Bramble
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Guest
Re: Bramble
The U.S. Coast Guard decommissioned BRAMBLE at Port Huron on 22 MAY 2003 after 59 years and one month of decorated service. She was taken over by the Port Huron Museum for interpretive use as a mostly static maritime museum, moored at the Port Huron Terminal. By 2010, the PH Museum could no longer afford the upkeep of the ship and BRAMBLE was put up for sale.
In early 2012, a private effort outside of the PHM succeeded in nominating BRAMBLE for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The U.S. Department of the Interior listed BRAMBLE on 1 AUG 2012 as resource 12000457 and at a national level of significance, making it official that she was the most historic of the thirty-nine 180-foot Seagoing Buoy Tenders constructed by the CG during WWII.
The PHM sold BRAMBLE in early 2013 to entrepreneurs Bob and Sara Klingler of Marine City. The Klinglers spent over a million dollars restoring the ship to fully operational condition, even tracking down obsolete parts from locations all over the world. Discreet safety and security upgrades were made at the request of USCG Marine Safety inspectors and private insurance underwriters. Respectful preservation of BRAMBLE’s physical and historic integrity was a paramount concern. BRAMBLE got underway several times in subsequent years with the Klinglers’ volunteer crew under a licensed pilot and retired USCG CAPT Charles Park (a former BRAMBLE CO). She had a role as an integral plot vehicle in the 2016 movie “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
After five years of private ownership and major investment of time, money, labor and love, Bob and Sara sold BRAMBLE in late 2018. This, after at least two Great Lakes-based nonprofits proved incapable of taking on responsible stewardship of the cutter. The buyer, Tom Clarke of Virginia, had presented himself as a billionaire with interests in historic preservation, yet he does not appear on Forbes' list of such wealth. Instead, Clarke has an established reputation as a white-collar confidence man with a long history of documented shady and broken business deals across several industries, including health care, Minnesota iron ore mining and coal mining in WV and WY. For all of this, Clarke negatively impacted hundreds of people and has earned defendant status for himself in various resulting litigation. Unfortunately, this only became known after the sale and BRAMBLE would ultimately become yet another of Clarke's victims.
Clarke claimed at the time of purchase that he intended to refit BRAMBLE and retrace the historic U.S. Coast Guard transit of the Northwest Passage that the ship had undertaken in Summer 1957 with her sister ship, SPAR (W-403), and the larger ice patrol/supply cutter STORIS (W-38). To undertake such a solo voyage with an elderly cutter such as BRAMBLE seemed ridiculous on its face to anyone with common sense, knowledge of BRAMBLE's limitations and the logistics/dangers of such a voyage. Then there was the damage that would be inflicted on BRAMBLE's “as-decommissioned” physical and historic integrity through Clarke's planned and ill-considered "upgrades" to make the trip, plus the potential dangers and hardship of the transit itself through the Canadian Arctic.
BRAMBLE suffered through a winter of preliminary modifications from Clarke’s live-aboard shipkeepers in Port Huron. Then, on 25 MAR 2019, Clarke and his crew got underway with the cutter. She left her longtime home port of Port Huron for the last time to head out through heavy late season ice into the St. Lawrence Seaway and Atlantic, bound for Mobile, AL. During the voyage and a stopover in Norfolk, VA, Clarke utilized the port agent assistance of Inchcape Shipping Services, the invoice for which he ultimately did not pay. This resulted in a maritime lien of necessaries to the tune of $178,000.
Upon arrival at Clarke's EPIC Shipyard in Mobile, among other work, his shipyard workers installed over a half-million dollars’ worth of modern electronics suite into the ship, some of which required cutting away parts of BRAMBLE's distinctive superstructure to allow room for antennas and scanners. Other exterior features were altered or completely removed. Interior fittings and furnishings were replaced by modern comforts to suit Clarke’s personal whims, luxuries that would never be found in a spartan military Coast Guard vessel and that most certainly did not follow the Secretary of Interior Standards for Historic Vessel Projects. Work stopped by midsummer 2019 in conjunction with financial problems and subsequent bankruptcy of Clarke's EPIC Companies across the South. However, BRAMBLE had already been compromised before leaving the yard.
As a result of the outstanding lien of necessaries, BRAMBLE was seized in August 2019 by the U.S. Marshals Service at Clarke's Mobile shipyard moorings. A local scrap company, Modern American Recycling Services aka MARS, assumed ownership of BRAMBLE with an $80,000 auction bid on 4 DEC 2019. The scrap company management subsequently played coy with their intentions while repeatedly refusing any dialogue seeking realistic preservation options for BRAMBLE. Their suggestion that the company may actively utilize the ship in service for their salvage fleet was never credible because of the major costs required to make the then-75-year-old BRAMBLE compliant with modern USCG and American Bureau of Shipping regulations (U.S.C. Title 46) for commercial vessels. By virtue of the MARS business of scrapping ships and their ongoing snubs to preservation discussions, the assertion by company management that BRAMBLE was "safe and sound" was always absurd.
