You may have heard of the expression, “Things that go bump in the night.” This story involves the collision of the irresistible force against the immovable object and the consequence of getting caught between a rock and a hard place.
Paul Mark assembled an able-bodied crew of determined men dedicated to the idea of success in the salvage of a behemoth hulk, the 263-foot-long, 48-foot-wide and over 20-foot-tall sunken vessel. It was a virtual submerged football field of a vessel known as the Bernert Barge Lines B-8 Rock Barge, lying on the bottom of the Columbia River near the Washington State shoreline, about one mile downstream of the Highway 97 Bridge crossing at Biggs Junction, Oregon, on the Columbia River.
The story of the B-8 Barge salvage job requires some background information on the events that preceded the big wreck and sinking of the vessel. Many experienced salvors said that it could not be salvaged in one piece as a complete and intact vessel.
Late one fateful night, in the middle of winter in February, around the 22nd of the month, 1996, Bob Bernert’s crew on the tugboat MT Lori B, of the Bernert Barge Lines Company, was headed downstream out of the John Day Dam pool navigation portage locks system on the mighty Columbia River. It so happened that this night coincided with one of the biggest Chinook Wind and torrential, warm rain events experienced in the Oregon and Washington state river systems for many years. It caused extensive flooding throughout the entire region.
The MT (Motor Tug) Lori B was pushing a string of three barges carrying wood chips and smooth, river rock gravel used for concrete production. All the barges in the tow string were fully loaded. The volume of water in the entire Columbia River System was flowing above flood stage and all the dams were in maximum spillway jettison mode, releasing as much river water as possible. In other words, the river was roaring, the rain was pouring, the temperature was soaring, and the tremendous Cascade Mountain Range snowpack was melting fast.
The Lori B captain eased the tugboat and barge string out of the lower locks protective channel and out into the mainstream of the mighty Columbia River torrent just below the massive John Day Dam. It was an immediate rude awakening into a very viscous, wild and out of control downstream rapid ride to the Biggs Junction Highway 97 Bridge channel.
The famous Highway 97 Biggs Junction Bridge connects Oregon and Washington at their respective North and South borders. Spanning over the Columbia River, the bridge is located about five miles downstream of the John Day Dam navigation locks. It is a large, spanning, steel bridge, two lanes wide and acts as a main connecting arterial highway for automobiles and heavy trucking transportation between Washington and California. This bridge is the Oregon-Washington connection on what is referred to by many over the road, long-haul truckers as, “The Old Jippo Trail.”
Two main concrete bridge support piers are the primary foundation for the enormous edifice, one on the Oregon side and one on the Washington side. These piers are solid, steel-reinforced concrete measuring more than twenty-five feet wide, fifty feet long and over eighty feet deep, imbedded into the ancient, igneous basalt, rimrock canyon wall. They are huge!
The tugboat Lori B came out of the locks and into the main channel of the river when tragedy struck. The main tow wire connecting the long string of barges broke on the starboard side and the barges immediately started to move out of position to the portside. The captain and crew tried to maintain control of the barges as the fast raging currents pushed the entire floating mass ever closer to the Biggs Junction Highway 97 Bridge channel.
The river water flow rate out of the dam was at record levels, with millions of cubic feet of water cascading over the dam every few seconds. The US Army Corps of Engineers had adjusted the Columbia River System Dams’ river water spillways to maximum release capacity.
This 1996 warming Chinook Winds event caused major flooding. It was a huge, natural disaster that completely inundated many areas in the region, including lower Oregon City, Oregon, on the banks of the Willamette River and the famous Warm Springs River Indian Reservation Kahneetah Hot Springs Resort located on the banks of the Warm Springs River near Madras, Oregon.
The crew of the Lori B had just a few minutes to make corrections to their barge string before meeting the bridge. Needless to say, there just wasn’t enough time and real estate to make the necessary corrections. The broken tow-wire had the barge configuration out of control.
The massive, one-of-a-kind, modified, million-dollar, Bernert B-8 rock barge, loaded to its maximum with 3000 tons of 2-inch-minus, smooth, river rock gravel cargo, struck the Oregon side bridge pier. The enormous force and velocity of the collision ruptured the portside of the vessel hull eight feet below the waterline with a gigantic, gashed hole more than ten feet long. The portside, aft, interior, compartment bulkhead also split open into a huge, gaping rupture over one foot wide and eight feet high. River water poured into the internal, well deck, open cargo holds of the barge and it immediately flooded the complete interior of the vessel. The B-8 Barge was sinking fast.
