Last fall the “Ghost Boat” appeared during the low water levels of Shasta Lake. Photo: US Forest Service//Facebook
Last fall, when California’s Shasta Lake was a little low on water, something weird showed up in the newly-exposed mud: a sunken boat. Why is that weird, you say? Well, because it wasn’t just any boat. It’s a boat that first sank in the middle of the Pacific during World War II. And how it ended up sinking again in a California lake is a complete mystery.
“It is marked ’31-17,'” wrote the US Forest Service in a Facebook post. “This confirms it as a boat assigned to the Attack Transport USS Monrovia. This ship was Patton’s HQ during the invasion of Sicily. Eisenhower also was on this ship at that time, and it went on to a further six D-Day invasions in the Pacific. Reportedly it was used in the invasion of Tarawa. It names the crew and states that it sank in shallow water during that invasion.”
The Battle of Tarawa was a bloody affair. Fought over three days at the end of November, 1943, it saw the United States fight Japan at the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Some 6,400 people died there on that little patch of land.
So how, exactly, did it end up at the bottom of Lake Shasta? Well, no one knows. After Tarawa, the vessel was salvaged. According to reports, it was then sold for scrap in 1969, but from there, the trail disappears. One theory is that whoever bought it decided to see if it would float in Lake Shasta, but quickly found out that it wouldn’t and just simply walked away from it.
“This boat is referred to as ‘The Ghost Boat,'” the US Forest Service continued. “It really is quite remarkable how it emerged from the lake with so many stories to tell.”
The Forest Service went on to say that any restoration done to the “Ghost Boat” will be done to preserve the integrity of the vessel. It “will hopefully preserve it in a weathered ‘combat fatigue’ look, and that is how it is intended to be displayed at a museum in Nebraska,” officials wrote. “There is more to discover of its history and obviously its time on Shasta Lake, and still the circumstance of its sinking, remains a mystery.”
