USGS 50 Years in Menlo Park

A Short History of the Research Vessel Polaris

-- Length: 96 feet -- Beam: 20 feet, 8 inches -- Draft: 7.5 feet --

The Research Vessel POLARIS is a research vessel operated by the USGS out of the Port of Redwood City. Completed in 1927 and owned by the USGS since 1966, she is reputedly the oldest active vessel in the Federal service. She has a distinguished and diverse history which includes carrying Winston Churchill and Herbert Hoover (on separate occasions) prior to her entrance on duty with the USGS.

The POLARIS was originally christened the PASADO MANANA in May 1927. Designed by A. E. Hudson for Mr. Lee Allen Phillips, at that time the Vice President of the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company and President and Director of California Delta Farms, she was built on the ways at the Seacraft / Wilmington Boat Works of Mr. H.C. Carlson. The PASADO MANANA represented an outlay of more than $150,000.00 (in 1927 dollars) and a construction period of six months. PASADO MANANA is loosely translated as Day After Tomorrow or Get Around to it Tomorrow, reportedly a retort to the owner from his wife after he tried to reassure her that he would get around to some necessary task ãtomorrow. The PASADO MANANA was featured in a 1927 issue of Pacific Motor Boat and from this article we obtained a description of her when she was new.

The vessel has an overall length of 96 feet, a 20-foot beam, and a draft of 8 feet. Sturdily constructed, she has bent oak frames with the stem, sternpost and horn timbers of the same material. She is planked with 2 1/4" vertical grain Douglas Fir. The thickness of the hull increases to over 8ä at the garboard strake near the keel. The foredeck, waistdeck, deckhouses and trim are all teak with all vertical surfaces coated with varnish. The planking of the teak decks were at least 2.5" thick when new.

The original main engine was a 200 horsepower Atlas-Imperial diesel with pilothouse control, positioned exactly amidships driving a 54" three-bladed single propeller designed especially for her by William Lambie. This engine gave the vessel a cruising speed of 11 knots at 300 r.p.m. She had 2 generators, a 7.5 KW driven by the main engine and a 12.5 KW Universal generating plant. Even in 1927, the boat was outfitted with a carbon dioxide fire protection system for the engine room and the galley.

When new, the galley was fitted with an Oxo-gas kerosene stove from Shipmate and had both an electric refrigerator and an icebox. Thankfully, the kerosene stove has been changed out for an electric unit in the distant past.

The salon, as well as the other cabins of the boat, is finished in Tabasco mahogany, originally with a walnut finish, and a half-inch inlay of white hardwood. Overhead, deck carlines are also solid Tabasco mahogany. The saloon was 16- wide by 21-long and could be made into 4 separate cabins by a curtain arrangement. The lower deck has 7 of headroom throughout except for the watertight doorways and the vessel could sleep 13 guests aft and a crew of 4.

Forward of the engine room, the owner had a stateroom with a double and single bed, sitting area and head with shower. There was also a smaller forward stateroom with 2 ship style berths and a head and shower, which I understand was for use by his grandchildren. The aft cabins shared a head and shower located in the starboard forward corner of the saloon.

The Smoking Room on the upper deck aft of the bridge, which we have now outfitted as a laboratory, is 12 by 13, and is paneled in Tabasco Mahogany with half-inch white hardwood inlay and has mahogany caps on the overhead deck carlines. This compartment has 8 Regulation Pullman windows for ventilation and light. We know these windows as Pocket Windows because they lower into a lead ãpocketä for water collection and draining.

The pilothouse also has the mahogany paneling and the 2 of the Regulation Pullman windows. When new, there was a settee/couch on the after bulkhead of the pilothouse below the ship's clock and barometer. The Captain had his own cabin on the port side and a double stateroom was on the starboard side for the seaman and cook. The engineer was quartered in the pilothouse. Throughout the boat, there were double call-bells for contacting the crew and mechanical ventilators in all rooms.

In the stern, there was a 12 elliptical cockpit for either lounging or for pursuing the owners other passion, game fishing. The original owner, Mr. Lee A. Phillips, was an avid angler who enjoyed fishing for Marlin and Broadbill Swordfish. The vessel had a mooring at Catalina Island, which she visited regularly. Mr. Phillips was trained as lawyer, but felt himself a natural engineer and immersed himself in a variety of construction projects.

