What Sank the Boats?    by Ms. Stone's 3rd Grade Class

One rainy day at a dock in Port Gamble there were two tugboats.  The two tugboat's names were

Legacy and Magic.

The owner of Legacy was David Berry.  He also ownes the cranes.

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The two tugboats were tied to a dock and each other.  The Magic was used for taking sand to

Seattle.  The Legacy was used for tugging boats.  The Legacy was 74 feet and the Magic was 140

feet.  The Legacy's colors are blue, yellow and white.  The Magic's colors are white, peach and gray.

That night when the two men left they forgot something...Errrrrrk!  The hatch was left open.

Then clouds covered the sky, rain started to pour, a storm was coming.  White caps became bigger

and went over Magic and in the hatch.  The boat began to wobble and it started to sink.

All of a sudden the boat started to sink in the deep, dark water.  First the boat looked thick and

hard and kind of rusted.  Now it looks crumpled, orange, dented and black.

This is how it sank.  It sank because it had rusted holes in it.  It was 82 years old!  It had the

hatch left open, so the water went in and sank it.

The oil leaked out like an octopus squirted black ink.

The next morning people smelled diesel fuel in the air.  In fact, three kids in our class, James,

Norman and Miranda, remembered smelling diesel fuel on the way to the bus stop.  Then Tamara

Gage called the Coast Guard.

Then they came with a big, big boom.  A boom is a big, big tube that keeps the oil out of the way. 

They came with absorbent pads.  Those pads soak up the oil from the water.

Then the crane comes, the crane is going to pull out the two boats so they can go free from the

water.

Then the diver dove down and put a strap around the boat.  After the boat got the strap around

it, the crane lifted the two boats up.  When the two boats got lifted up they were saved.

The salmon and birds didn't get infected with oil because the salmon swam under it and the birds

flew away when they saw it.

The people closed the fishing season while they cleaned up the oil with absorbent pads.  Divers

went underwater to see if the geoducks were O.K. to harvest.  They were not infected with diesel.

Dave Berry was trained to change the rules for boats.  He wants to get rid of old boats.

Facts: Boat sank in Port Gamble.  The boat Magic is 82 years old and 145 feet long.  Legacy is

75 feet long.  Magic is really old and rusty.  Legacy is a tugboat.