Steamship to worship: A church from shipwreck remains

CHARLESTON, Ore. – There’s a point in time around the bay when memories become legend.

It may not be too many more years before that’s the case with the story of the Charleston Baptist Community Church. A few early congregation members still remember the church’s first days.

Just a few.

It was in 1945 and into ‘46. The story goes that principally five women and two elderly men framed and sided the church with lumber salvaged from a shipwreck. It was that of the steamship George L. Olson – the remnants of which appeared out of the sand on Coos Bay’s North Spit this winter.

The wooden steamship ran into the rocks of the north jetty on June 23, 1944, as it headed out to sea between the jetties. Waves buffeted it for three days before crews were able to re-float it. They towed it up the shipping channel, but the Olson mired in the mudflats between Barview and Charleston.

Wartime news dominated headlines then. Most of the young men were away, fighting, including Orville Schulze. Back home, the responsibility for constructing the church for a congregation living in the small fishing village fell to the ones left at home. The idea came from the church’s first pastor, the Rev. John Porter. The laborers joined him, with help from other locals as they found time, and erected a two-story house of worship.

“When I came home, I stood in awe out here,” said the 92-year-old Schulze, who is tall and genteel.

“I said, ‘Who in the world built this?’ “

Eva Schulze did.

Eva, Orville’s late wife, was one of those seven carpenters.

After a bit of digging through years of memories with Charleston resident Viola Steege, who was living across from the church in those days, Schulze and Steege came up with all but one of the other names.

There was Dorothy Brown, Rose Cottel, Mrs. Hallmark, Mr. Parks and Ralph Barker. The Parks lived near Steege’s family home. After a few minutes she recalled Mr. Park’s first name, since it was commonly heard in the neighborhood.

Steege remembered Mrs. Parks yelling down the street, “Walter, you get over here and do your own work!”

But about the wreck of the George L. Olson.

Steege remembers the Olson grounded in the muddy tide flats below the old pulp mill at Barview. Her dad, Willis Short, took her along and went aboard one day. The fisherman and daughter clambered across the deck and ascended into the dark hull.

“He was buying stuff off it for his own boat, the Doolittle,” she said.

There were bunks below deck. Her dad bought bedding for his new fishing boat. Steege’s recollection of that day has faded, but she does recall spending 50 cents on a bentwood chair off the George L. Olson.

It’s still in her house.

A lot of people were doing some salvaging back then as the waves battered the ship. The Charleston group put in a bid for salvage rights to the government, which by then was in possession of the wreck, said Ross Wilbanks, who’s now the church’s minister.

For $300 the congregation claimed the salvage rights to what people say became 500,000 board feet of lumber. Much of the lumber built the church and parsonage, but Schulze said some was sold to locals, too.

“I think every house in Charleston has some of the ship’s lumber in it,” Steege said.

In December 1944, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deemed the derelict George L. Olson a hazard to navigation. They towed the stripped-down Olson to sea and cut the tow line. It floated back to shore, running aground a mile and a half north of the jetty.

A bit of a pit bull, the Rev. Porter went out to protect his church’s investment. He built a sand buggy from an old truck and took volunteers out onto the North Spit to salvage more, Wilbanks said.

A 1968 Oregonian story in the church’s archive said Porter camped out there in lean-tos.

“Moving lumber and guarding it from private pilfering was a twenty-four hour job,” the article said.

They hauled lumber off the spit, by board and by lumber raft.

“They’d go over there, gather it up, put it on the beach. Then, when the fishermen came in, they’d bring it in for them,” Schulze said.

By April 1946, they were ready to open their church.

“I went to the first service. It was the first Sunday after I was home from the war,” Schulze said.

The name has changed since 1946. That first year, they took the Baptist name out of it because they wanted everyone to feel welcome, Wilbanks said. It’s remained the Charleston Community Church to this day.

These days it’s the people who climb the fold-up stairs to deposit items into the church’s attic who get the best sense of the church’s history. That’s where rough-cut two-by-fours and big beams appear just as they were 62 years ago.

It’s where you can smell dust mixed with the scent of sweet fir timbers and remember the George L. Olson.