Dreamers who bring geriatric ships to Stockton’s Delta are often so enamored by what a vessel could be they don’t see what it likely will be: derelict.
So it goes with the MV Aurora, a 293-foot pocket cruise ship, which sank last week near Herman & Helen’s Marina. The old codger is resting stern-down in 13 feet of water in Little Potato Slough, leaking “petroleum product.”
“The incident was completely accidental, a tragic twist of fate …” Chris Willson, the previous owner, wrote on his Facebook page, after speaking with the current owner, whom he doesn’t name.
The ‘incident’ was inevitable — if not the sinking, the ship’s owner walking away and leaving the burden on taxpayers.
In 2013, Willson had the Aurora towed to Herman & Helen’s, a spot about six miles northwest of Stockton. I was charmed at first by the ship’s faded elegance and colorful history.
A German shipyard launched the ship in 1955. Christened the Wappen von Hamburg — Hamburg’s Coat of Arms — it ferried tourists to the German resort island of Heligoland, among other places.
You can read the rest of the ship’s history here.
Some trivia too good to omit: It was the villain’s ship in a James Bond movie; A TV writer’s Alaskan cruise aboard the ship inspired her to create “The Love Boat;” Willson found it on Craigslist.
Yes, Craigslist. The Aurora, having lost its “rizz,” stopped carrying passengers after several decades. It was demoted to workhorse. When it pooped out, it became a white elephant.
Not until later did it emerge that Willson and the ship had been evicted from San Francisco’s Pier 38. The Aurora’s engines didn’t work, and — tellingly — Willson refused to bear tow costs, so the port paid him $47,500 to go away.
The Port of San Francisco’s former harbormaster, Hedley Prince, told me back then that the ship, under previous owners, had been ousted from numerous ports and waterfronts.
“The Aurora has already been kicked out of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Solano, Sacramento and Alameda counties,” Prince said.
Herman & Helen’s Marina was open then, operated by leasees Dave and Chris Johnson. The Johnsons, thinking cool vintage boats would attract tourists, sank pylons for huge vessels. They invited not only the Aurora but The Fir, a 1938 165-foot decommissioned U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse/buoy tender; and the HMCS Chaleur, a 152-foot ex-Canadian minesweeper.
A tugboat, the Mazapeta, ended up there as well.
Two problems: the Johnsons were already deep in the red. The marina soon closed. Herman & Helen’s went into court-appointed receivership amid a tangle of litigation.
And the Johnsons sank the pylons illegally. Operating a mooring facility for large ships was prohibited, as was expanding the marina without a proper land use permit, according to county code enforcers.
The county gave the vessel owners a 30-day notice to leave. I was unable to find a county official who could explain why the county did not force the ships to leave (by some accounts, the Aurora couldn’t leave because Little Potato Slough has silted up and needs to be dredged).
In 2021, The Chaleur sank. The ship is underwater on the port side of the Aurora.
On Labor Day 2023, the Mazapeta sank. The Coast Guard raised it; the City of Stockton had to pay for it to be towed to Mare Island and dismantled.
The Aurora makes for a sunken trifecta.
The Fir is still moored nearby. In 2017 it was purchased by The Lighthouse Project LLC, a Virginia-based group that is restoring it.
In the decade following his arrival, Willson and a revolving crew of volunteers worked to restore the Aurora. They put a lot of work into it. But unless one is wealthy, or has government or nonprofit funding, a ship as big as the Aurora is a giant sponge that soaks up more money and labor than most people can ever provide.
“A lot of people think if you have a ship like that you must be rich,” Willson said in 2013. “But you’re not. But whatever you have, it’ll eat it, and all you’re going to have.”
Faced with increasingly skeptical questions, Willson stopped taking my calls. But not before vowing to persevere with the Aurora’s restoration, whatever the commitment, whatever the cost.
“I will never walk away from this ship,” he pledged in 2014.
What a guy. Last year he walked away.
Willson blamed others. “Due to the overwhelming amount of bad players I decided to remove myself from this project last October …” he wrote on his Facebook page, where one of his major themes is that anyone who says anything negative about his stewardship of the Aurora is a naysayer or a hater.
Because shifting blame is so much easier than admitting you bit off way more than you could chew and bailed.
Willson, who moved out of state, writes he decided to “pass along my interest in the vessel to someone who felt they could move the project forward and deal with the political side of this adventure.”
Whether “pass along my interest” means “gift this wonderful vessel” or “fob off this turkey” is unclear. What is clear is that nowhere does Willson take one iota of responsibility.
“I had hopes for it,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle last week, “but at the same time I realize not everybody had the ability to keep the project going.” Everybody? It was his baby.
Lt. Commander Mark Leahey of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Sector San Francisco is the incident commander for the Aurora sinking.
“We can’t say definitively what caused it to sink at this point, but what you see above the waterline and what you see below are two different things,” he said.
