Stockton volunteers restore historic rare wooden minesweeper ship

The Stockton Maritime Museum is moving to its permanent home on the historic Stockton waterfront.

The museum, which has been restoring an historic wooden warship for more than a decade, received a grant from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy to build an acre-and-a-half of property, where they'll build reproduction shipyard buildings and move the USS Lucid to, according to David Rajkovich, Stockton Maritime Museum president. 

"This is a non-magnetic minesweeper," Rajkovich said. "It's a very unique class of ship. It's built primarily out of wood and all the metal on it is non-magnetic. The engines are aluminum and stainless steel. All the fittings on it are bronze, brass, aluminum, stainless steel, or monel. So very valuable metals. That's why a scrapper had it. They were removing all those valuable metals from it."

Rick Hamel, a U.S. Navy veteran who dedicates around 24 hours a week of his time to help restore the ship, said it's one of two wooden minesweeper ships left in the world, with the other in the Netherlands. Built in the early 1950's, Rajkovich said it's a sister ship to the three built in Stockton and he got hold of it 14 years ago.

"It's been an adventure because when we acquired this thing, it was a mess," Rajkovich said. "It was full of garbage. When we first acquired it out in the Delta, it had wild animals living on it."

So, what did it take to get to this point after it was mostly scrapped?

"Oh, a lot of blood, sweat and tears and traveling all around the country, all around the world (Taiwan) to get this gear," Rajkovich said. "Not only did we get this gear, but then we had to restore it. Rick played a big part in that."

For more than a decade, there have been countless volunteers who have dedicated their time, including Hamel, a Lodi resident, who contributes his woodworking skills to this Stockton ship.

"I do some woodworking," Hamel said. "Do some mechanical, do some electrical, whatever he tells me to do…it's history. And I was never on a wooden ship. All the ships I was on were metal, iron."

Rajkovich said around 80% of the volunteers are veterans and calls himself a history buff, with his dad being a World War II sailor and remembers his dad taking him to a ship 25 years ago on a similar ship to what he served on in World War II.

"I love history and I'm not a veteran myself, but I've been around veterans my whole life," Rajkovich said. "I even have a group of young veterans, combat engine veterans that we support, that we get together once a month and play bocce ball or shoot pool or sometimes just drink. So I like giving back. I tell them, this is how an old fat guy can serve his country, you know, helping veterans."

The ship is currently docked at a vocational high school where students have also gotten experience practicing carpentry, electrical work, and plumbing aboard the ship. 

The museum recently held an open house hosting sailors who served on the ship from all over the country aboard and plans on having another one later this year.

"The second-to-last skipper of this ship is still alive," Rajkovich said. "He's in his mid-90s now and he lives in Los Angeles and he's a real character. Floyd Fields is his name and he loves telling stories, sea stories, so some of it is probably expanded upon a little bit, but great, great character. And we had a plank owner come out last weekend from Michigan and a plank owner is someone who's on the ship when it's first commissioned. He's a part of the original crew…and loved coming back, showing his wife his ship."