The bridge was closed for one week after the collision accident and all highway traffic had to be re-routed down to the Dallas Dam bridge, via Interstate 84, then back up on the Washington side on Highway 14. It was reopened after the State Highway Department determined that no significant structural damage had occurred to the Oregon side bridge support pier. The pier would later be patched up and repaired with concrete facing work.
When the B-8 barge struck the submerged, steel-reinforced concrete, bridge pier, the barge was ripped wide open below the water line as it set up and scraped along the submerged bridge pier lower expansion shelf. The entire midsection on the port side of the B-B barge was massively damaged. Near the aft end of the barge, the portside, interior bulkhead of the huge well deck cargo compartment structure protecting the interior was breeched with a one-foot wide and eight-foot tall vertical bulkhead separation. The river water gushed directly into the barge and flooded the entire interior bathtub style cargo holding compartment. The watertight integrity of the massive rock barge was lost. It sank rapidly to the river bottom.
The MT Lori B. and the two other barges were forced into the bridge pier by the strong river current, as the B-8 Barge broke free from the tow. It continued drifting downstream, with one deckhand stuck on board. The captain of the Lori B. finally freed his tugboat and two barges from the bridge pier. The river current velocity was so great, that it took a magnificent job of river boat piloting expertise to free the trapped vessels from their precarious predicament.
The captain knew he had a deckhand stranded on the B-8 Rock Barge floating down river fast. As soon as he broke the big tow free of the bridge pier entrapment, he opened up the 4000 horsepower combined engine throttles to make up time and get to the rock barge as fast as possible. He arrived near the Washington shoreline just in time for the trapped deckhand to step on board the Lori B. The B-8 Rock Barge immediately disappeared beneath the waves and sank to the river bottom at that very moment in time. Whew!
The Columbia River in February is freezing cold water. During a monumental flood event, loss of life could rapidly occur. Fortunately, the deckhand narrowly escaped certain death from hypothermia and going adrift in a raging river in the middle of the night during a massive rain and windstorm. Praise God!
The crew had directed the barges toward the Washington shoreline shallow water area and the B-8 Rock Barge came to rest on the smooth, flat, gravel, river bottom in about 30 feet of water, approximately one mile downstream and west of the Biggs Junction Bridge near the north shoreline. The giant gantry tower structure on B-8 was still visible above the surface of the river. It showed the position of the wreck which was resting on its hull and upright on the river bottom. The B-8 Rock Barge wreck was well out of the main river channel and therefore posed no threat to river traffic navigation. Visualize a complete football field, over twenty feet thick, totally submerged 32 feet underwater and you will begin to get an idea of the scope and magnitude of the colossal, behemoth hulk of a barge resting on the bottom of the Columbia River.
The B-8 Rock Barge was a very unique and different type of rock barge. Nothing like it had ever been built or used before on the Columbia River system. Bernert Barge Lines had refitted and fabricated the World War Two era, Army Surplus, APL Barge into a specialized hopper barge that had the capacity to carry 3000 tons of rock gravel in ten separate material hoppers. They were connected together by an internalized, lower belt, conveyor system. A huge, onboard, gantry tower and a large, off-loading projection, adjustable, conveyor belt ramp which all worked together for depositing the gravel loads at the designated shore-side delivery pier stations automatically. This was a very costly modification, which entailed over one-million dollars of barge refitting, customized fabrications and labor investments.
Most rock barges were unloaded using derrick barge cranes or shore stationed cranes equipped with massive, clam-style, digging buckets and extra-long, crane booms. The process was very time consuming and costly. Each bucket load of gravel had to be picked up from the gravel barge by the crane operator using his clam bucket. Then it had to be swung over to the shore-side hopper or gravel pile and released. A repetitive swinging of the clam bucket back and forth, hanging down from the tip of the massive crane boom until finally, after several hours, the rock barge would be unloaded. Then it would be sent back out with the towboat to the gravel rock source to be reloaded, as the entire process was continuously repeated.
The B-8 rock barge was unique because the gravel could be off-loaded very rapidly using the system built into the barge. That vastly reduced the turnaround time necessary with the typical flat deck, gravel barges. Bernert Barge Lines had high hopes for the barge in making money on the river moving gravel rock to the various concrete batch plants in the Portland/Vancouver area. They served the expanding, building construction market by providing fresh batch concrete material.
The salvage operation of this massive barge was postponed until the late summer and early fall season, after the terrific Cascade mountain range spring and summer snowpack meltdown. The river levels continued to recede back to normal levels and the river currents slowed to more manageable conditions for marine vessels, construction equipment and divers to work in safely.
