1969 ❖ GIANT STERN TRAWLER OUT OF BELLINGHAM, WA.

SEAFREEZE PACIFIC

The 296-ft, 3,000-ton displacement stern trawler
was preparing for her maiden fishing voyage off
Washington State and then
heading to Alaska.
Homeport was listed as Bellingham, WA. 
Photo dated November 1969.
Captain Erling Jacobsen was master;
she carried a crew of 56. 
From the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society© 

One of the two largest fishing vessels in the USA was assigned to Bellingham, as her base, for bottom fishing off the coast of Washington & B.C. One of the two $5.3 million experimental vessels built at Baltimore with federal funds and operated by American Stern Trawlers, Inc. The Euro-type stern trawlers with facilities for processing and freezing 50 tons of fish per day and able to hold 2,000 tons were designed to determine whether the American fishing industry could be made competitive with the deepsea fleets of such nations as Russia and Japan.
1971: A note from McCurdy's Marine History of the PNW, Newell, Gordon lists the SEAFREEZE PACIFIC  as another costly maritime effort on the part of the government that ended in failure when this vessel and her sister ship SEABREEZE ATLANTIC were placed in layup. Built for 5.3 million dollars to compete with the huge deepsea trawlers of the foreign fleets, they proved to be financial failures.