Lee Phillips was an avid angler and enjoyed fishing for Marlin and Broadbill Swordfish. The PASADO MANANA was used as a "floating hotel" for Mr. Phillips and his guests, among who was Winston Churchill in 1929 and former U. S. President Herbert Hoover in September 1933. Between 1902 and 1912, Mr. Phillips organized the corporations responsible for reclaiming 100,800 acres of land in the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta system upriver to Stockton. In 1905, he went to Holland to study the dike system to determine its application here. After 1927, he then used the vessel for meetings with the farmers on the diked and levied island farms in this region and for fishing and duck hunting trips. The PASADO MANANA was one of the first private vessels to have telephone land line hook-up whenever she docked. The vessel was used to travel the West Coast of North America and made many trips to Canada during prohibition. At one time, the crew was forced to discharge a load of whiskey into Puget Sound to avoid a confrontation with the U.S. Coast Guard. Two copper tanks were found by the present Master of the vessel while searching for a leak in his closet from the upper deck through a wire run. The tanks are in the aftermost bulkhead of the main cabin and are hidden by a false wall. They are approximately six inches deep; five feet tall, and five feet wide. The grandchildren I have spoken with remember a spigot of sorts on the after bulkhead in the cockpit area for dispensing an adult beverage. The mansion he built and lived in Beverly Hills was sold in 1907 to Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and became Pickfair. He is also responsible for the construction of the $10,000,000 Biltmore Hotel on Pershing Square in Los Angeles. Members of Mr. Phillips' family still reside in the Bay Area today, and grandchildren who had sailed on the PASADO MANANA have been aboard during the Survey's ownership. Mr. Phillips died in 1938.

After Mr. Phillips death, the PASADO MANANA was sold to a Mr. John Grant, described as an oilman from Los Angeles. He was the registered owner until 1944, when the U. S. Army acquired the vessel. She became an Army personnel boat, designated the Q109, and was assigned to the Seattle area. The personnel boats where used to move men and their equipment between garrisons where the Army maintained harbor installations. There was a rumor that the PASADO MANANA had been involved in a collision during this era and had been sunk. There is evidence of repair to the starboard side, so she may have sustained some damage, but nothing can be substantiated.

After the war the vessel was sold to Mr. Einar Haugen of Seattle, registered as a Yacht, with a Master and crew of five. Mr. Haugen kept the vessel until 1950, when she was sold to Mr. Robert Fleming of Los Angeles. He kept the boat for two years and sold her to Mr. Robert Paysee of Chicago, Illinois who in turn kept her through 1956. In 1957, the PASADO MANANA was purchased by the Alaska Charters, Inc. of Seattle, Washington, at which time the name was changed to POLARIS. It is believed that the vessel had continued to operate in the Puget Sound cruising area since the end of World War II, as this region would have suited her very well. Alaska Charters kept the POLARIS for two years before Mr. Ken K. Bechtel of Seattle purchased her in 1959. Mr. Bechtel and his friends cruised the POLARIS up and down the coast and the Inside Passage to Alaska. In 1959, she was repowered with a direct reversible six cylinder Union Diesel main engine of 240 horsepower at the Stone Boatyard in Alameda. This turned out to be the last Union Diesel engine made by the Oakland, California Company once located at the intersection of Union and Diesel streets.

In early 1963, the POLARIS was once again advertised for sale, at a price of $163,000.00. This time, however, she failed to attract a new owner, and so she was donated to U. C. Berkeley. The University tried to use the vessel for a variety of purposes, but each time she left her Richmond berth, reportedly, "something broke." The expenses for her upkeep, repairs, and berth where mounting when the U. S. Geological Survey came looking for a vessel to use for Marine Geology studies, such as the effects of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake in Cook Inlet, Alaska. The USGS, through a special appropriation from Congress, "purchased" the POLARIS from U. C. Berkeley for about $4,000 dollars.

