The SS Catala was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 coastal passenger and cargo steamship built for service with the Union Steamship Company of British Columbia

Union Steamship Company of British Columbia

The Union Steamship Company of British Columbia was a pioneer firm on coastal British Columbia. It started in 1889, from the beginnings of local service on Burrard Inlet near Vancouver, and expanded to the entire British Columbia coast...

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Union Steamship career

Catala was built at Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 in 1925. Like her sister ship, the SS Cardena

SS Cardena

For more than 35 years, from 1923 to 1958, the Union Steamship Cardena sailed the British Columbia Coast, carrying passengers, groceries, dry goods, industrial cargo, mail and sundry other supplies to the 200 or so mining, logging and fishing communities that once dotted the province’s coastline...

, Catala spent most of her operating career from 1925-1958 on the British Columbia Coast

British Columbia Coast

The British Columbia Coast or BC Coast is Canada's western continental coastline on the Pacific Ocean. The usage is synonymous with the term West Coast of Canada....

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Later career

In 1958, she was sold to new owners in British Columbia for use as a fish-buying ship. During the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle she was used as a floating "boatel" moored on the Seattle waterfront. Later in 1962 she was towed to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 and used as a floating restaurant

Floating restaurant

A floating restaurant is a kind of vessel which is usually a type of steel barge used as a restaurant on water. For example, the Jumbo Palace at Aberdeen in Hong Kong is one such restaurant. Sometimes retired ships are given a second lease on life as floating restaurants. The former car ferry New...

. In 1963 she was brought back north to Ocean Shores, Washington

Ocean Shores, Washington

-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 3,836 people, 1,789 households, and 1,198 families residing in the city. The population density was 444.7 people per square mile . There were 3,170 housing units at an average density of 367.5 per square mile...

 and used as a "boatel" again until she was driven aground by a storm on New Year's Day 1965.

Scrapping

Following her grounding, efforts to re-float Catala failed, and the wreck was left to decay at the beach on Damon Point, Washington. Over the years she was vandalized and pillaged, and in the late 1980's a girl fell through a rusted portion of her deck, breaking her back. Her family sued the State of Washington, which in turn ordered the wreck cut up. Catala was cut down to sand level and buried, until a series of winter storms unburied her in the late 1990s. Subsequent storms gradually exposed more of the hull until in April 2006 a beachcomber noticed that oil was leaking from the wreck. The State of Washington Department of Ecology cordoned off the wreck before scrapping the rest of the vessel. Several endangered bird species nest in the area, including the snowy plover

Snowy Plover

The Snowy Plover is a small wader in the plover bird family. It breeds in Ecuador, Peru, Chile, the southern and western USA and the Caribbean...

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External links

SS Catala Shipwreck page - Washington State Department of Ecology