Paul Mark and Bob Bernert began planning the enormous salvage project. Other marine salvors and diving companies approached Bernert Barge Lines with the intention of possibly gaining the salvage job contract. They expressed that the best way to deal with the huge, sunken hulk sitting on the river bottom near Biggs Junction, Oregon, was to cut it into small pieces, using divers equipped with underwater cutting torches, and then load it onto barges with massive floating derrick barge cranes. The pieces would then be barged down river to the Portland iron scrap yards for recycling disposal.
Those marine salvage companies proclaimed that this was the only way to deal with the situation. They said that it would be impossible to refloat the sunken vessel because of the bathtub style, open well deck, cargo holds, interior design.
The small amount of interior lift capacity contained in the side bulkheads and the well deck false bottom was insufficient to provide enough vertical lift displacement to refloat the vessel. Pumping out the massive bathtub cargo hold using huge water pumps would be physically impossible with the side gunnels of the vessel still below the waterline. They declared that the only option available to remove the wreck was to cut it into pieces, load it onto barges, and tow it down river for scrap. The insurance companies would have to pay the freight and the salvage diving companies would make millions. Bob Bernert would lose his marvelous, newly refurbished, rock barge contraption forever.
Years later, after the B-8 Rock Barge salvage job, Bernert Barge Lines ended up sinking two more rock barges. They were both cut up by divers underwater, using contract diving companies, and then scrapped out just as described in the above scenario.
Paul Mark had other ideas. He knew that with the right equipment, the right salvage crew of operators, and the right diver, that he could salvage the barge and return it to full operational service capacity on the river.
Those “cut and run” technique salvors were wrong and Paul Mark was right! It wouldn’t be easy. The work would be hard and long, but God willing, it could and would get done. Paul Mark was one of the originals of adapt, innovate, improvise and overcome in diving construction because he had been a super diver on the Columbia River. His entire marine construction career as a diver and marine construction company owner had been built on his “Can Do!” philosophy. You never told Paul that something was impossible. He lived to prove you wrong and he would do it consistently time and time again throughout the duration of his illustrious and lengthy construction and salvage diving career.
The story of this incredible salvage job is unique and amazing. It deserves a place in the annuls of history with some of man’s greatest achievements ever performed on the planet. The course had been set and the plans had been made. Now it was merely a matter of time to wait for the seasons to run their course and the rest of the winter snowpack to melt in preparation for the great 1996 B-8 Rock Barge Salvage Job in Biggs Junction, Oregon.
Paul and his son Craig continued their pile driving business operation in the Portland/Vancouver area through the rest of the winter when most of that work was performed. They made the usual barge moves and fulfilled their marine construction contracts, working into the spring and early summer. Behind the scenes, Paul was slowly working with his ideas and assembling the necessary salvage equipment for the Biggs Junction job. Paul always played his cards close to his chest, and only he and his son Craig had the immediate “need to know” knowledge concerning the rapidly approaching salvage job lurking just over the horizon.
Tory van Dyke was working with Paul and Craig on the river doing various construction and diving jobs and he was clueless about the upcoming B-8 salvage job. One day, in the middle of August, they took a trip up river, towing a newly acquired 12-foot-long Zodiac inflatable boat equipped with 50 H.P. outboard motor. They traveled up to Biggs Junction and Tory made an exploratory diving inspection on the wreck. Later, Tory and Paul would return with a video camera and special underwater housing to make a video tape survey dive. Tory video tape recorded the entire 263-foot-long wreck, highlighting the tremendous underwater hull damage to the portside of the enormous barge. The underwater video tape footage was carefully studied and scrutinized to further formulate ideas necessary to overcome the tremendous structural damage done to the barge hull in order to successfully salvage the great vessel.
Paul and Craig moved their efforts into high gear. Bob Bernert, with his MT Mary B. tugboat and crew worked with Paul and they moved a massive construction salvage operation from Paul’s Camas, Washington, floating construction yard up to Biggs Junction alongside the wreck of the B-8 barge. The floating salvage construction city of derrick barges, flat deck barges, material barges, tugboats and auxiliary equipment made quite an island out on the river near the Washington shoreline. It floated on the river surface below the famous Mary Hill Museum, seated high on the canyon wall above the river. It was an unusual display of marine construction equipment and became a floating landmark for the next six weeks to travelers and truckers passing by on Interstate 84. The huge marine construction presence of derrick barges, tugboats and flat deck barges all congregated in one spot on the big reservoir just below the John Day Dam was quite a sight to behold.
Years earlier, in the late 1950’s, SCUBA equipped construction divers Paul Mark, Bud Sanders and Tommy Amerman worked together on the construction project of the John Day Dam for several years. They worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as diving contractors with Commercial Divers, Inc. Now Paul and his son Craig had returned to the area to work on the massive rock barge salvage operation.
