San Francisco’s weather, of late, has resembled the opening credits of “Gilligan’s Island.” Yes, it’s getting rough.
It’s also getting expensive: After the storms of November, the 900-foot Dry Dock No. 2 at the Port of San Francisco’s Piers 68-70 experienced “significant hull tearing at the waterline and uncontrolled flooding in ballast compartments.” This left the massive vessel dangerously listing to the side like the U.S.S. Yorktown after the Battle of Midway.
This city has had its fair share of experience with building-sized structures sinking and tilting. But it warrants mentioning that, at just 645 feet, Millennium Tower is dwarfed by Dry Dock No. 2.
If things, quite literally, go sideways at the Port of San Francisco, it would be a catastrophe. Recovering a two-block-long structure from underwater would be costly, and the environmental consequences would be dire.
The port declared an emergency in December. February’s ten thousand thundering typhoons have been more than a trifle anxiety-inducing.
A floating dry dock is a large U-shaped vessel resembling a shoebox that is designed to be partially sunk and then raised with a ship within it. It is then drained, and repairs can be done to the ship.
Dry Dock No. 2, which was built in 1970, once had the capacity to hoist a ship as large as 54,800 tons. The adjacent dry dock, Eureka, which was built in 1945, is 528 feet long and could lift up to 17,500 tons.
As it has no bow or stern — and therefore no port nor starboard — Port of San Francisco officials simply say Dry Dock No. 2 is listing “to the east.”
In response, this month the port fast-tracked $18.5 million to keep the dry dock above water. Contractors have been hired and there is now 24/7 video surveillance of the faltering Dry Dock No. 2; automated pumps kick into gear when its 40 hulking ballast tanks begin taking on water.
There is steel reinforcement being undertaken on metal that was once perhaps an inch thick. Mission Local is told the hull is now paper-thin in places. Photographs shared by the port reveal that, like the Dude’s car, the primary hue of the dry docks appears to be “brown rust coloration.”
Maritime staff at the port admit that the present weather is scary. They are candid that the dry docks’ alarming condition has necessitated an “all-hands-on-deck operation.”
And that costs money: That emergency appropriation of $18.5 million from the port’s revenue is a mere down payment on an estimated $61.2 million to dispose of the aging dry docks.
Think of it as palliative care for elderly infrastructure: The steep upfront costs are merely a bridge payment to ensure the dry docks last long enough to be demolished later — in an orderly fashion, rather than simply falling apart.
If the dry docks were to sink, the port estimates the price tag could triple or even quadruple. It would also unleash an environmental disaster.
If the docks sink to the bottom of the bay, this will necessitate an expensive reclamation and release fuel into the water.
And perhaps other toxins as well: While the port says it has found no indications of harmful material within the docks’ ballast tanks, shipyards are notoriously dirty sites. The sediment within those tanks would comprise the dregs from nearly 50 years of sucking in and pushing out the local waters.
The port is an “enterprise agency,” which generates its own revenue. So this is not city money, per se. But it’s still not fun to have to spend scores of millions of dollars to demolish assets that nobody wanted to lease or buy and have now become a liability. Yet there was little the city or its port could do to stave off this day.
This eventuality was inviolable the moment that the Hawaiian Merchant, the first containerized ship to visit San Francisco Bay, sailed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in 1958.
The monumental dry docks that helped fuel and maintain San Francisco’s status as a maritime powerhouse, now corroding in disuse and on the verge of slipping beneath the waves, serve as massive metaphors for the end of a San Francisco era.
“San Francisco has changed,” Gavin Elster says in the film “Vertigo.” “The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast.”
Of note, “Vertigo” also came out in 1958. Little did its scriptwriters know it, but the city was sitting atop the precipice of a roller coaster and getting ready for some real change. And nowhere changed more than the city’s waterfront.
To start: A study from the mid-1960s estimated that close to 12 percent of all the city’s jobs — that’s around one job out of every seven or eight — “is supported by the activity directly and indirectly associated with the port.”
Like crime stats in the 1970s or real-estate prices in the 1940s, this is a figure that is difficult for present-day San Franciscans to grasp.
What happened? A lot, but, in a word, containerization. It doomed this city’s port. The boats were too damn big. They required too much damn land. Heavy federal subsidies helped the Port of Oakland, which is sprawling and can accommodate giant ships, quickly catch and pass San Francisco in the 1970s.
Troublesome images of the dry docks from a Port Commission presentation from this month.
The loss of thousands of jobs on the docks, in warehouses and in transportation triggered a blue-collar diaspora from San Francisco. Black people made up 13 percent of San Franciscans in 1970; that number was 5.6 percent in 2020.
The stevedores, warehousemen and drivers were replaced by white-collar workers, contributing to an explosion in the price of residential real estate. The city has replicated this cycle ever since, substituting wealthier and wealthier white-collar workers.
The Port of San Francisco is now, and long has been, a real-estate holding company. The rusting, listing dry docks jutting out of the water are holdovers from a different time.
It’s amazing, in retrospect, that a working shipyard was operating at Piers 68-70 and employing hundreds of workers until a decade ago.
