Vietnam Era PTF Boat Heads Up River To New Home In Illinois

A fast patrol boat that served in the Vietnam War is heading upriver to serve as the first maritime training vessel on the inland waterways later this month. 

PTF-26 is scheduled to depart the GulfQuest National Maritime Museum in Mobile, Ala., at 8 a.m. July 20 for the trip upriver. The vessel will arrive at its new homeport in Golconda, Ill., about a week later.

“We’ve had a lot of schedule changes,” said Capt. Gary Fischmann, who is an MPTF founder and board member, as well as the vessel’s permanent skipper. “We actually stayed in Mobile a little longer than we were originally intending.”

The vessel arrived in Mobile on May 27 and was met with enthusiastic volunteers from the naval and special warfare small boat community, Fischmann said. That allowed some repairs to take place, including upgrades to deck and internal lighting, minor maintenance to the starboard engine, radio and antenna repairs and cleaning.

Getting it to the inland waterways was “miraculous,” said the Rev. Kempton Baldridge, managing director of Maritime Pastoral Training Foundation, Ltd. (MPTF), which owns the boat.

Baldridge pointed to all the people it took to make the PTF-26 project come to fruition. Among the crew are veterans of the Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine. The crew also includes a lawyer, a plumber, a mechanic, an excursion boat captain and a real estate agent. One crew member is the former commandant of the Ohio Naval Militia, and another is one of PTF-26’s crewmembers from its time in active serve in the 1970s. The oldest crew member is a retired senior captain who joined the Navy the same year PTF-26 was commissioned (1968). One Golconda resident who played an important role in the decision to homeport the vessel there previously sailed on a 90-foot replica of a 15th century sailing ship.

The crew comes from Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, California, North Carolina and South Carolina, and most of them had never met before getting underway.

A History of Service

PTF-26 was constructed in 1968 as the very last of the 841 PT boats built by the U.S. Navy beginning in 1940, so it is known as “the last American PT boat.” Only nine PT boats remain, and just two of those are operational: PT-658 in Portland, Ore., and PTF-26. PTF-658 was built too late to see military action, so PTF-26 is the sole PT boat with a combat record still functioning.

PTF-26 was shipped (along with sister Osprey-class vessels PTF-23, 24 and 25) to Vietnam and based at DaNang, a short distance from the demilitarized zone (DMZ).

“The PTFs operated under cover of darkness on covert, highly classified missions involving teams of special warfare operators (i.e. SEALs),” Baldridge said.

Michael Klapka first set foot onboard PTF-26 47 years ago, in 1977, after joining the Navy right out of high school. Following its service in Vietnam, the boat was docked at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, Calif. Klapka spent almost a full year as part of the crew as it was “very actively” put to use, he said.

“The 26 boat had recently returned from Vietnam and was unique compared to most other boats,” Klapka said.“I had the privilege of working with an exceptionally unique and diverse crew. We all took a lot of pride in the boat and the work we did.The sheer size and speed of this boat always surprised and delighted anyone lucky enough to ride it.”

Upon leaving military service in the 1990s, PTF-26 took on a second life as a youth seamanship training vessel with the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco. Later acquired by Liberty Maritime Museum of Sacramento, it was renamed the training vessel Liberty and made history as the first large Sea Scout training ship with an all-female crew. For more than two decades, the sea scouts of “Tiki Too” traveled the Bay Area and competed in dozens of regattas on the West Coast. PTF-26 was crewed by about 120 teenage girls from the Sacramento area from 1998 to 2020.

The Long Trip

In the fall of 2016, the MPTF board learned of PTF-26’s availability and began investigating how best to move it from northern California to the inland waterways.

Board members pored through marine surveyor’s reports, flew out to inspect PTF-26 and concluded the boat was ideal for what they hoped to accomplish. On March 27, 2020, MPTF took title to PTF-26. Days later, COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions were imposed nationwide.

Meanwhile, the pandemic and the economic downturn took its toll on other youth training ships in mid-America. The 80-foot Chicago-based training vessel Manatra, 80-foot training vessel Pride of Michigan in Harrison Township, Mich., and the 120-foot SCS Greyfox in Port Huron, Mich., the national flagship of the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps, were all sold off in 2022 with no replacement and without public notice.

Baldridge noted that the Manatra’s parent organization had been actively training future mariners since 1946.

“PTF-26 will try to address some of the unmet need from the loss of these three vessels, while creating opportunities for Sea Scouts, Sea Cadets and NJROTC Cadets from 164 different units within driving distance of Golconda,” he said.

Getting the boat from the West Coast into the river system proved anything but easy, as it turns out.

Continued COVID-19 restrictions, unexplained mechanical problems and other issues prevented PTF-26 from being moved from its temporary dock space in Morro Bay, Calif., until December 2023, when it made the trip to Ensenada, Mexico. It was then transported on the deep draft mv. BBC Michigan as deck cargo through the Panama Canal, with subsequent delivery to Port Everglades, Fla. 

Even before its crew reassembled, PTF-26 was unexpectedly delayed further by the Jan. 16 collapse of the miter sill at Demopolis Lock. The Corps closed the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway to all river traffic until May. The Tenn-Tom was the only route PTF-26’s marine insurer would allow.