One of the first diving duties Tory van Dyke performed on the wreck was to place marker buoys visible topside on the bow and on the sides of the wreck every fifty feet to help identify the wreck’s position on the bottom. It was facing with the bow of the barge pointed downstream at a southwest attitude. The water was slightly over thirty feet deep and the river bottom was relatively flat. The barge was fully loaded with 2-inch minus, smooth. river rock gravel to the tune of 3000 tons.
The freeboard on the sides of the barge at the time of the wreck collusion against the Highway 97 Oregon side Biggs Junction Bridge pier was slightly less than two feet. Once the barge struck the pier violently and the watertight integrity was lost, it sank quickly. The massive gash torn into the port side bilge keel region amidships and toward the bow, combined with the bulkhead rupture aft, that exposed the inner barge, cargo region, bathtub, compartment area to massive water infiltration and flooding. The barge quickly lost its two feet of freeboard and came to rest on the river bottom.
It took quite a heroic effort by the captain and crew of the Tugboat Lori B. to reach and rescue the stranded deckhand from the B-8 Rock Barge near the Washington side of the river in time before it sank in thirty feet of water. The barge rested there, out of harm’s way, clear of the river navigation channel, for more than six months. The river water currents and clarity, weather forecasts and salvage preparations, all moved into more favorable conditions for the salvage operation’s success.
Paul and Craig assembled their equipment and crew at Biggs Junction on September 1, 1996. The main salvage crew took up temporary residence on the Mark Marine Service Tugboat MT Patricia. They slept onboard and took their meals on the boat for the next six weeks. The salvage crew included Paul Mark as the Salvage Master and Material Supplies Procurement Officer, Craig Mark as the Tugboat Captain, Crane Operator and General Foreman, Dennis Forsberg as the Deck Engineer and Boat Operator, Jerry Nodine as the Crane Operator and Welder, Tory van Dyke as the Contract Diver, and two other men working as Diver Tenders and Deck Hands.
The inflatable, outboard-equipped, 12-foot-long, Zodiac boat was used as a super-fast shuttle to move men, equipment and lightweight materials from the beach at Biggs Junction out to the big, floating, salvage city habitat adjacent to the wreck of the B-8 Barge.
Paul Mark and Tory van Dyke shared a room at the NU-VU Motel in Biggs Junction, right next to the best restaurant in town, Jack’s Fine Foods. They spent the next six weeks eating breakfast and dinner together at Jack’s Restaurant. They engaged in continuous troubleshooting dialogue about the barge salvage job progress. Breakfast and dinner conversation centered around the job. They even discussed it at night before shut eye in the motel room. Paul never had any doubt in his mind about the success of the salvage mission and neither did Tory. “We can. We will. We did!”
Tory ate two breakfasts every morning and skipped lunch because he was suited up in his drysuit for the entire day’s work underwater. Paul and Tory ate steak dinners or dinner specials every night and always enjoyed the excellent bread pudding for dessert, which was included with the meals. Jack’s was a great place to eat!
The salvage crew was known to come ashore after their dinner on the tugboat to have a few highballs, cocktails and beers. Later in the evening, it was touch and go getting back to the tugboat for sleep, as they carefully sought to avoid hitting the navigation beacons in the pitch-black darkness. Running wide open throttle in the Zodiac inflatable boat between the beach and the floating, salvage city was quite hazardous. However, the brave crew was always amply fortified for the nocturnal challenge!
Jack’s Restaurant had a large cocktail lounge which overlooked the Columbia from its strategic, hillside, river view position. It had a bird’s eye view of the B-8 Rock Barge wreck location and the floating, salvage city. Many lounge patrons spent long hours sipping cocktails and observing the salvage team’s progress working all day on the barge salvage job. It was live action theatre and the locals all became very interested in the progress being made. They had been looking at the wrecked barge for over six months, just sitting there on the river bottom. Now, something was finally being done to remove the giant object from the panoramic and picturesque Columbia River view.
The barge salvage job literally became the talk of the town. Biggs Junction is a crossroads between the Jippo Trail Highway 97 truckers’ north-south route and the main east-west arterial highway for heavy transportation and travel which is Interstate 84. The big Highway 97 Biggs Junction Bridge connects Washington and Oregon at the border of the two states, the Columbia River.
While Biggs Junction only has a permanent population of less than 200 people, the outlying cities of Goldendale, Washington, The Dalles, Oregon, Rufus, Oregon, and the other small towns in close proximity to the area added to the local population with day workers employed in the local businesses. The locals all became very interested in the frenzied action taking place out on the river. Waitresses, barmaids, cocktail waitresses, bartenders, cooks, dishwashers, gas station attendants and other locals in the bar and the restaurant became first name basis friends with the salvage crew members.
