Retirement and Abandonment in Ensenada
By the early 1970s, smaller, faster vessels made it difficult for the Catalina to compete for passenger traffic, and she was retired from passenger service in 1975.
In 1977, the Catalina was purchased at auction for $70,000 by real estate developer Hymie Singer. He bought the ship as a Valentine's Day gift for his wife and the steamship was moved for several years between Newport Beach, San Diego, Santa Monica Bay and Long Beach. At one point, there was a proposal for the Catalina to ferry tourists up the Nile River, but her 21 feet of draft was too deep for the river. As the ship bounced from one port to another, one writer noted: "Twice she broke free of her moorings in Long Beach and once nearly hit a tanker; it was as if the ship was rebelling against her fate, having gone from being a source of pride to an embarrassment to a naval hazard."
In 1985, Singer moved the ship to Ensenada, Baja California, where she became the focus of a series of unsuccessful business ventures, including a floating discothèque and the Catalina Bar and Grill. In late 1997, the Catalina escaped its moorings and became stuck on a sandbar in Ensenada Harbor. Since that time, the Catalina remained half-submerged and stuck in the mud in the harbor. After years of neglect, the Catalina was badly decayed and rusted and had been stripped by looters and vandals.
Read more about this topic: SS Catalina
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