Cement Ship ss palo alto

The idea of constructing boats/ships out of cement was not peculiar to the days of material shortage of the First World War. The idea actually dates back to the middle of the 19th century in France. In 1848 Joseph-Lewis Lambot proposed the idea of building a couple of canoes out of cement, and despite the radical nature of the method and materials used to build the canoes, the experiment proved to be successful. Later in 1887 a small ship, the Zeemeur, was successfully constructed using similar methods and materials and over the next two decades more and larger concrete ships had been successfully constructed and placed in service.

During World War I, as would happen later in World War II, the Unterseebooten or U-boats of the Imperial German Navy were ravaging the merchant fleets of the British and its allies, including the United States. The losses of large numbers of ships combined with an acute shortage of steel in the United States, required a radical solution to this problem.

It was at this time that, at the direction of the United States Shipping Board a solution was found to meet the need for more ships by using the radical method building ships out of concrete. The U.S.S.B.S Emergency Fleet Corporation, Concrete Ship Section, had under taken the responsibility, in mid-1918, to design up to 38 ships of various types using this medium. In January 1919, the first concrete for the Design 1100 oil tanker Palo Alto was poured.

In May 1919, with great promise and even greater fanfare, SS Palo Alto was launched at the San Francisco Shipbuilding Company’s facility at the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Oakland, Calif. S.S. Palo Alto’s specifications were as follows: She had a Length of 420 ft., a Beam of 54 ft., and a draft of 35 ft.! {The U.S.S. Iowa class battleships of World War II at 54,540 tons displacement had a draft of 36 ft..} Palo Alto was powered by a Llewellen 3 cylinder triple expansion steam engine of 2800 h.p. with a single shaft and propeller and a gross tonnage of 6144 tons. As an interesting aside, the concrete material used in Palo Alto’s construction came from Davenport, Calif., only about 10 miles north of where Palo Alto lies today.

Some of the advantages mentioned in the reasoning for building ships out of concrete or more accurately in this case, shale aggregate, were as follows: There was to be a cost savings in building with concrete and an attendant savings in maintenance costs as opposed to a similar steel ship. The speed of construction was also a major factor in this endeavor.

Another factor was allegedly the ease of repair of a damaged concrete ship although that ended up not being the case due to the need of using such specialized equipment as a rotary kiln, which were not in widespread use at the time. These and other factors all contributed to the ultimate decision in favor of constructing concrete ships.

Unfortunately, it was not long after the decision to proceed was made that the whole raison d’etre of these unusual ships was negated. The First Word War ended on November 11, 1918. Equally unfortunate was the realization that these ships were very expensive to operate as they were extremely heavy and required more fuel to operate than a comparable steel ship. The combination of these and other factors would ultimately prove to be the undoing of the usefulness of these ships and consequently,   all of these ships that were constructed would have very short service lives.

In 1924, Palo Alto was towed to Oakland, Calif. where her machinery was removed and this might have been the end of the story, However,  in  1929 she gained a new lease on life.

In 1929, Palo Alto was sold to the Seacliff Amusement Corporation with the intention of making her the centerpiece of a grandiose entertainment center based on the coast at Aptos, Calif. The ship was to be transformed  into a large entertainment center with the addition of a dance hall, restaurant  and an arcade and other amenities including even a swimming pool in the former engine room.

In early 1930, Palo Alto was towed from Oakland, Calif. to her present location just off shore at Seacliff State Beach, Aptos, Calif. There, she  was  permanently  moored  and work immediately began to transform the ship and to build a pier from the shore for access to the ship.

The ship/entertainment center, opened in June 1930 and even in the early years of the Great Depression it was a successful enterprise Palo Alto’s heyday was unfortunately not long lived. She hosted many visitors during the 1930 and 1931 summer seasons but during the winter storms of 1932, the Palo Alto cracked amidships and this heralded the end of her days as an entertainment venue.

Shortly thereafter, Palo Alto’s fittings and any other useful equipment was sold for scrap and the dance hall and restaurant etc. were dismantled and removed. A few years later the bare bones of the broken former oil tanker was reopened to the public as a fishing pier, a role in which she served the public admirably for many decades until again being closed off due to severe deterioration.

In 2019, Palo Alto will celebrate her centenary and I have little doubt that in one form or another, she will see at least 100 more years as a land mark and curiosity…a forgotten relic of World War I.