SITE OF THE NEW CARISSA — David Parrot has a special fondness for tugboats. Years ago, Parrot read “Grey Seas Under” by Farley Mowat, a book about the missions of a salvage tug. The book sparked his interest in salvage.

In 1981, Parrot turned that interest into a career. This year, that career brought him to Coos Bay to tackle the New Carissa shipwreck.

Parrot and a partner started their business with just one tugboat. They created Titan Salvage, now owned by Crowley Maritime Corp. Over the years, the company expanded to become one of a handful of companies doing salvage and wreck removal worldwide. Now Parrot is Titan’s managing director. The company has worked on projects in Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Germany, Malaysia and in the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans, to name just a few places.

Parrot earned himself the nickname “General Chaos” in his years in salvage, a fitting title for the man leading the crew in removing the New Carissa stern from the surf off the North Spit this summer.

Parrot, who grew up in New England and speaks with a Northeastern accent, is nearing the end of his career, but he still gets a gleam in his eye when he reminisces about his almost three-decade career in ship salvage.

“It’s just fun stuff,” Parrot said. “It appeals to the kid in me.”

He is having a good time with his crew here in the Bay Area on the project that may be the last in which he has a significant role.

On Sundays, when the crew often gets together for a relaxing barbecue, Parrot’s the cook.

“Here, try this,” he says, handing out a bit of salmon — or pork or steak.

His enthusiasm’s contagious. He tells stories of other salvage operations and the early days of Titan. Soon, other workers chime in with stories of their own: What it’s like to travel. What it’s like to work with guys from all over, in the far reaches of the world.

Parrot does more than just lead his crew, he is a mentor. He’s patient yet firm. He finds young talent and brings them along, encourages them.

Parrot’s careful not to mention exactly who. But it’s easy to see. He has a story — success story — for each of the workers who has been part of Titan.

Parrot has his own success story, too. He was a yacht broker before venturing into the world of saving sinking ships. In the beginning, he said salvage work was not steady and he had to make a few more yacht deals until Titan found its bearings. Later, a pair of barges set the company apart.

Titan’s jack-up barges, now towering above the surf of the North Spit, allow Titan to do work in places other salvage outfits couldn’t access. Other firms use heavy lifting ability to retrieve wrecks, he said. The New Carissa wreck is a good example of what other companies could not do. Lifting what is left of the wood chip ship wouldn’t be a problem, but where it is positioned in the water is.

“They could lift this wreck out in one go, but they couldn’t get to it. It’s too shallow,” Parrot said.

For jobs like the New Carissa, it takes more than just big machines. That aspect of the business is part of the attraction for Parrot.

This job is using some gigantic equipment — the barges and cranes — to do the work, but also some that aren’t so big. For instance, the hydraulic pullers are tiny, relatively speaking, to what crews will be pulling out of the sand on the North Spit. On salvage operations where there is still some value in the vessel, Titan uses small water pumps to refloat ships that have begun to sink.

“It gives me a sense of satisfaction to see these big things float again,” Parrot said.

That is not possible in the New Carissa’s case, but he is grateful to see the removal going well so far. He doesn’t particularly like the idea of slicing the rusting stern to pieces, but feels better recalling that much of the burning and breaking apart of the once huge chip vessel was done long before the first Titan torch was turned on it in June.

New Carissa has posed a challenge to Parrot and to Titan ever since it ran aground in 1999. Parrot said the it presented an outline of what the company could do during the jury trial in Coquille in the fall of 2002.

This summer, using that same plan presented years ago, Titan is seeing success in the project. Parrot said a finished removal of the New Carissa without incident will be a final rebuttal to those who said it couldn’t be done.

 “When we get it out, it’ll be very satisfying,” Parrot said. “And get it out safely.”

— Staff Writer Susan Chambers contributed to this story.