The Columbia River Ship Report
January 26, 2009
By Joanne Rideout-
“Good morning, it’s time for the Columbia River Ship Report on Coast Community Radio, I’m your host Joanne Rideout.”
For the past five years on weekday mornings I’ve greeted listeners with those words, from the station’s studios on the banks of the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon, 17 miles from the open sea.
Astoria occupies a unique geographical niche, poised at the interface between two major avenues of waterborne commerce-the formidable Columbia River and the vast Pacific Ocean. The presence of a deep, fast-flowing river on the city’s doorstep brings the maritime environment up close and personal for residents and visitors. It also makes it a good place to watch ships.
The Ship Report was inspired by the sense of wonder I feel in this river environment-a place where at any moment we might see yet another exotic behemoth gliding by, playing its part of the great chain of commerce in the Northwest. It’s an ongoing story of the ships, the mariners who call them home, and the never-ending romance of the sea.
Coast Community Radio, home of the Ship Report, is heard up and down the Northwest Coast, from the top of the Long Beach Peninsula south to Tillamook and beyond. It’s Clatsop County’s only public radio station and an NPR affiliate. The station, which this year celebrated a quarter century on the air, runs primarily on volunteer talent and elbow grease. Local people donate their spare time and expertise for our listening pleasure, and provide the vast majority of its wonderful, eclectic programming.
I first created the Ship Report when I worked at the station as a news reporter. As a staff member, part of my job was to host NPR news and insert as much local news and information into the broadcast as possible.
As a newcomer to Astoria then, the river fascinated me. When I observed the riverfront downtown and the parade of commercial vessels passing by, I noticed that there were people climbing up and down small ladders on the sides of ships, boarding and disembarking from a small boat that ran alongside. Someone told me they were pilots. When I learned we had two pilots in our midst at the station, I was determined to find out more.
One of my radio colleagues was Capt. Thron Riggs, a Columbia River Bar Pilot and Coast Community Radio music programmer. When he’s not on duty as a pilot, bringing ships across the dangerous Columbia River bar (known worldwide as the Graveyard of the Pacific), he volunteers as the host of an early morning classical music show. Another bar pilot, the late Captain Paul Jackson, at that time also did a morning radio show once a week.
I started asking questions, especially of Capt. Riggs, whose show ended just before the mine began, and he kindly answered them. Then one day he invited me and another station staffer out for a ride on one of the pilot boats. As we left the dock, we entered another world that seemed universes away from the one nearby on land.
We saw Capt. Riggs board a vessel and watched it disappear in the distance as he shepherded crew and cargo safely out to sea. I remember standing on the deck just outside the wheelhouse, chatting with deckhand Peter Schwartz about piloting, listening to the rush of water as it churned beneath the boat, feeling the rumble of the boat’s engines and the wind in my face. I was hooked. I had to know more about this profession and its intoxicating environment.
Then Peter made a fateful offer that would change my life, though I didn’t know it at the time. He said, “Anytime you’d like to go out on a run with us again, just let me know.”
That summer I took him up on his offer, and went back and forth across the infamous Columbia River Bar many times with the bar pilot boat operators and their crews. I photographed pilots getting on and off bulk carriers, car ships, container ships, and tugs. I talked to many pilots and crew members about their work. I spent lots of time on the water (which I loved), and also learned that sitting in a boat that’s rocking sideways in ocean swells makes me seasick fast. But the maritime world had caught hold of me and somehow I felt I belonged in it.
Some things were clear, even to my novice eyes-this was dangerous, demanding work that required a great deal, both physically and mentally, from the people who did it. And the fact they went virtually unnoticed by the majority of local residents and visitors–I could hardly believe that people on land knew so little about the amazing mariners working in their midst.
I asked Capt. Riggs and other mariners more questions. I learned how to interpret the pilot ship schedule and understand the jargon. I reacquainted myself with the concept of the 24-hour clock. I took copious notes and eventually learned how to tell what was on most of the ships that come into the river (hint: it has to do with what berths they’re headed for in port). I read maritime trade magazines, maritime reference books, and surfed the Web for information. And I started sharing what I learned on the air with listeners. Eventually the report grew from a 2-minute segment to the 9 minutes and 20 seconds it currently occupies in the program schedule.
