Off Beat: The news of the day, after the date that lives in infamy

As we were reminded again last week, the world was shaken on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.

It didn’t take long for the ripples from Pearl Harbor to reach Vancouver. The front page of our Dec. 8 paper was filled with war-related stories: families awaiting news of their loved ones in Hawaii, anti-sabotage precautions at local factories … and a U.S. Navy yacht that once belonged to a Hollywood star.

That vessel was the U.S.S. Amber, which docked at noon along Vancouver’s waterfront on Dec. 7 as part of a Navy recruiting campaign. Its hull number, PYc-6, designated it as a coastal patrol yacht — one of about 50 the U.S. Navy used for training and patrol purposes.

The 120-footer was built in 1930 for movie star John Barrymore. But as his career went into an alcohol-induced death spiral, Barrymore couldn’t afford to operate the yacht.

The Navy acquired it in 1940 and armed it with machine guns, a deck gun and anti-submarine depth charges. It was commissioned in Seattle on March 3, 1941.

According to our story on Dec. 8, 1941, “Only a few silent onlookers along the Vancouver waterfront Sunday afternoon saw how Japan’s declaration of war changed a well publicized recruiting cruise of the navy’s U.S.S. Amber into a sudden departure for grimmer duties …”

As “the radio and news wires cracked with war news, she maintained a dead silence and permitted no one aboard. Then suddenly at 4:40 p.m. she sped downstream into the gathering dusk, presumably for inshore patrol duties on the northwestern waterways.”

Our story noted that the Amber took off so quickly that “three of its crew members ashore on leave were left behind.”

Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.