A long and useful retirement

Three more old boat photos, the remains of several WWII ships sunk as a breakwater at Oyster Bay after the war. Some were quite new when they scrapped.

H.M.C.S. Matane, aka K444, aka "Old Rust". 92 m. long. Launched 1943. Sunk here 1948. Now hosting a thriving seaweed and invertebrate community.

As she was. Naval Museum of Manitoba photo

Boat bits. This one has been identified as S.S. Betsy Ross, (Cor Caroli.)

Betsy Ross before she fell to pieces. 

Old boat, new boat

And I don't know the names of either of these boats.

The story behind these photos is here, in my earlier post, and here, on Flickr; photos and story by Fransen CR, who played around and scavenged these ships when she was a girl and they were newly sunk.

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Aquí hay tres fotos más de los barcos hundidos como rompeolas en Oyster Bay. Eran barcos que se usaban durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial y terminada la guerra, se vendieron como fierros viejos.

El primero (dos fotos) es el HCMS Matane, construido en 1942, hundido aquí en 1948. Medía 92 metros de largo.

El segundo se dice que es SS Betsy Ross, aunque ahora solo quedan pedazos. 

Y por fin, dos barcos, viejo y nuevo, sin nombres.

La historia de estos barcos se cuenta aquí en este blog, y en Flickr; la historia y unas fotos por una mujer que jugaba entre los barcos cuando era niña.

Over-exposed

At low tide on the open sandy areas north of Oyster Bay, almost all that can be seen are the sand dollars. Underneath ( I dug down) there are more sand dollars. Many more. And the occasional clam.

One of the sand dollars. To my naked eye, the live ones looked black, but the camera saw the red colour.

The exposed sand dollars were all waving their spines, trying to bury themselves in the sand as the water receded. They look helpless, but they're quite efficient diggers.

And one lonely crab molt.

Coming up to the ship graveyard, the sand dollars peter out, and other critters show up.

One of the old ships innards, draped with sea lettuce.

Those round lumps in the sand? Sand dollars, sheltering. Every few steps I could feel one crack under my foot. Sorry, guys!

Beside the ship above, I found this unhappy Opalescent nudibranch, Hermissenda opalescens. Also a worm poop.

The very low tides can be hard on creatures from the lower intertidal zones. Out of the water, those rusty iron ship bones get hot. I found a couple of limpets belly up in the heat beside this boat. I brought them home wrapped in cool, damp sea lettuce: one survived and is now cleaning the wall in my tank.

And this nudibranch was moving sluggishly, out exposed on warm sand. I took a few photos, then covered it with several layers of wet sea lettuce.

Orange starfish, with one new arm.

I found green anemones, a pink anemone, a very red one (mostly buried, keeping away from the sun), and this orangey one, under a couple of inches of water. A hermit crab is sheltering under its shadow.

A row of whelks, closed down to preserve moisture. The sea lettuce here is still wet, and if you look closely, you'll see a green anemone (or is it two?) still open for business.

Starfish can move quickly when they want. On the far side of the boat, I saw a big purple starfish. By the time I went around to that side, having to go up onto the headland to dodge shoe-eating mud, I couldn't find the star anywhere. It had probably buried itself under the sand; starfish don't like sunshine.

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Cuando la marea está baja, en la playa arenosa al norte de Oyster Bay, todo lo que se ve son los dólares de arena. Y debajo de la arena (excavé varios hoyos) lo que se encuentra son más dólares. Y una que otra almeja grande.

Los dólares de arena vivos se ven, a mis ojos, negros. Pero la cámara ve el color rojizo. Todos los vivos estaban agitando las espinas, tratando de enterrarse bajo la arena, fuera del alcance de los rayos del sol. Parecen no tener defensas, pero son capaces de desaparecer en pocos minutos.

Un cangrejo había dejado su muda de carapacho. Al tostarse se hace más rojo.