PTF-26 spent time docked in Palm Beach, Fla., and then Fort Myers, Fla. After an eight-day passage in late May, PTF-26 received a warm welcome and prime dock space at GulfQuest National Maritime Museum in Mobile for several weeks.

Shortly before the vessel arrived  in Mobile, it was discovered that previous repairs to an engine cooling system were done improperly, and corrective measures were needed before PTF-26 could proceed upriver. Fischmann agreed to resume command for the final 751-mile trip through 15 different locks.

Klapka rediscovered PTF-26, once again becoming part of the crew, thanks to the power of the internet. After leaving the navy, he went on to work first as a marine mechanic and eventually retired from United Postal Service (UPS) as a mechanic. 

“Not long after the internet became a useful tool for research, I was able to keep track of the 26 boat and its location for many years,” he said. “I was happy to see it found a useful purpose. I always wanted to revisit it, but it never seemed to be the right time or place.”

When Klapka found that MPTF had bought the boat and planned to relocate it in Golconda, it was much closer to Klapka, who had moved to the Memphis, Tenn., area.

“I found myself part of the next crew from Ft. Myers to Mobile Bay,” he said. “The boat was showing its age, but after nine days at sea proved to be solid and safe, a perfect piece of history well worthy of renovation.”

“My once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was an easy decision,” he continued. “I hope everyone who has a history with this boat gets to reunite with it and each other again.”

A New Mission

PTF-26 has been listed by the Historic Naval Ships Association (HSNA) for more than 25 years and is among a very few listed as “operational museum ships.” The others in the United States are Liberty ships SS John W Brown and SS Jeremiah O’Brien, D-Day veteran USS LST-325, War of 1812 hero USS Constitution, post-WWII PT-658 and Vietnam swift boat PCF-851.

 While continuing to represent its historic past, PTF-26’s primary mission will be providing “hands-on” shipboard training opportunities for teenagers enrolled in Sea Scout, Sea Cadet and NJROTC units in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri and Michigan. 

Baldridge envisions 12 to 15 cadets or scouts eating, sleeping and training aboard as crew trainees on weekends, with a USCG-licensed captain in command, guided by adult officers of their units. When “visit ship” is held on weekends, qualified, uniformed cadets and scouts of the crew will conduct tours for the public, either on the dock or on deck if the insurance company allows, Baldridge said. Tours will be offered without charge, Baldridge said, as PTF-26 is classified as a vessel in public service.

“Among the subtle, less obvious roles for PTF-26 is validation of southern Illinois’ historic connection to the river industry and the exceptional impact its citizens have had upon the armed forces,” Baldridge said. “Moreover, the presence of so historic a naval vessel in a city of 650 leads naturally to retelling Golconda’s amazing history as Illinois’ oldest city and how its former mayor was a larger-than-life, real-life naval hero and commanded PTFs and PBRs. That’s a story worth telling and repeating.”

Additionally, Baldridge hopes that PTF-26 will help focus attention on essential roles played by U.S. merchant mariners, especially on the inland waterways.

He said that while U.S. container ports are struggling to deal with record volumes of cargo imports and exports, the number of American oceangoing ships has dwindled to fewer than 200 commercial and government vessels, crewed by 13,500 “blue water” U.S. mariners.

By contrast, more than 33,000 mariners work on the rivers aboard 4,700 towing vessels in the Coast Guard’s Eighth District, meaning there are three times as many U.S. mariners working in the river industry than there are in ocean shipping.

“All of this is to say it is high time we acknowledge the importance of the maritime industry in this part of the country and develop certain key infrastructural components—i.e. ‘hands-on’ training vessels and maritime studies curricula—to inspire, inform and fire the imaginations of our youth and also to help shape their views of the maritime profession itself,” Baldridge said. “The maritime profession deserves far more respect than it receives. From experience, it’s not even close.”

“No one is suggesting working on the water is for everyone,” he added. “It’s not, but for many of our youth it’s exactly the kind of work they would enjoy and spend their lives doing. But they need to know it exists, first of all, plus what it takes to get out on the river, lake or ocean. In a sense, the kids with no exposure to the maritime world are why we’ve been so tenacious, resolute and downright stubborn about getting PTF-26 to the river. For nearly eight years we’ve worked hard to acquire PTF-26 so it could serve here in the Heartland. For two decades, PTF-26 was an iconic presence on the Sacramento River, accumulating an unmatched record of safety, security and success with its all-female Sea Scout crew. We wanted to transplant that same success here to the Ohio River. The youth raised by the rivers deserve special opportunities out on the river so they can make it their river. We believe PTF-26 is going to do that like nothing ever has before.”

Klapka said his experience reuniting with PTF-26 was more than he could have ever hoped for, and he thinks visitors to the vessel will go away with a feeling of just how special it is.

“This will not be a museum piece to look at,” he said. “It is more like a living, breathing historical experience. During our trip the boat never failed to attract a crowd and patriotic well-wishers, many of whom had Vietnam Era veterans in their family who served and sacrificed so much.”

Klapka said that as momentum builds in anticipation of PTF-26’s long-delayed arrival in Golconda, he gets increasingly excited about its future.

“Everyone I have met and become friends with seems to share the same goal,” he said. “It will require many man hours of hard work and generosity from those who understand the importance of keeping this era of history alive.

“Giving PTF-26 a new home to build on her 55 years of service is simply the right thing to do,” he added. “And God willing, it will continue to be seen that way for a long time to come.”