Rusty derelict turned out to be historic Liberty Ship lifeboat

In February of last year, Mike Malone of Zigzag put his boat into the Columbia River at St. Helens and headed upstream.

On his way past Sauvie Island, Mike decided to put ashore and investigate a curious derelict tri-hull boat that he’d noticed there many times before, while he was trolling for spring Chinook salmon along that part of the river. It was lodged high on the bank by Collins Beach, apparently washed there by the flood of 1996.

The tri-hull was huge and weird-looking, something like a flying saucer made of ferro-cement with three fins on the bottom of it and a flying bridge at the back. “When this thing was on the water, it must have been a bizarre-looking sight,” Mike said.

But there was something else there, too - something even more interesting than the tri-hull, although it didn’t look that way at first.

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