Second world war ‘Ghost Boat’ emerges in California lake, puzzling officials

The drought hit Lake Shasta coughed up a Higgins vehicle and experts are struggling to explain its presence

Waning water levels across the west – symptoms of the region’s record drought – have revealed yet another artifact.

Dubbed the “Ghost Boat” by officials, the rusted carcass of a second world war Higgins boat, used to transport troops into battle and on to beaches overseas, began to emerge from the shallows in Lake Shasta last fall. Levels have sunk low enough this year to excavate the craft fully.

But how it ended up in California’s largest reservoir, buried in the depths for decades, is uncertain.

“The circumstance of its sinking remains a mystery,” US Forest Service officials with Shasta-Trinity national forest wrote in a Sunday morning Facebook post, including photos of the historic find perched atop dried cracked earth of the desiccated lakebed. Numbers painted along the boat’s ramp show that it was once assigned to the Attack Transport USS Monrovia, used as General George Patton’s headquarters in the Sicilian occupation in 1943.

“Eisenhower also was on this ship at that time, and it went on to a further six D-Day invasions in the Pacific,” officials said in the post, noting that it was reportedly used in the invasion of Tarawa and that it “sank in shallow water during that invasion”, but was later salvaged. Classified as an attack transport in 1943, the ship earned seven battle stars during the war, according to NavSource, a volunteer-run history site, but was sold for scrap in 1969.

Still, the fate of the USS Monrovia and its illustrious history does little to shed light on how the little Higgins boat went from the battles of Europe to the bottom of Lake Shasta. For now, it is on its way to a museum in Nebraska where experts will work to preserve it and restore a “weathered ‘combat fatigue look” before it is put on display.

The boat is just the latest in a series of peculiar finds pulled from the muck in receding waterways across the west. Another boat linked to the second world war was discovered in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US, along with three sets of human remains that may be linked to mob murders.

Meanwhile, the drought is expected to worsen in the coming years, spurred by the climate crisis, that has put more pressure on declining water resources. Roughly half of the American west is categorized as in severe drought by the US Drought Monitor and researchers are concerned that there is little chance for a rainy season strong enough to offset the long periods of dryness.

There may be more mysteries that will emerge from the mud. For now, officials are trying to piece together the story of the Lake Shasta Ghost Boat.

“There is more to discover of its history and obviously its time on Shasta Lake,” they said. “It really is quite remarkable how it emerged from the lake with so many stories to tell.”

cover photo: The USS Monrovia, a second world war Higgins boat, emerged from the drought-stricken Lake Shasta. Photograph: Courtesy Shasta-Trinity National Forest