Over three years would pass before MARS quietly moved BRAMBLE deadship from Mobile to another of their scrapping facilities in Gibson, LA, sometime late in 2022 or early 2023. BRAMBLE, sans mast, anchors and other exterior features, was then spotted and photographed by a retired Coastie in the Gibson yard in January 2023, where she was later shuffled around to various spots in the yard awaiting her fate.
A photo posted to Facebook a couple weeks ago in December 2023 showed her ashore at the facility, clearly at the end of the line. At that facility and with her diminutive size compared to the other vessels and rigs routinely dismantled there, it wasn’t going to take long to end BRAMBLE’s existence.
This leaves three 180-foot tenders in the U.S.: the privately owned and operational SUNDEW (W-404) in Duluth, the static museum ACACIA (W-406) in Manistee and IRONWOOD (W-297) in Astoria. IRONWOOD is used as an active maritime training vessel for the Tongue Point Job Corps seamanship school. With a decorated and accomplished USCG career, as the last remaining B-Class 180 and the only 180 built outside the Great Lakes (Coast Guard Yard, Curtis Bay, MD), IRONWOOD is now the most historic surviving 180 in the US. There are also several 180s that are continuing overseas service to foreign navies and coast guards.
One bright spot is that BRAMBLE’s beautiful bronze bell, property of the U.S. Coast Guard and on artifact loan to Clarke, was recovered prior to the Marshals auction through legal intervention by U.S. Coast Guard attorneys. This action was initiated by the curatorial staff of the U.S. Coast Guard Heritage Asset Center after they were alerted of BRAMBLE’s seizure. The bell, builder plate and her commemorative Northwest Passage plaque are all safe with the curatorial staff at the Heritage Asset facility in Forestville, MD.
It’s a heartbreaking ending for such a historic vessel. BRAMBLE was one of only three ships remaining in the U.S. to have served a support role at the Crossroads atomic testing at Bikini Atoll in 1946 and the only remaining vessel from the historic U.S. Coast Guard transit of the Northwest Passage from 1 JUL to 6 SEP 1957. From that NW Passage mission, SPAR was reefed off Morehead City, NC, in 2004 and the task group leader, USCGC STORIS (National Register 12001110) was illegally sold by the U.S. Government in late June 2013 and allowed to be unlawfully exported to Mexico for scrapping later that year. BRAMBLE really was a rare, tangible link to major U.S. history and maritime heritage, not to mention her long Great Lakes service.
Aside from worn paint, BRAMBLE was in beautiful physical condition and fully operational in "as-decommissioned" configuration prior to the sale to Tom Clarke. A few ill-informed social media posts and news stories online almost paint Clarke in a sympathetic light, as though this situation is the result of some unkind twist of fate or unforeseen business calamity. That is not the case.
Here’s to hoping that Karma is real.
In early 2012, a private effort outside of the PHM succeeded in nominating BRAMBLE for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The U.S. Department of the Interior listed BRAMBLE on 1 AUG 2012 as resource 12000457 and at a national level of significance, making it official that she was the most historic of the thirty-nine 180-foot Seagoing Buoy Tenders constructed by the CG during WWII.
The PHM sold BRAMBLE in early 2013 to entrepreneurs Bob and Sara Klingler of Marine City. The Klinglers spent over a million dollars restoring the ship to fully operational condition, even tracking down obsolete parts from locations all over the world. Discreet safety and security upgrades were made at the request of USCG Marine Safety inspectors and private insurance underwriters. Respectful preservation of BRAMBLE’s physical and historic integrity was a paramount concern. BRAMBLE got underway several times in subsequent years with the Klinglers’ volunteer crew under a licensed pilot and retired USCG CAPT Charles Park (a former BRAMBLE CO). She had a role as an integral plot vehicle in the 2016 movie “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
After five years of private ownership and major investment of time, money, labor and love, Bob and Sara sold BRAMBLE in late 2018. This, after at least two Great Lakes-based nonprofits proved incapable of taking on responsible stewardship of the cutter. The buyer, Tom Clarke of Virginia, had presented himself as a billionaire with interests in historic preservation, yet he does not appear on Forbes' list of such wealth. Instead, Clarke has an established reputation as a white-collar confidence man with a long history of documented shady and broken business deals across several industries, including health care, Minnesota iron ore mining and coal mining in WV and WY. For all of this, Clarke negatively impacted hundreds of people and has earned defendant status for himself in various resulting litigation. Unfortunately, this only became known after the sale and BRAMBLE would ultimately become yet another of Clarke's victims.
Clarke claimed at the time of purchase that he intended to refit BRAMBLE and retrace the historic U.S. Coast Guard transit of the Northwest Passage that the ship had undertaken in Summer 1957 with her sister ship, SPAR (W-403), and the larger ice patrol/supply cutter STORIS (W-38). To undertake such a solo voyage with an elderly cutter such as BRAMBLE seemed ridiculous on its face to anyone with common sense, knowledge of BRAMBLE's limitations and the logistics/dangers of such a voyage. Then there was the damage that would be inflicted on BRAMBLE's “as-decommissioned” physical and historic integrity through Clarke's planned and ill-considered "upgrades" to make the trip, plus the potential dangers and hardship of the transit itself through the Canadian Arctic.