In other words, a rusted steel hull may be to blame, though only time will tell.
Bill Wells, head of the California Delta Chambers & Visitors Bureau, said the management of the Aurora was “Just outrageous.”
“Any boat that doesn’t get hauled out every once in a while is going to sink,” he said. “It basically was just brought up here to rot away.”
So, 2,496 gross tons of rusting metal sits in Little Potato Slough. The U.S. Coast Guard and Sheriff’s boat patrol had to respond. A “Unified Command” had to be formed with representatives from Coast Guard, California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response and the City of Stockton.
Booms had to be deployed to confine and absorb the oil or diesel leaking from the ship. Booms also were set around the intake of Stockton’s Delta Water Supply Project, and the whole shebang shut down “out of an abundance of caution,” a city spokesperson said. Global marine services divers were hired to inspect and repair the hull and place pumps in the now-submerged interior to drain and refloat the ship. The federal Oil Spill and Liability Trust Fund must be tapped.
And that’s just the beginning. What to do with the massive ship and who’s responsible for the presumably painful cost of removing it is yet to be determined.
“We have been in contact with several, what are called, responsible parties,” Lt. Commander Leahey said. “The first person unfortunately did not have any insurance or any means of paying for the response, which is why the Coast Guard assumed responsibility.”
Not to worry. Willson says he’ll help.
“(In) My attempts to make this dream a reality, I will be setting up a GoFundMe or another crowdfunding page to help save the Aurora,” he wrote on Facebook
Two words, Mr. Willson: Please don’t.
Michael Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email:mfitzgeraldstockton@
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Great article, Mike!
I’ve never seen this site before. I’ll have to bookmark it. 🙂
*DISCLAIMER* These comments reflect nothing but my own opinion. Mike, I wonder if you are the one to whom Mr. Willson refers as the “friendly jackass bobblehead reporter” in his blog, which he started around 2016/2017: https://museumships.us/?view=article&id=654:part01&catid=87
This is a common theme. People who think they have a lot of money, but very little knowledge or common sense, decide they can take on a massive project such as this. Shortcuts are taken, and critical mistakes are made. People who see the world through rose-tinted glasses are short-sighted. They rarely have a plan for their projects, don’t take the “what-ifs” into account and quickly get in way over their head.
In this case, per Mr. Willson’s own blog, the “what-ifs” happened every single time for him, from the cold, calculating Pier 38 owner who had ideas of acquiring Wappen von Hamburg (I will only ever refer to her by her original name) for his own purposes and by any means necessary, to the grimy, homeless, drug-addicted alcoholics-turned maritime squatters who were hired by the previous owner-turned-partner, and kept on by Mr. Willson to watch the ship. Planning for the “what-ifs” would have prevented these things from happening.
What I find particularly disingenuous of Mr. Willson is that he started a YouTube channel three years ago, with the help of British YouTuber Gemma of “Ship Happens”, to document the “restoration” of Wappen von Hamburg. The problem is that the videos he posted are of work done to the vessel many years before he even started this YouTube channel. On top of it, Mr. Willson links his YouTube channel to a Patreon page. Why keep these two sites active, if he supposedly has no ownership interest in the vessel anymore? Is the intent to have viewers send him money for a project that no longer exists?
In my opinion, Mr. Willson’s ambition, amplified by his rose-tinted glasses, led him to believe that YouTube would be the vessel’s savior. The general perception is that everyone who has a YouTube channel becomes instantly rich and famous, and they get dozens and dozens of sponsors who give them free tools and materials for their project. The truth is that, unless you have a good working understanding of YouTube and the metrics it uses to promote videos, you’re never going to be or get any of those things. Only 10% of YouTube content creators make over $100k/year.
If Mr. Willson had done his research first (naval engineering survey, cost analysis of repairs and parts, etc..), he would have understood that this was going to be an expensive project. First and foremost, he should have started by ensuring she was mechanically sound (engines, gear boxes, pumps, hoses, fittings, etc..), that way she would be capable of moving under her own power, if necessary. Maybach diesel engines are bulletproof, and Wappen von Hamburg’s powerplants should have been able to start with no major issues.
Once the mechanical was sorted, the next step would have been to ensure she was structurally sound, and the most thorough way I know to accomplish this is by putting her in drydock, which allows a completely thorough inspection of her hull but is incredibly expensive, as evidenced by Battleship Texas’ recent and New Jersey’s current drydock repairs.
Reality has now made its presence known and Wappen von Hamburg is paying the price. She will probably be scrapped in situ, a cost that will most likely be passed on to the local tax payers, and yet another piece of history will sadly be lost, all because Mr. Willson’s rose-tinted glasses obscured the six P’s…Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
RIP Wappen von Hamburg, you will be missed.
Well stated!
It’s to bad these old ships are being lost. The old yacht and ferry, etc., should be saved for the future, with Stockton’s boat building past it would be the perfect place for a museum. Maybe at the old navy docks.