Estas mareas bajas son un episodio difícil para muchos animales de la zona baja; no toleran el sol. Y junto a los barcos viejos, que normalmente proveen habitat para muchos, ahora se siente el calor; los fierros viejos se secan y se hacen un hornito. Al lado de este barco, encontré dos lapas boca arriba, lo que no se ve si están sanos. Me los traje a casa envueltos en un poco de alga marina húmeda; una sobrevivió y ahora está felizmente limpiando la pared de mi acuario.

Y un nudibranquo, Hermissenda opalescens, sufría en la arena; apenas se movía ya. Le saqué unas fotos y luego la cubrí de varias capas de algae.

Luego había una estrella de mar anaranjada, con una pata nueva.

Y una anémona anaranjada en un poco de agua. Un ermitaño se estaba escondiendo en su sombra.

Vi anémonas verdes, color de rosa, y una de un rojo muy fuerte, casi por completo enterrada en la arena, escondiéndose del sol asesino.

Junto a los caracoles hay una anémona verde escondida entre la alga.

Las estrellas de mar se pueden mover muy rapidamente si quieren. Vi una grande, morada, al otro lado del barco. Pero cuando fui a verla, después de tener que dar toda la vuelta para evitar el lodo comezapatos, no la encontré en ninguna parte. Se habrá enterrada ya; a las estrellas de mar no les gusta el calor.

Lifer under sand

The tide was as low as it gets in midafternoon. On a sunny Sunday. Everybody and their dog was on the beach, keeping their distance, but therefore covering most of the beaches. On the north end of Oyster Bay, I found an empty beach and walked along the water's edge to the sunken boats beside the breakwater, all baking in the sun this afternoon.

Looking back the way I came.  One of the larger ships.

The sand was covered with sand dollars, from the north end of the bay almost to the ships. Thousands of sand dollars; hundreds of thousands. Not much else. But around the old ships, the sand dollars gave way to a variety of other animals.

And I saw my first live moon snails!

The first thing I saw. A moon snail egg mass collar. The eggs have hatched.

And nearby, among many collars, a live snail, Lewis's moonsnail, Euspira lewisii.

These are large snails. The visible part of the shell was about the size of my fist, 3 inches across. The mature snail gets to about 5 1/2 inches across; that looks about right.

And though the snail may cram itself inside the shell, mostly it swells up and surrounds its shell, reaching 20 cm. or more in length.

Visible in the photo above is part of the foot, thought the two tentacles are not visible. The snail hadn't moved when I went on to the shore and the last ship, then returned. It may have been busy laying eggs.

A second snail. Here one of the two tentacles is exposed.

These snails burrow through the mud, looking for clams. They bore a hole in the clamshell to eat the clam inside.

Another egg mass collar underwater, intact, but without eggs. Also a beautiful green anemone.

The egg mass is a jelly containing thousands of eggs. They hatch into microscopic free-swimming veligers which later become snails. (Other snails hatch out as tiny snails, already in their shells.)

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La marea estaba a su nivel más bajo a media tarde. Y hacía sol. En domingo. Todo el mundo andaba en las playas, manteniendo su distancia, como se hace en estos dias, pero de ese modo cubriendo toda la playa. Cerca de Bahía de los Ostiones (Oyster Bay) encontré un espacio libre, y de allí caminé hasta llegar a los barcos hundidos afuera del rompeolas de la bahía. En el momento, no seguían hundidos, se estaban tostando al sol.

Toda la playa estaba cubierta de dólares de arena (galletas de mar). Miles de dólares. Cientos de miles. Y no mucho más; un gusano o dos. Pero alrededor de los restos de los barcos, ya había una variedad de animales.

Y por primera vez vi un caracol luna en vivo.

La primera foto es de un collar que protege la gelatina donde el caracol deposita sus huevos. Los huevos ya no están allí; habrán nacido ya.