The job was on such a grandiose scale, that many casual bystanders and onlookers began placing bets and wagers on the ultimate success or failure of the salvage mission. Most of the great salvage diving companies in the Portland area had already weighed in that the salvage of the 263-foot-long, B-8 Rock Barge, as a complete and intact vessel, was not only a ridiculous waste of time, but that it was also utterly impossible.
Interestingly, six weeks later when the barge was successfully salvaged and towed to the Oregon shoreline alongside the beach at Biggs Junction, the entire town turned out to see the amazing sight. Mark Marine Services spent the next several days giving the whole town onboard tours of the salvaged vessel, while sharing some of the many details involved in the monumental task of raising the behemoth hulk.
Plans were put into action as the B-8 Barge salvage job began on September 1, 1996.
One of the first ideas used to salvage the B-8 Barge was to tap into the pre-plumbed, dewatering system on the entire starboard side of the vessel using water pumping hoses and air ventilation hoses. Both sides of the vessel had been equipped with piped fittings for pumping out the internalized chamber cells between the barge hull, the well deck and the interior bulkhead structures.
The barge was open inside and resembled a gigantic battub. The outside hull, on the bottom and the sides from the stem to the stern, was constructed of solid steel plating 5/16” thick. The interior hull structure bulkheads and well decks were built of ¼” thick steel plate material. The internal sides and the false bottom of the barge were separated by a divided, air compartment structure void, two feet thick, thus the outside hull of the vessel was separated from the interior bulkhead of the vessel.
The inside, bathtub, well deck, cargo hold was a false bottom that had a two-foot-thick void of air space between the false bottom and the actual outside hull. It contained separated, watertight compartments which acted as independent, water-tight, floatation chambers. These separated watertight compartments were plumbed with fixed, 2-inch piping designed to pump out and dewater individual compartments that might develop leaks over time. All the piping was located on each side of the barge main deck catwalks. They were also plumbed with air vent piping. A complete series of manholes, equipped with flush deck, quick-release hatches were also located on the catwalk main decks on each side of the vessel. These allowed entry into divided compartment air spaces for complete access as necessary. The quick-release hatches could be removed to allow large, water pumping hoses to be inserted into the respective air space compartments for dewatering purposes.
Because the barge hit the bridge pier on the portside and damaged the portside hull in the bridge keel region amidships and toward the bow of the vessel, the integrity for pumping those watertight chambers was already lost. Plumbing into the starboard side to dewater that portion of the vessel was the only option available.
When you pump out any underwater chamber to dewater flooded compartments, you must pump air down to vent the chambers to replace the water that is being pumped out. It is similar to pouring gasoline out of a small gas can. Unless you open the vent on the top of the can, your gasoline flow out of the can will be very restricted. The same method applies to watertight chambers flooded in sunken vessels.
The B-8 Barge was sitting upright and resting on the river bottom in 32 feet of water. A large, 200-foot-long and 48-foot-wide, flat deck, gravel barge was moved alongside the starboard side of B-8. It was secured and tied off to the B-8 main deck catwalk side cleats. Eight, 2-inch sized, water pumps were positioned on the portside of the material gravel barge and plumbed into the dewatering fittings on the starboard side main deck catwalk of the B-8 Barge by the diver. 2-inch diameter water hoses and 1-1/2-inch diameter air hoses were attached to their respective piped, deck fittings by the diver and secured with soft lines to the deck of the material barge above the waterline.
After all the pumps and vent hoses were connected to the proper main deck fittings on the sunken barge, the dewatering operation started. In less than 30 minutes the barge rolled over onto its portside because all the water had been removed from the starboard watertight compartments within the side bulkhead and false bottom structures. The gravel cargo load shifted to the portside and all the gravel rock contained in the 10 massive, gravel loaded hoppers spilled out of the wreck and onto the river bottom, coating it with 3000 tons of two-inch minus, smooth, river rock gravel.
A small amount of the gravel rock load spilled into the bottom of the barge well deck below the hoppers onto the portside bulkhead. This left-over gravel rock cargo would later be air-lifted off the barge and into the river using a 20-inch diameter air-lift pipe, twenty-five feet long, attached to the crane and manipulated by the diver inside the barge on the well deck bottom. Virtually the entire 3000-ton load of rock gravel was spilled out of the 10 barge hoppers before it was salvaged when the barge rolled over onto its portside with the initial dewatering effort. The air-lift system merely cleaned up the residual spillage from inside the bottom of the bathtub well deck area between the interior, portside bulkhead and the hoppers.
