The first destination was the Columbia River Maritime Museum, the best museum in the state according to Frommer's travel guide. And an excellent museum it is, too. Its main focus is the Columbia River Bar, known as the Graveyard of the Pacific.
The museum's visual diagram of the Bar is more understandable than a written explanation. The river runs 1200 miles from British Columbia until it crashes into the Pacific which tries very hard to push it back where it came from. The south jetty I mentioned yesterday is visible in this diagram. It was quite an undertaking to build, being extended to 6 1/2 miles a few years after it was thought to be finished.
Since the discovery of the river's mouth in 1792, approximately 2,000 vessels have wrecked on the Bar, including over 200 large ships, with over 700 people losing their lives. The combination of high seas, a mighty river, and shallow, shifting sandbars make the Columbia River Bar one of the most dangerous bar crossings in the world. Fog is also a serious hazard, shrouding the Bar for up to 200 days per year. The waves over the Bar can be 40 feet high, tossing even the biggest freighters around like bath toys.
Ocean currents build underwater sandbars 5 to 10 feet high in a year. With the geography of the Bar constantly changing, millions of dollars per year are spent to keep shipping channels open by dredging. Each year the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers removes enough sand to fill 500,000 dump trucks - 5 to 6 million cubic yards.
in 1977 the National Transportation Safety Board declared the Columbia River Bar "a specially hazardous area." It is the only river bar in the entire 88,533 miles of the U.S. coastline that has been given this designation.
A freighter going up-river past Astoria.
All large seagoing ships crossing the Bar must have a licensed bar pilot on board. There are less than two dozen of these pilots. For the pilots, the most dangerous part of their job is getting on and off the ships. They currently use a helicopter and two specially designed 73-foot high-speed boats to make the transfers. When transferring from the speed boat, the boat gets right next to the freighter and the pilot has to grab for a ladder hanging over the side while holding onto a rope attached to the transfer boat, being careful not to get caught between the pitching speed boat and the side of the freighter. When leaving the freighter the pilot has to jump the last ten feet or so to the deck below while holding a rope in case he misses. A very tricky maneuver. There are river pilots as well as bar pilots.....the bar pilot does the bar crossings and the river pilot takes the ship from bar to destination and back to the bar.
There were no pictures of the pilot boats currently in use, but there was a model of the pilot boat Peacock which was used from 1967 to 2001. More than any other vessel, the Peacock contributed to the growth of the maritime economy of the Columbia River. The reason for including this picture is that it shows the "daughter" boat being carried on the back. This small boat slid off the rear of the Peacock to ferry the bar pilot to the ship he was to board and to pick him up on his return. Getting the "daughter" back on the Peacock would have been a little trickier than launching it. They didn't show a video of getting it back on board, maybe because it wasn't any too graceful.
Another freighter going up river with the beautiful Washington coastline in the background.
The Coast Guard maintains a very important presence around the Bar. USCG seamen save approximately 600 lives per year as well as doing the very important and difficult job of placing and maintaining all navigational aids which are crucial to safe navigation. The USCG also has elite training facilities here which prepare seamen to deal with the worst possible conditions.
This is a replica of the USCG lifeboat CG44300 (44 designates a 44-footer). She was in use for 34 years as both a training ship for seamen and as a working lifeboat. She was completely rolled over several times, pitch-poled once (flipped end-over-end) in 30 foot seas, beached and flung against ships and jetties. She was rammed by an out-of-control freighter which hit her while she was moored, knocking her through one boathouse and under another one. Observers thought she'd certainly be a total wreck but she bobbed back up from under the boathouse and didn't have to lose her job. What finally got her retired was an engine being damaged in a rescue in 1996. These lifeboats are designed to be self-righting and self-bailing, pretty much unsinkable.
View of much of the Graveyard of the Pacific from Coxcomb Hill, stretching from Astoria to the mouth of the river. Astoria covers the hill at center left all the way down to the river on three sides. The Astoria-Megler Bridge from Washington to Oregon is in the middle. Most of the bridge is close to water level, but the section close to the Oregon shore has the channel for the biggest freighters so it has to be dredged regularly. There are sand bars clearly visible near the center of the bridge which don't show up in the picture.
After the museum we went up to Coxcomb Hill at the very top of Astoria to see the Astoria Column.
This is what the GPS wanted us to go through on our way up. It did manage to find us a workable detour. The entire town of Astoria is built on a hill, except for the commercial district between the river and where the hill starts up and that isn't much. It's like a mini-San Francisco with tier after tier of houses.
The Astoria Column, built in 1926, is 125 feet high with 164 steps. No one will be surprised to hear we elected not to climb them. The history of Astoria is told in the mural encircling the column. It's quite a tourist attraction.
The best part of going up the hill is to see the magnificent view of the rivers and mountains. This view is to the southwest, the Lewis and Clark River going into Youngs Bay.
The next and final stop was Fort Clatsop where Lewis and Clark wintered from November 1805 to March 1806. The Park Service has done a very nice job of building a replica of the fort. All traces of the original have disappeared but historians are confident the replica is within feet of where the original was located.
Interior courtyard between the two 50-foot long buildings which made up the fort.
It looks like a reasonably comfortable place to live for five months. Lewis and Clark and Company didn't think so. They had a miserable time in the cold and constantly rainy weather. Their clothes had long since worn out so they dressed in deer skin. Buckskin shrinks when wet so needs to be worn as it dries so it doesn't shrink too much to put it back on. With all the rain the poor men probably weren't dry for very long. They made 338 pairs of moccasins while they were waiting for winter to end, knowing that each person would need a new pair every two or three weeks on the return trip.
Tomorrow we'll do a day-trip down the coast to see some of Oregon's famous beaches.
The other detraction for L&C at Clatsop was their relationship with the local natives who viewed them as a good source of whatever they needed.
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