The Thea Foss

There was a Russian sub in the Thea Foss waterway. It wasn’t a commissioned sub or anything. It was built in 1973 and a Canadian entrepreneur had recently salvaged it from the scrap heap. He had had the brilliant idea to fix up the insides with some cans of paint, decorate the state cabins and galley and charge people an entrance fee. Now for a few crisp tourist dollars, one can take a tour of the submarine and see firsthand how 70 men could live in a little Russian metal tube no larger than an elementary school bus. It’s also testament to Russian use of old technology as there is nothing at all modern in this little trap and if I had been told it was built 50 years ago I would not have been surprised. My understanding is that this pissed off the Russians who had thought it was to be used as scrap metal and not as a tourist trap but by that time there wasn’t really anything that they could do about it.

In some roundabout way we are friends of friends of the port commissioner in Tacoma. She had invited them to see the submarine while it was in port being painted and so they in turn, invited us. We thought it might be too difficult for the littlest one to go through it but would be a great diversion for the older boy.

It was raining like crazy but we got everything packed up and off we went to get our first look at the inside of an old Russian diesel-and-battery submarine.

The sub was almost directly under the 12th street bridge and though it was easy to see from the road it was a little more difficult to actually get to once we had gotten to the other side. We found it down at the end of a dirt alley past the dilapidated warehouses that line the north side of the waterway. Down a long slippery gangplank and up a ladder that looked like it was part of the original sub purchase.

Flat black with bright red hammer and cycle on the side. It is at once both larger than you would think and smaller than you would like it to be. Probably not one of Mother Russia’s crowning achievements in the cold war of the early 70’s. The insides were a mess of dials and cramped quarters. No fancy computer screens or anything, just big round hand crank dials and a periscope. It brought to mind how unpleasant and closed in it must have been when it was submerged and running on battery power.

After the tour we stood outside in the rain on the little dock and looked at starfish that had attached themselves to the pier. We weren’t in any hurry to get home and even though the rain wasn’t slowing down we hung out for a while. I think we were just glad to breath fresh air and watch the little rings form when the rain hits the water: standing next to a boat that was too far from home, both physically and politically.