BRAMBLE suffered through a winter of preliminary modifications from Clarke’s live-aboard shipkeepers in Port Huron. Then, on 25 MAR 2019, Clarke and his crew got underway with the cutter. She left her longtime home port of Port Huron for the last time to head out through heavy late season ice into the St. Lawrence Seaway and Atlantic, bound for Mobile, AL. During the voyage and a stopover in Norfolk, VA, Clarke utilized the port agent assistance of Inchcape Shipping Services, the invoice for which he ultimately did not pay. This resulted in a maritime lien of necessaries to the tune of $178,000.
Upon arrival at Clarke's EPIC Shipyard in Mobile, among other work, his shipyard workers installed over a half-million dollars’ worth of modern electronics suite into the ship, some of which required cutting away parts of BRAMBLE's distinctive superstructure to allow room for antennas and scanners. Other exterior features were altered or completely removed. Interior fittings and furnishings were replaced by modern comforts to suit Clarke’s personal whims, luxuries that would never be found in a spartan military Coast Guard vessel and that most certainly did not follow the Secretary of Interior Standards for Historic Vessel Projects. Work stopped by midsummer 2019 in conjunction with financial problems and subsequent bankruptcy of Clarke's EPIC Companies across the South. However, BRAMBLE had already been compromised before leaving the yard.
As a result of the outstanding lien of necessaries, BRAMBLE was seized in August 2019 by the U.S. Marshals Service at Clarke's Mobile shipyard moorings. A local scrap company, Modern American Recycling Services aka MARS, assumed ownership of BRAMBLE with an $80,000 auction bid on 4 DEC 2019. The scrap company management subsequently played coy with their intentions while repeatedly refusing any dialogue seeking realistic preservation options for BRAMBLE. Their suggestion that the company may actively utilize the ship in service for their salvage fleet was never credible because of the major costs required to make the then-75-year-old BRAMBLE compliant with modern USCG and American Bureau of Shipping regulations (U.S.C. Title 46) for commercial vessels. By virtue of the MARS business of scrapping ships and their ongoing snubs to preservation discussions, the assertion by company management that BRAMBLE was "safe and sound" was always absurd.
Over three years would pass before MARS quietly moved BRAMBLE deadship from Mobile to another of their scrapping facilities in Gibson, LA, sometime late in 2022 or early 2023. BRAMBLE, sans mast, anchors and other exterior features, was then spotted and photographed by a retired Coastie in the Gibson yard in January 2023, where she was later shuffled around to various spots in the yard awaiting her fate.
A photo posted to Facebook a couple weeks ago in December 2023 showed her ashore at the facility, clearly at the end of the line. At that facility and with her diminutive size compared to the other vessels and rigs routinely dismantled there, it wasn’t going to take long to end BRAMBLE’s existence.
This leaves three 180-foot tenders in the U.S.: the privately owned and operational SUNDEW (W-404) in Duluth, the static museum ACACIA (W-406) in Manistee and IRONWOOD (W-297) in Astoria. IRONWOOD is used as an active maritime training vessel for the Tongue Point Job Corps seamanship school. With a decorated and accomplished USCG career, as the last remaining B-Class 180 and the only 180 built outside the Great Lakes (Coast Guard Yard, Curtis Bay, MD), IRONWOOD is now the most historic surviving 180 in the US. There are also several 180s that are continuing overseas service to foreign navies and coast guards.
One bright spot is that BRAMBLE’s beautiful bronze bell, property of the U.S. Coast Guard and on artifact loan to Clarke, was recovered prior to the Marshals auction through legal intervention by U.S. Coast Guard attorneys. This action was initiated by the curatorial staff of the U.S. Coast Guard Heritage Asset Center after they were alerted of BRAMBLE’s seizure. The bell, builder plate and her commemorative Northwest Passage plaque are all safe with the curatorial staff at the Heritage Asset facility in Forestville, MD.
It’s a heartbreaking ending for such a historic vessel. BRAMBLE was one of only three ships remaining in the U.S. to have served a support role at the Crossroads atomic testing at Bikini Atoll in 1946 and the only remaining vessel from the historic U.S. Coast Guard transit of the Northwest Passage from 1 JUL to 6 SEP 1957. From that NW Passage mission, SPAR was reefed off Morehead City, NC, in 2004 and the task group leader, USCGC STORIS (National Register 12001110) was illegally sold by the U.S. Government in late June 2013 and allowed to be unlawfully exported to Mexico for scrapping later that year. BRAMBLE really was a rare, tangible link to major U.S. history and maritime heritage, not to mention her long Great Lakes service.
Aside from worn paint, BRAMBLE was in beautiful physical condition and fully operational in "as-decommissioned" configuration prior to the sale to Tom Clarke. A few ill-informed social media posts and news stories online almost paint Clarke in a sympathetic light, as though this situation is the result of some unkind twist of fate or unforeseen business calamity. That is not the case.
Here’s to hoping that Karma is real.