Bobkiewicz tells of history of ships named Santa Paula

March 11, 2009
Santa Paula News

When called at the last minute to speak at the February Good Morning Santa Paula City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz rose to the occasion, offering a unique program on all things - well, at least ships and a sweepstakes race - Santa Paula.

By Peggy KellySanta Paula TimesWhen called at the last minute to speak at the February Good Morning Santa Paula City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz rose to the occasion, offering a unique program on all things - well, at least ships and a sweepstakes race - Santa Paula. URS Corporation/Bob Orlando hosted the Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event held at Logsdon’s at the Santa Paula Airport.When called upon to fill the slot left open by the cancellation of State Senator George Runner, Bobkiewicz noted, “I thought, Good Morning Santa Paula is the place to come to hear things that you won’t hear anywhere else... the long and illustrious history of ships named Santa Paula!”The first good ship Santa Paula was a Union Oil “freighter built in 1900,” that Bobkiewicz said was made of wood, weighed 650 tons, and called San Francisco its home port. The steamer hull operated in tow or under sail and served the Union Oil Company, founded in the city more than 100 years ago, until 1933.“You’re probably saying, ‘Well, that’s the only ship named Santa Paula’,” but Bobkiewicz told the crowd a second ship was built during World War I “when there was a lot of need for ships for the war, that led to the creation of the USS Santa Paula,” built in Pennsylvania in 1917 for the W. R. Grace Steamship Company.The USS Santa Paula was a freighter that, when placed in service in 1918, “moved people and cargo back and forth to Europe” from the east coast to France. When the ship was decommissioned it was returned to W. R. Grace Company and put into commercial deployment, but it couldn’t escape war: Bobkiewicz said the ship - then a cargo carrier renamed the Montanan - was sunk in the Indian Ocean by Japanese torpedoes on June 3, 1943.
Shortly after World War II there was “huge interest” in commercial pleasure cruising, an interest that “started long before ‘The Love Boat’ happened.” And what happened is another W. R. Grace Cruise Line ship named Santa Paula that cruised back and forth to the Caribbean as a pleasure craft from the mid-1940s to the late 1950s. A cruise ship prior to WWII, the ship was put into service as a troop carrier and later to transport war brides of service members to the United States, giving the ship strong romantic nuance decades before “The Love Boat.”Bobkiewicz, an avid collector of all things Santa Paula, even has a doll from the ship that was the precursor to the Grace Line’s second Santa Paula, a one-stack steamer, which upon the retirement of its namesake also sailed the Caribbean route from the early 1960s to the early 1970s.Bobkiewicz noted that one of the reasons “The Love Boat” was produced and first aired in 1977 was to “revitalize the cruise industry,” which had fallen on hard times.Subsequently, the Santa Paula was renamed and ended up harbored as the Kuwait Marriott, sunk in 1991 during the first Iraq War.Switching modes of transportation, Bobkiewicz said the Santa Paula Stakes has been held annually at the Santa Anita Race Track for close to 40 years. “Don’t let it ever be said,” Bobkiewicz concluded, “that you don’t come to Good Morning Santa Paula and not learn something new!”



Site Search

E-Subscribe

Subscribe

E-SUBSCRIBE
Call 805 525 1890 to receive the entire paper early. $50.00 for one year.

webmaster