En seguida, el primer caracol, casi toda enterrada en el lodo/arena. La parte visible de la concha es más o menos el tamaño de mi puño; unas tres pulgadas. El caracol maduro llega a 5 1/2 pulgadas; parece que este es un adulto. Y puede ser que esté poniendo sus huevos; no se mudó del lugar, aunque lo toqué, me fui, y más tarde regresé; seguía en el mismo sitio.

El cuerpo de estos caracoles es muy grande; con trabajos, sacando fuera el agua, logran encerrarse en la concha, pero normalmente se extienden alrededor de la concha, llegando a 20 centímetros o más de largo.

Los huevos, cuando nacen son "veligers", animalitos microscópicos con alitas para nadar. Luego se convierten en caracoles. (Algunas otras especies de caracol salen del huevo ya con su conchita.)

Rusted Ghosts

Long, long ago, back in the 20th century (it seems strange to say that now, to me who spent most of my life in that century) when logs were logs, when the saws in the woods were manned by two lumberjacks each, perched on supports jammed high into the stump, where the 12-foot-long saw could reach across the width of the trunk, the felling of a tree was only the first part of an arduous undertaking. Somehow, those monsters had to be hauled out of the dense BC bush, loaded onto trains or trucks, and dumped in a handy harbour. From there, they could be boomed or loaded onto barges and towed to a mill, usually some distance away over treacherous waters.

Google map: Comox Harbour, Goose Spit, Royston.

One such handy dumping ground was Comox Harbour, a deep river mouth with a spit partway across the opening, creating a safe place to store log booms. A logging railway came down the coast to Royston, on the far side of the harbour.

Starting in 1911, steam locomotives hauled logs from logging camps throughout the Comox Valley to the Royston log dump. The logs were sorted into booms and towed to more protected waters on the inside of Goose Spit. From there, the steam tugs towed the log booms to Fraser Mills in New Westminster. (Royston Seaside Trail website)

The ocean here can be stormy, and the Royston log dump had no protection. In 1937, the logging company started to sink derelict ships to form a breakwater. It was the age of the steam engine, and the old sailing ships could not compete; they were among the first to be riddled with holes and left to rot on the tide flats.

The Riversdale, a steel-masted Cape Horn windjammer, launched 1894, stripped and used as a barge before she was finally sunk. The bowsprit is all that remains of the superstructure.

From the sign at the trail.

The first member of the Royston ghost fleet was the five-masted auxiliary lumber schooner Laurel Whalen. Built in 1917 by Cameron Genoa Mills Shipbuilders in Victoria, the Laurel Whalen had a brief spell as an ocean going cargo ship before being converted to a floating cannery in the 1920's. Eventually she outlived her usefulness and was brought to the breakwater site in the 1930's. (Forgotten British Columbia Facebook page)

The Melanope and the Orotava. The Melanope is the oldest of the sailing vessels, built in 1876.

A world traveller: Liverpool to Australia to Asia to Royston, hauling everything from coal to rice, later stripped down and used as a log barge.

Then came WWII.  When it was over, many of the old warships were scrapped. Several ended up in the Royston breakwater.

The Prince Rupert, a WWII frigate.

In her active days.

In all, there are 14 ships rusting away on the old breakwater: "... three windjammers, three frigates, two destroyers, three steam tugs, one (maybe two according to some accounts) harpoon boat, and two barques (a kind of “workhorse” of the 19th century sailing ships)." (atlasobscura)

Another view of the Melanope and the Orotava

320 feet long, four-masted. Captured from the Germans, WWII.

When I arrived, the tide was low, but not as low as it gets at other times. I could see fragments of other ships, barely above the surface. Some, though, even at the lowest of the low tides, are now so rusted and rotted that they have almost disappeared.

On the shore, the remains of an old rail heading out to sea. A slipway, maybe?

For more complete info, see the book The Ghost Ships of Royston, by Rick James.

Related: about the breakwater at Oyster Bay: Rust in Peace.