwater County. It was maintained as seaworthy and sailed south to become the property of the Mexican government. Mexico plans to use the shallow draft vessel as a relief ship up and down its western coast to supply communities and seacraft which have disasters.

Johnson spent 10 years at Suisun Bay at Vallejo, California, with a Reserve Fleet before shipping to Olympia and taking the helm. He will retire Friday when he locks the door of the Fleet's office and hands the keys to the General Service Administration, the U.S. government's landlord.

Meanwhile he issues a public invitation to all those who live in the area to attend the close-out ceremonies starting at 2 p.m. Wednesday. Top officials of the Maritime Administration from Washington, D.C., Seattle and San Francisco, along with top state officials will participate in the ceremonies. Many plaques will be awarded and the praises of the Fleet will be sung.

What happens after Friday's transfer to the GSA?

"That's all there is," said Johnson.