By James Heinz
I found this story while walking along in Manitowoc, Wis. There she was. A blue and white tied to the dock at the Manitowoc marina. I knew the ship was not built in the Great Lakes the moment I saw it. I had no idea where it ultimately would prove to be from.
She had a high bow and was clearly built for the open seas, very heavy seas by the look of her bow. She resembled the pictures I had seen of modern whale catching ships, which had their harpoon cannons mounted on a high bow like this one.
She was much larger than any of the other boats at the marina and was built of steel rather than fiberglass. She had no cargo holds and she was too big for a Great Lakes fishing boat and too small to be a cargo ship. She was not a tugboat. I had no idea what the ship was or where it came from.
When I walked around her stern, I saw the word “OSLO” embossed in the metal on her stern. OSLO is the capitol of Norway but that city name had been painted over with the words “HALTEN” painted above “OSLO” and “TAMPA FL” painted below “OSLO”.
Hmmm, a ship built in Norway and registered in Florida but tied to the dock in Manitowoc. It was a mystery that would have baffled a seagoing ship Sherlock. There was only one way to solve it, and that was by employing an investigative technique known as Asking Random Passerby What Is This Thing.
I hit pay dirt with the second person I asked. He identified himself as the caretaker of the vessel. He told me that the vessel had indeed been built in Norway and “went out with the fishing fleet” into the North Atlantic. I took that to mean that it was an oceangoing commercial fishing vessel, but her stern deck area and lack of holds to store the fish did not seem suited to that.
The caretaker said that 20 years ago a man who owned a steel company in another state went to Florida and bought HALTEN. The man converted it into a private yacht, brought it back to the Great Lakes, and sailed it around the Lake for a number of years. The ship was tied to the dock in Manitowoc when the man died and had been there for a number of years because the man’s widow did not want to part with a memento of her husband.
But for what purpose had the ship been built?
There were no records in the WMHS files because we do not track private yachts. So, once again I had to ask for a diagnosis from Doctor Google. And the answer surprised me.
She was a rescue ship.
The website https://www.northernlight-uk.com/our-boats/norwegian-rescue-ships/halten/ shows a photo of HALTEN tied to the Manitowoc dock in the exact same place in front of the same marina building. The text states:
”Halten (RS 71) was built in 1966. George and Sue wrote on 17 July 2003 to say Halten was docked at the Manitowoc Marina on Lake Michigan, Wisconsin, USA. [The]…marina manager told us Halten arrived in the spring of 2002 and the boat is a year-round customer converted to recreational use.
Her owners then emailed us to say the vessel had traveled to Manitowoc Marina via the East coast, around Nova Scotia and through the St Lawrence Seaway and all of the Great Lakes except Lake Superior. Confirmation, and a photo, in August 2007 that she is still in the same location.”
That corresponded with what the caretaker told me.
Northern Light conducts tours of the Hebrides Islands using another repurposed Norwegian rescue ship and keeps track of all the Norwegian rescue ships of that same class including HALTEN. The RS in RS HALTEN stands for Rescue Ship.
Northern Lights describes these vessels as “liveaboard ocean-going towing and fleet support vessel(s) for the Norwegian fishing fleet.”, which jibes with the caretaker’s statement that HALTEN “went out with the fishing fleet.”
Northern Lights gives the following information about these boats: “75′ 9″ (22.85m) x 19′ 9″ (6m) x 11′ 6″ (3.5m) GRT: 91 tons. Range: 3,000 nautical miles.”
If it was used for rescue, we would assume HALTEN must have been built by the Norwegian government. It was not. It was built by a private charity called the Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue. It was one of twelve such boats constructed between 1962 and 1973. She apparently served NSRS until she was sold in 1997.
Both the website https://rs.no/english/ and Wikipedia tell us that “Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue is a charity organization funded partly by membership fees, partly by donations, and partly by government subsidies. It employs 197 professional seamen, 60 at the head office in Oslo, and 14 in the regional branches. The organization has 4,200 volunteers, and around 111,000 paying members. Pleasure craft owners can sign up for a “totalmedlemsskap” (Total Membership), a service and assistance package deal.
Although Norway has a Coast Guard, apparently there is such a demand for rescue services that this private charity has existed since 1891 to assist Norwegian mariners in distress.
Email requests for more information from Northern Lights, the Norwegian embassy, and NSFSR have gone unanswered even though I used Google Translate to translate my request into Norwegian. However, there may be something wrong with Google Translate since it translates the Norwegian word “HALTEN” into English as “the limp”, which seems like a strange name for a brave ship dedicated to saving those in peril on the sea.
For now, HALTEN will remain tied to the dock at the Manitowoc Marina for the foreseeable future until the widow of her late owner can bring herself to part with a memento of her late husband.
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James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.
Photos by James Heinz
