The Concretia
North America’s First Self-Powered Concrete Ship
By Sonny Moran
Y
es, concrete can float, but when it sinks – it sinks fast! For this reason, sailors
who crewed on concrete ships often referred to them as “floating tombstones.”
Ships made of concrete are built of steel and ferrocement (reinforced
concrete) instead of just steel or wood. Ferrocement is made by mixing cement and sand
together, then applying it into a tapestry of wired-together rebar and wire mesh to form
a hull. Concrete construction makes shipbuilding cheaper, but the ship’s operation is
more costly. Concrete ships require a thick hull, which allows less space for cargo, but
ferrocement is strong, durable, waterproof, prevents corrosion, and is fireproof up to
750 degrees celsius for up to 48 hours.
The Concretia
and Its Crew
North America’s first
self-propelled ship made of
concrete, the Canadian
Government Ship (CGS)
Concretia, was designed and
built between 1908 and 1917 by
Charles Michael Morseen,
president of Atlas Construction
Co. Ltd. of Montreal, Quebec,
and Professor E. Brown, Vice
Dean of Applied Mechanics and
Hydraulics at McGill University.
The Concretia. – Sonny Moran photo.
The Concretia: North America’s First Self-Powered Concrete Ship • 1
It was a World War I experimental vessel built of concrete due to a shortage of wood and
steel in Canada. The hull was 18 inches thick on the sides, 24 inches thick at the keel,
and 132 feet long. The Concretia steamed through the waters of the mighty St. Lawrence
River and Lake Ontario as a lighthouse and buoy supply vessel from 1920 to 1931.
This Department of Marine and Fisheries vessel had a 14-member crew whose
duties fluctuated depending on the task at hand. In the 1920s, pay rates and working
conditions on Government of Canada ships were determined at a meeting of various
vessel-operating department officials, held each spring prior to the navigation season.
Deck officers and engineers were paid based on the size of their ship and engines, as well
as the work their vessels were intended to conduct. For example, in 1926, the captain of
the Concretia earned $160 a month during navigation season. The first mate, as secondin-command, received $125 a month. Setting wages for the Concretia’s crew was
involved, balancing prudent expenditures from the public purse with the desired pay of
the crew.
The End of the Concretia
The Concretia finished her government service career in 1933. Eventually, the
ship was scuttled in Kingston, Ontario, to form a wharf, but not before the engines were
removed and placed into a ship called the Salvage Queen, owned by the Canadian
Dredge and Dock Co.
The concrete hull was purchased in 1978 by three Canadian adventurers who
wanted to use the massive ship as their means to sail the warm waters of the
Mediterranean Sea as well as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They refloated the
Concretia in 1979, renamed it the Onaygorah (a Cataraqui Aboriginal word meaning
“the one which keeps the history”), and towed it to the La Salle Causeway dock, near
Lake Ontario, for refitting. It was very difficult to free the vessel from the Kingston
Harbour bottom. Even the Canadian Forces tried to dislodge the concrete ship, to no
avail. Tugboat service operator Harry Gamble of Kingston pumped all the water out of
the ship and was finally able to free the historic craft from the mud of Kingston
Harbour. Since the hull was made of poured concrete, it remained in great shape.
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Onaygorah a) Concretia at berth in Kingston, Ontario.
– Image courtesy of former Onaygorah crew member Jeff Irving.
The refit Onaygorah boasted 13 working sails totaling 6,000 square-feet on
three, 85-foot masts. It is believed the ship became the largest pleasure craft registered
in Canada at the time of her refit. The vessel now accommodated 11 double cabins, with
more than half of them equal to the size of a stateroom. A dining room, galley kitchen,
three washrooms, living room, hot tub, and of course a bridge and engine room rounded
out the onboard amenities. The ship was also given a new propeller shaft. The owners
spent more than $750,000 for equipment to make Onaygorah ship-shape.
The three-masted barquentine sailed out of Kingston in 1981 on a five-year
voyage to study marine biology in the warm South Pacific waters around the Island of
Fiji. Travel plans included trips through Haiti, the Bahamas, Jamaica and the Yucatan.
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Oswego, New York, served as an early port of call on her voyage halfway around the
world. While docked in the harbor, the Onaygorah captain had to hire a crane to help
crew members dismantle the ship’s three, 85-foot tall masts. The vessel’s route included
sailing down the Erie Canal, and her tall masts would not fit underneath some of the
bridges that spanned the canal.
Where is the Onaygorah today? Did it make it to the South Pacific? Did it
become a “floating tombstone?” No one seems to know.
The Parmanencia
The Concretia had a sister ship, the Parmanencia, also of ferrocement
construction, built in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1920. The vessel, owned by W.N.
MacDonald of Sydney, Australia, sailed with nine crewmen and weighed 292 tons. On
its last voyage the Parmanencia carried 188 tons of herring as it left the Island of SaintPierre, south of Newfoundland, heading for Boston. A strong wind out of the southwest
buffeted the ship and the wind increased in intensity, swirling into a violent storm. As
the storm raged the Parmanencia stayed afloat with great difficulty. The captain turned
for shelter along the coast to wait out the storm. The vessel dropped anchor, but the
anchor chain snapped and broke. The Parmanencia’s engines were no match for the
storm and soon structural cracks appeared on the bridge and in the ferrocement hull.
The captain finally ordered the crew to abandon ship. All crew members made it to
shore, but the Parmanencia was lost off the Island of Saint-Pierre.
Concrete Ships Today
Surviving concrete ships are no longer in use as ships. When steel and wood
became plentiful after the conclusion of World War I, the shipbuilding industry stopped
building concrete ships. Their heavy hulls became too expensive to operate because they
needed too much fuel to push them through the water. Concrete vessels therefore had
little or no salvage value.
At least three U.S. concrete ships can still be seen today. The cement tanker
Selma was built in 1919 and sailed between Texas and Mexico. Listed on the U.S.
National Register of Historic Places, it lies partially submerged in Galveston Bay, Texas.
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The wreck of the cement vessel Atlantus, built by the Liberty Shipbuilding Corp. of
Georgia during World War I, rests off the coast of New Jersey, near Cape May Point,
where it was grounded in sand. The tanker Palo Alto, built in 1919 at the U.S. Naval
Shipyard in Oakland, California, by the San Francisco Shipbuilding Company, serves as
an artificial reef for marine life at Seacliff Beach in Aptos, California.
About the Author
Sonny Moran is a Canadian author based in Ottawa and has
been a professional writer since the mid-1980s. Sonny has
worked as a communications advisor/coordinator in the
private and public sectors and also had a career as a journalist
for national and regional publications. He is author of the two
popular books Captains of Concrete and Floating Tombstone:
The Mysterious Disappearance of North America’s First SelfPropelled Concrete Ship. He spent five years researching Captains of Concrete and is
uniquely qualified to write and speak about the CGS Concretia – his great-uncle John
Dick was first mate and captain of the vessel for four years.
References

Appleton, Thomas E. Usque ad mare: A History of the Canadian Coast Guard
and Marine Service. Ottawa: Department of Transport, 1968.

Broad, William J. Rogue. Giants at Sea. New York Times, July 11, 2006.

Irving, Jeff. Former Onaygorah crew member. Interviewed on September 19,
2008.

Dick, John. Canadian Armed Forces Personnel File. Ottawa: Library and Archives
Canada.

Concretia. Original official files. Ottawa: Library and Archives Canada,
Department of Marine and Fisheries, 1920-31.
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