BAE Systems — the British aerospace, munitions, information security and Muni hybrid engine behemoth — abandoned the site in 2016, unloading it for a dollar (and a $38 million pension liability) to a smaller operator called Puglia Engineering.
Puglia sued BAE in 2017, alleging fraud — in large part based upon the ragged condition of the dry docks, which it claimed was concealed. That case dragged on for years and ultimately resulted in a settlement.
Puglia declared bankruptcy, and the port received a roughly $5 million settlement from BAE to maintain the shipyard, which has been deserted since 2017. As recently as 2022, port workers say that you could wander through and see jackets and helmets eerily hung up on pegs, as if it was a Friday before a Monday.
The port did not receive any takers to run the shipyard, and potential deals to sell the dry docks fell through. A Turkish outfit had thoughts of scooping them up, “but their inspectors came to assess the material condition,” says Dominic Moreno, the port’s assistant maritime director. “They deemed it non-viable.”
For the vast majority of San Franciscans, the idle dry docks are out of sight, out of mind. The last time they were in the news may have been when the 650-foot Dry Dock No. 1 came unmoored in a storm in 2002 and took itself on a trip to Treasure Island (it was later scrapped and replaced by Eureka).
People will notice, though, if the cranes atop Dry Dock No. 2 collapse, which the port warns could well happen if the 900-foot vessel leans further to the side.
If you’re wondering why the dry docks can’t simply be floated to the Farallons to be scuttled amid the veritable “graveyard of ships,” including some packed with radioactive waste, Moreno notes that “we don’t sink ships in the ocean anymore.”
Also: it would be a challenge to tow the dry docks that far without a significant risk of them first sinking in a navigation channel. Even if we did do that anymore.
Despite their status as an environmental and financial sword of Damocles hanging over the port, Moreno describes the pending loss of the dry docks as “bittersweet.” Right up until the shipyard’s closure in 2017, the place hosted hundreds of union jobs. Moreno’s own uncle used to work around here.
But things change, and the decline and fall of the port as the economic engine of San Francisco was nothing short of transformational. It was, perhaps, the most significant factor in the metamorphosis of the city from what it was to what it is — and what it will be.
The dry docks’ journey from asset to menace is a coup de grâce for the working-class city that was already underway when the Hawaiian Merchant sailed into the Bay and “Vertigo” sailed into theaters.
And it’s a continued inversion of San Francisco: The city once served the economic needs of its all-important waterfront. But, now, the waterfront’s economic role is circumscribed — and it serves the needs of its city.
The drydocks are aging infrastructure that need to be dealt with and removed. They served their purpose. This happens all over the world all the time.
The Earth is round.
Great article on both the history of the dry docks and the current situation. It is very unfortunate that the dry docks stopped functioning in 2017, seemingly just after they’d made their mark servicing a large cruise ship. It’s very sad to see the working class functions of the city turn into a yuppie “playground “ for entitled nouveau riche.
Really interesting article.
Interesting writing as well.
Left out is the story of the Waterfront and General strikes of the 30s which resulted in the International Longshore & Warehouse Union, fundamentally changing the balance of economic (and
political) power.Nolonger were workers subject to superexploitation (to say the least), and owners were no longer assurred of superprofits. In part containerization was a response to take back control of the industry
Interesting article. Where can ships on the west coast can get maintained and dry dock serviced?
It wasn’t just more land in Oakland that made it a better port. It was access to freight railways. San Francisco, being on an isolated peninsula with no rail bridges, was a lousy place to offload goods being shipped by rail (which was most things).
Lyle —
That’s true too, but San Francisco simply cannot accommodate the bigger ships and does not have the land necessary to handle all those goods. But you are correct: The tunnel to the Peninsula is not large enough to handle two containers atop one another on a flat car and, being at the head of a peninsula, San Francisco was just not an ideal disembarkation point for cargo.
Best,
JE
Where will these dry-docks be scrapped? They can’t leave the bay due to their fragile status. So, it will have to be here, somewhere. First the cranes come off, then the walls are cut down and eventually the hull will be pulled up, perhaps by flooding one end and cutting the dry end to pieces. Oh, so sad and so sad it was left so long. Was the port not paying attention?
Let’s keep our eyes on the prize. Patch it up and turn it into low income housing.
Great piece
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
How could it possibly not be cheaper to put airbags in the ballast tanks or strap them to its sides, pump out toxic fluids, tow it to sea on a calm day and sink it as an artificial reef? Could it really cost tens of millions to get it clean enough to be a net benefit to wildlife? Maybe local deposits of lead paint are a problem even in the vast volume of the oceans.
The condition of the floating drydock is the result of the drydock itself not being drydocked and having its hull surveyed and patched and painted as needed. Ships in the water have to be drydocked and maintained or they sink. Period! For regular ships the Coast Guard requires about every 3-4 years, and it can be a million dollar deal.
Great article – thanks for the history lesson. I see that dry dock everyday from my office.
Absolutely fascinating reporting Joe. This made my night.
Do as the ol’ San Franciscans’ did… let it sink and build on top of it