The big advantage gained in the salvage operation from dewatering the starboard side of the vessel was the shift of the barge onto its portside. This allowed the majority of the cargo gravel rock load to spill off the barge and onto the river bottom. Thus, the entire cargo load was effectively off-loaded and cleared to lighten the gross weight of the vessel for the salvage mission to continue.
All the pumps and air vent fitting hoses were removed from the starboard side and the vessel immediately flooded again and righted itself back into its previous hull resting position on the river bottom.
Many of the salvage crew members thought that the barge was nearly salvaged because it flipped over when the starboard side compartments were pumped out. The starboard side of the vessel was high and dry out of the water. The river was 32 feet deep, but the vessel was 48 feet wide. Resting on its portside brought the barge starboard side high out of the water. The rock gravel cargo load spilled out of the hoppers and was effectively removed instantaneously and evacuated from the wreck when it tipped over, but the salvage mission was only beginning.
The next step was to cradle the B-8 rock barge underneath with a series of ten, 1 ½-inch diameter thickness, heavy, wire rope cables over 100 feet long each. These would be used as slings and attached to the deck winches on the two, large flat deck barges positioned alongside and parallel to each side of the sunken vessel.
Twenty deck winches were welded to the material barge decks to hold the wire rope slings. Two manual-operated deck winches positioned, with one each on opposite sides of the sunken barge to receive the wire sling ends for each wire. A total of 10 wires were installed as lifting support slings and positioned underneath the hull of the sunken barge. They were attached to the corresponding twenty deck winches, welded down, and positioned on the side of the moored, material barges. The diver had to feed a soft line attached to the end of each wire rope sling, one at a time, underneath the 48-foot wide, hull bottom of the rock barge. The line was placed from one side under the barge and then up to the surface on the other side.
The diver swam the softline into the proper position underneath the hull on the bottom and pushed it through and underneath the hull as far as it would go. Then he would swim back down the side of the barge, along the bottom section underneath and around the stern. He swam back up the other side of the hull on the bottom to locate the soft line attached to the wire sling. Once he located that, he would pull the soft line through the rest of the way underneath the hull and them swim the end of the soft line back up to the surface. The topside diver tender or deckhand would grab the soft line and start pulling it up until he had the wire rope sling on deck and ready to be secured into the receiving deck winch drum. The diver performed this procedure ten times for each of the ten wire rope slings. The ten wire rope slings were spaced roughly 20 feet apart under the massive hull of the B-8 Barge for a total length of about 200 feet.
In essence, the ten wire rope slings represented a combined, gigantic, lifting cradle that would be used to support the sunken vessel and stabilize it, as the massive dewatering process commenced. As the vessel gained more and more floatation buoyancy, the slack in the cradle wires would be taken up on the 20 respective deck winches. They were welded opposite each other on each side to the flat deck material barges.
The two, side-attached, 190-foot-long, 12-foot-deep, flat deck, material barges were flooded with water to lower them down, closer to the river water level. When the barges were pumped out, they produced substantial additional lift on the B-8 Rock Barge. The side barges tied in together with one another by the 10 wire rope slings cradled underneath the hull of B-8 Rock Barge and connected to the 20 deck winches. Once the sides of the gigantic rock barge cleared the waterline in the river, then the huge, bathtub, interior, barge reservoir could be dewatered and the salvage would be completed.
Four, forty thousand-gallon, military surplus, polypropylene, flexible, diesel fuel bladders, 40 feet long and eight feet wide, were installed underneath the 10 rock hoppers steel I-beam support structures inside the cargo compartment hold. Two fuel bladders were installed on each side of the hoppers and placed end to end, with one in the forward section and one in the after section on each side of the barge. The fuel bladders would be pumped full of compressed air to act as gigantic lifting bags. Each fuel bladder filled with air provided 320,000 pounds of buoyant lift capacity, for a combined total of 1,280,000 pounds of buoyancy lift.
Combine the four fuel bladders lifting capacity with the lift of the two, 190-foot-long, 42-foot-wide, 12-foot-deep, flat deck material barges, as they were pumped out and dewatered, tied into and cradling the B-8 Barge with the 10 wire rope sling wires, and that terrific buoyancy force would ultimately lift the B-8 barge side gunnels and decks above the river level waterline. Once the B-8 Barge sides were above the waterline, then the internal cargo compartment, well deck, bathtub hold could be dewatered using several 5-inch and 7-inch size water pumps. At that point, the B-8 Rock Barge would once again float on its own buoyancy hull displacement.