People often tell me that what they enjoy most about the Ship Report are my interviews with mariners.
Over the time I have been doing the Ship Report, I have done my best to earn the trust of people who allow me to interview them. Mariners can be wary of talking with journalists, often for good reason. People have needed time, in some cases, to see for themselves that I meant what I said-that I wanted to help others understand the nature of their profession and the great contribution mariners make to our communities.
Even though I’ve been doing the show for a while now and a fair number of people seem to know me or have heard my name, I’m still amazed and humbled when people tell me, a stranger, so much about their lives and work.
The Ship Report has grown from my sincere curiosity and the great generosity of mariners who continue to tolerate me poking around their world. One person who deserves special thanks is Columbia River Bar Pilot Capt. Robert Johnson, whose voice you’ll hear frequently on the report, and whose expertise continues to answer many a listener question.
Others in the maritime community (Capts. Deb Dempsey and Mike Balensifer, USCG Cmdr. Peter Troedsson, and OSU Coastal Hazards Specialist Pat Corcoran, to name just a few) also generously give their time when I have a question and need an expert. Without that kind of participation, I don’t think the report would be nearly so interesting. Such committed guests help keep the Ship Report fresh, fascinating, and singularly local.
For me, the Ship Report is the greatest and most wonderful research project I could ever have hoped for. From my beginnings with the bar pilots, I’ve broadened my understanding of this region, and gone on to interview Columbia River pilots, Coast Guard personnel, fisher poets, fishermen and women, and other maritime specialists in areas such as fishing, weather, and estuaries.
The Ship Report continues to expand on and on with time, to my delight. I look forward to the next interview and the next idea. In five years of doing the report, I’ve never run out of things to share.
I’m grateful and gratified that other people seem to find all this interesting as well.
Judging by the many people who have told me how much they value the Ship Report, I think there must be a lot of us who feel that pull to the water and all things maritime. So I meet kindred spirits all the time, people who share my fascination with our marine environs.
I appreciate every one of you and your support for what I love to do. And it’s you I’m thinking of when I sit down at the microphone each day, eager to share the next piece of treasure I’ve managed to find-all part of the chronicle of our priceless maritime community. Thanks so much for listening.
The Quick Guide to Shipwatching
Chances are the next time you’re near the waterfront and a ship goes by, you won’t have this article or the Ship Report nearby to help you remember what you’re looking at.
That was the inspiration for the Columbia River Ship Report Quick Guide to Shipwatching, a compact, foldout guide to the types of vessels you’ll see on the river, what they carry and who’s on them.
The idea came from many comments I received from listeners who told me that they would see a ship and then not be able to remember what I’d said about it on the radio.
The Quick Guide project took me the better part of a year, in my spare time, to complete-I took many photos of ships to get the ones that now appear in the guide. I wrote the copy. I hired a local designer, Susan Spence, who did a terrific job of translating my ideas into a beautiful layout, and I had it printed at Anchor Graphics in Astoria. So it’s a completely local project, which is just what I envisioned when I created it
The guide is for sale at bookstores, restaurants, hotels and gift shops on both sides of the Columbia, in Astoria and the Long Beach Peninsula. I hope it helps people be their own Ship Report when they’re out and about.
Radio, website and podcast
The Ship Report is broadcast weekday mornings at 8:49 a.m. on Coast Community Radio, KMUN Astoria 91.9 FM and KTCB Tillamook 89.5 FM, and streams live on the Web at www.coastradio.org.
The Ship Report is also available anytime at www.shipreport.net, along with the daily ship schedule. There’s a link to download an .mp3 audio file of the report, and a podcast link (added at listener request, for those who want to subscribe via iPod). The site also includes lots of other esoteric information, like what those ship horn signals mean.