Crossing the Bar

oil, 13-1/2" x 19-1/2"

SOLD

This painting is based on the Artist’s personal experience working as an electrical engineer on a Polish Rescue Tug in the 1970’s. This dramatic painting portrays a steam tugboat towing a tall sailing vessel across the treacherous Columbia River Bar. Nicknamed "The Graveyard of the Pacific", the most dangerous part of Oregon’s Columbia River is the Columbia River Bar. Roughly three miles wide and six miles long, the bar is an area of shallow but violent water where the Columbia opens into the Pacific Ocean. Since 1792, approximately 2,000 ships have sunk on or near the Columbia Bar. Even when visibility was acceptable, ships often had trouble traversing the Bar, the area in which the gigantic flow of the river rushes headlong into towering ocean waves. Ships and lives are still lost today. A somewhat choppy but manageable river can suddenly twist itself into an unimaginable chaos of tossing, turning, icy water. Some vessels were stranded, while others sunk outright or simply disappeared in that infamous triangle formed by Clatsop Spit, Leadbetter Point and Astoria. The conditions are so extreme the state of Oregon created the Columbia River Bar Pilots, one of the oldest ongoing businesses in the state. Established in 1846, the pilots ensure that foreign trade vessels make it safely across the Bar.