“Archimedes’ principle states that the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially submerged, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces and acts in the upward direction at the center of mass of the displaced fluid. Archimedes’ principle is a law of physics fundamental to fluid mechanics. It was formulated by Archimedes of Syracuse.” —Wikipedia
Forty, 4’X8’, ¾-inch thick, plywood sheets had to be installed as overhead decking, underneath the ten hopper support I-beam structures. Ten plywood sheets were required as overhead decking support for each 40,000 gallon, fuel bladder to hold it in position. They had to be tied into position, attached to the I-bean steel support structure, to hold the inflated fuel bladders in position under the hopper supports. Without the plywood decking installed overhead and underneath the hopper support structures, the fuel bladders would have immediately floated up to the surface between the steel support structures when they were inflated with compressed air.
The diver had to swim each piece of plywood into position, one piece at a time. He tied it into place underneath the steel overhead supports using four, small, nylon, soft lines. They were tied off topside, into the pre-drilled holes, in each corner of the 40 plywood sheets, before being placed in the water for the diver.
A short section of heavy log boom chain was loaded onto each sheet of plywood to counter the floatation of the wood. The diver dragged the plywood, with the chain section on it, underneath the hopper support structures, inside the long cargo hold, along the bottom of the well deck. He positioned it for release, upward under the steel hopper support structures. The boom chain was removed, and the plywood floated upward. The diver guided it into place and then tied the plywood piece into position. This had to be done forty times until the overhead, plywood deck was finally finished and ready to receive the four massive fuel bladders.
The fuel bladders had to be carefully reeved underneath the open, aft section, on each side of the hoppers support structure and towed along the bottom of the well deck, using a long softline pulled through by the crane. The diver had to cautiously work each fuel bladder along the bottom of the cargo well deck, underneath the support structures and into their proper resting positions, underneath the overhead, plywood decking assemblies.
This had to be done four times. It took painstaking planning and precision performance to carry out this very difficult and delicate task. Each fuel bladder was ultimately placed into its proper position under the overhead, plywood decking material. The diver’s job became more and more difficult, as the massive well deck cargo compartment filled up on each side, with salvage materials strategically placed. His emergency escape routes from underneath and inside the well deck cargo area of the wreck were constantly be reduced by the accumulation of all the salvage materials installed within the overhead support structures.
Captain Craig Mark was operating the crane. He had to be very careful not to bring too much tension on the reeving line attached to the fuel bladder, as the diver carefully swam inside the cargo hold, quickly guiding each fuel bladder past all the fouling hazards and into its proper position. Line pull signals were used for diver to tender communications, which allowed for more specific directions to the crane operator if things went awry.
The fuel bladders provided tremendous floatation lift and worked excellent. Once the bladders reached the surface, as the barge gained buoyancy, they lost all their lifting force because they were on the surface and no longer submerged. They had done their job.
One smaller 20,000-gallon fuel bladder was positioned in the aft end of the barge under some existing small, steel deck structures, without any overhead, plywood support installed. As soon as the compressed air was pumped into it, the bladder immediately escaped out of the small containment decking area and floated to the surface. The four, large, fuel bladders worked very well under their plywood overhead decking and provided great buoyancy lift assistance for the B-8 Barge salvage. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Paul Mark went into The Dalles, Oregon, and procured hundreds of diagonally side-cut, 10-inch long, 2X4 wooden wedges that were used for filling cracks underwater in the hull of the B-8 Rock Barge. Tory the Diver hammered the wooden wedges into place and filled up the steel hull cracks and holes. More than a hundred wooden wedges were used to stop water infiltration through the damaged hull as it was being pumped out. Other materials were also used to fill in the big holes and cracks in the hull, including larger pieces of wood, 2X4’s of different lengths as required, blankets, sleeping bags and other forms of watertight stuffing, with the intention of slowing down the water infiltration into the hull, as the huge water pumps were busy dewatering the vessel.
It was clearly evident from the beginning of the job, that the hull damage from the collision was so extensive, that the vessel would ultimately have to be drydocked for major hull repairs before being returned to full service on the river. Pounding wooden wedges into hull cracks and holes as damage control plugs, stopped water flow as much as possible and assisted in the salvage and dewatering process to get the barge floating on its own again. The permanent, major repairs would come later at Paul Mark’s Camas, Washington, floating vessels and construction equipment material yard and in the Sundial Drydock at Troutdale, Oregon, just across the river.