The Branch of Pacific-Arctic Marine Geology received the vessel in the spring of 1966. After being modified for scientific operations, the POLARIS was used on her first cruise off the coast of Oregon, and then displayed at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco later that same year. In 1967, the vessel was taken to Prince William Sound in Alaska to survey the area, documenting the effects of the 1964 earthquake. Sub-bottom geophysical data was collected using an electronic "sparker" system and a seismic streamer. Marine Geology used the POLARIS for coastal operations until a larger ship was acquired.

The POLARIS started her career with the San Francisco Bay Estuarine Studies Group in the early 1970s. The vessel was fitted with pumps below the waterline to provide a continuous supply of Bay water to a series of instruments that recorded salinity, turbidity and fluorescence while underway. Additionally, a reel with a submersible pump at the end of a long hose was mounted on the stern to take samples from various depths at over fifteen stations, from the southern end of the Bay to Rio Vista on the Sacramento River, and the Three Mile Slough entrance on the San Joaquin River. The instruments processed this water, collected at depth, and the values recorded on strip charts.

As the scope of the operation and instrument technology has both expanded, the POLARIS has been outfitted with four hydraulic winches to handle different types of sampling. A computer running the Multiple Interface Data Acquisition System (MIDAS) has replaced the strip charts. When the POLARIS is underway between science stations, the water from the bow pump is first monitored for temperature, and is then piped through two Turner Designs instruments, a fluorometer and a nephelometer, which measure fluorescence and turbidity. The water then passes through a Seabird instrument that measures salinity. The MIDAS also records data from other onboard systems that measure air temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction.

The Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) and the video depth sounder in the pilothouse provide course, speed, latitude and longitude, as well as water depth. At thirty-six stations in the Bay, an instrument package called a CTD is lowered on a conductive wire from a hydraulic winch located above the upper laboratory. The information from this package is displayed and saved on another computer in that lab. The CTD instruments measure conductivity, temperature, depth, fluorescence, optical backscatter, and oxygen.

The POLARIS is fitted with two small hydraulic winches on her aft deck for benthos sampling. These are used for grab and core samples, and gathering biologic samples such as the invading Asian clam Potamocorbula. The boat boom can be operated in conjunction with a larger deck winch for heavier cores, launching and recovery of current meters, and the operation of a box core. A 17 foot Guardian Boston Whaler is carried on the port side boat deck for use in shallow water benthos sampling in the South Bay and in Suisun Bay. Outfitted with a boom and small hand winch, the Guardian is capable of extensive grab and small core sampling in water too shallow for the POLARIS.

For the scientists working on board the POLARIS, she provides berthing for thirteen, two heads, a shower, and a full galley. The pilothouse is equipped with a rasterscan radar and an autopilot, both connected to a Sperry Mark 37 gyrocompass, Differential GPS, Loran C, video sounder, VHF radios, and a recording fathometer. The POLARIS is operated by a crew of two Coast Guard licensed Merchant Marine Officers, assisted as necessary by the scientific party. CO2 firefighting systems are installed in the engine room, galley, and forward storage area. Two limited service life rafts are available for emergencies.

In 1988, in order to increase her reliability and reduce maintenance costs, the POLARIS' direct reversible Union Diesel main engine was removed and replaced by a Detroit Diesel 12V71. The Union Diesel engine, the last of its kind, was donated to the San Francisco Maritime Museum. The POLARIS has three electrical generators, two 30kw and one 15kw. Power rates of 240vac, 120vac, 24vdc, and 12vdc are provided for the various ships and scientific systems needs. The vessel's three fuel tanks carry more than 2500 gallons of diesel. Her fuel consumption, with the main engine and two generators operating, averages 10 gallons an hour, at a cruising speed of 10 knots.

The POLARIS was featured in one of the PBS NOVA programs, "Inside the Golden Gate", filmed in 1974. She has also been featured in National Geographic magazine, Sunset magazine, and various local newspapers and television news programs. In 1995, the vessel was the featured guest at the Festival of the Sea hosted by the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco. The POLARIS is a valuable and much loved part of the Geological Survey, continuing to provide an efficient scientific platform for the many important studies of the San Francisco Bay Ecosystem.

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