Turning the bow toward the shoreline and northeast into shallower water allowed for a slight exposure of the bow section of the B-8 Rock Barge, where primary dewatering of the vessel commenced. As the bow section compartment began to gain buoyancy through constant pumping, the vessel slowly began to gain more exposure above water. All the installed, salvage, lifting components worked together to provide substantial lift. The lift gains allowed the vessel to be moved closer and closer into shallower water on the Washington shoreline. Slowly, and with the addition of more pumps for continuous dewatering, the huge vessel began to reemerge from the watery deep where it had rested, submerged and trapped for over six months.
Eventually, the B-8 Barge began floating on its own hull displacement and the entire giant bathtub cargo hold was completely dewatered. It was towed over to the Oregon shoreline and secured in place alongside the beach. The whole town of Biggs Junction turned out for tours of the B-8 Rock Barge and Mark Marine Services salvage crew members were there to answer all of their questions. Bets were paid off at Jack’s Lounge and the drinks flowed freely for several days.
One of the first repairs completed, once the barge was floating again, was to weld up the giant fracture in the portside, bulkhead, aft section of the cargo hold. It was essential to weld the side split in the aft interior cargo bulkhead and close it immediately to restore integrity to the entire, inner cargo hold, well deck of the vessel. The welding repairs made the huge bathtub compartment once again watertight.
Salvage Summary
The B-8 Rock Barge was salvaged with a side flip, a huge wire rope cradle, two side barges, some major lift bags, a constant shuffle move into shallower water and lots of big water pumps running 24 hours a day for several days. The vessel slowly gained buoyancy from hours of constant pumping action to discharge the water from inside the flooded barge compartments. It was dewatered first at the bow compartment section, using a snorkel pipe, steel extension tube sealed over the bow deck hatch. The bow section eventually began to rise up and worked as a huge, high canter-lever. The massive lever action eventually brought the heavy stern section out of the water. Dewatering, with constant water pump action 24 hours a day, working from the bow to the stern, discharging the accumulated water overboard from inside the wreck, and dewatering the two side-mounted, saddle-side barges finally refloated the giant vessel.
The B-8 Rock Barge was towed downstream and through the Dalles Dam navigation locks. It was secured in a large, shallow, water storage, mooring slip in Hood River, Oregon, until late December 1996. Craig Mark and his crew used the MT Patricia to tow the B-8 Rock Barge down to the Mark Marine Services Vessel and Equipment Yard in Camas, Washington. It was repaired in part at the yard and then moved across the river to the Sundial Drydock in Troutdale, Oregon, in the Spring of 1997, where it was repaired below the waterline. Paul and Craig Mark returned the B-8 Rock Barge to active duty service in the Fall of 1997.
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First-hand narrative from Tory the Diver about the salvage of the B-8 Rock Barge
The B-8 Barge salvage job was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on a diving job that lasted for six weeks and burned up an average of four SCUBA tanks a day. I spent every day, all day long, in my drysuit, and most of the time underwater. I would come up for supplies and change bottles every so often, but most of the time I was busy working on the day’s underwater assignments, doing the best that I could do to get the barge floating again.
I had thirty-two SCUBA tanks on the job. About once a week, I would travel back down river to Vancouver, Washington, to Jim Larsen’s DOLPHIN TOO Dive Shop and pump bottles. Jim was very gracious to give me a key to the business and full access to his air compressor and storage bottles. I went in there day or night and pumped bottles and then went back up the river on the road to Biggs Junction to continue in the ongoing salvage mission.
It was a great challenge. Paul Mark was very kind to allow me to do all the diving on the job from start to finish. Some talk had come up about bringing in another diver and maybe even a different company, but Paul wouldn’t stand for it. He kept to his original game plan and we accomplished our mission. Praise God that we were successful. The salvage job’s success stands as an ongoing tribute to Paul Mark, Craig Mark and the entire salvage crew of Mark Marine Services. The B-8 Rock Barge survived virtually intact and it is still engaged in active duty service as a gravel rock barge on the Columbia River to this very day!
Paul and Craig ended up taking ownership of the barge and they used it in their business for a number of years, hauling rock gravel before finally selling it to a concrete firm in the lower river. They drydocked the barge several times and completely restored the hull to 100% capacity and full integrity.
Craig Mark met his future wife Debbie on this salvage job. The investment Mark Marine Services made in this dynamic, six-week-long, salvage mission is still paying dividends to all those involved who worked long and hard to make the endeavor a success and a great achievement. They said it couldn’t be done, but we did it and that stands today as an endearing testimony to the skill, character and craftsmanship of Paul Mark, a real man with a true mission to succeed in life, against all odds and with a smile on his face. Thanks Paul, and Semper Fi.
Written by Tory van Dyke. © 2019. All Rights Reserved.
