Almost six months after the city shut down Captain John’s Restaurant, its 74-year-old owner is living on board in squalor and vowing to go down with his rusting ship.

John Letnik has been slowly dismantling anything of value from his beloved Jadran and still spends some nights sleeping on the carpet in his Captain’s Quarters.

He had movers put the bed and other valuables in storage back in July, the day before Waterfront Toronto officials ordered Captain John’s signs and the gangplank to the restaurant removed to make way for a planned park.

“I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to get everything out of here otherwise. What was I going to do, lower things down from the ship by rope?”

Instead, it’s been six months of silence, says Letnik, since the city shut off water to the ship June 26 and health officials ordered the restaurant shut down.

The gangplank remains. And Letnik, who underwent hip replacement surgery last March, carts in water when he’s not staying with family or friends.

“Captain” John still clings to the remote hope that if he can get a 10-year lease on a new waterfront slip, he can find a buyer for the 300-foot vessel, pay off more than $568,000 in back taxes and “leave with dignity.”

“It’s not very easy for me to look around,” Letnik says of the dark, cold ship where even the last bit of brandy is now gone.

“Are they (city and waterfront officials) waiting for me to die here?”

Letnik says he’s become so frustrated that no one from the Toronto Port Authority, Waterfront Toronto or the City of Toronto will return his calls, he recently asked long-time friend and former city councillor Chris Korwin-Kuczynski to intervene.

During a half-hour meeting in Mayor Rob Ford’s office Nov. 30, Korwin-Kuczynski says he appealed to the handful of city and waterfront officials present for solutions.

“I wanted to be sure that we had some final answers on this. They basically told me there were no other spots for the ship in the harbour and that he should walk away with honour,” says Korwin-Kuczynski.

Waterfront and city officials are still working together, says Michelle Noble of Waterfront Toronto. But everything is complicated — right down to removing the restaurant’s faded signs from Queens Quay which, it turns out, would interfere with hydro connections.

“We’re trying to work in a collaborative fashion, but this is not a simple one because it is under marine jurisdiction,” says Noble. “It’s not like a typical property where it’s a very simple process” to seize a house and sell it for back taxes after three years of arrears.

Instead, the city could face a lengthy battle to seize the ship under maritime law.

“This is a legal matter and the Toronto Port Authority cannot comment on it,” said authority spokesperson Irene Quarcoo in an email, refusing to discuss if, in fact, legal action has been launched again Letnik.

Even Korwin-Kuczynski acknowledged there is mounting pressure now to get rid of the ship from the prime waterfront slip at the foot of Yonge St. where it’s been moored since 1975.

Construction is well underway on three condo towers right next door and Waterfront Toronto plans to turn the adjacent parking lot, where the ship’s gangplank rests, into green space as part of the ongoing rejuvenation of the easterly waterfront.

“People in those condos aren’t going to want to look out their windows and see a rusting ship,” says Korwin-Kuczynski.

Civic officials had a ship recycler tour the Jadran about a month ago and estimated it will cost at least $150,000 to tow and scrap, Korwin-Kuczynski was told.

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That’s unthinkable for Letnik, who brought the ship here from his former homeland of Yugoslavia decades ago and turned it into one of the first attractions on Toronto’s waterfront.

In a last desperate bid to sway the city, Captain John has been handing out flyers downtown, decrying the “unprecedented and cruel” shutdown by the city, and urging folks to sign an online petition of protest at savecaptainjohn.org.

“He’s not going to go peacefully. I made that very clear,” says Korwin-Kuczynski. “He just wants his legacy to live on, but nobody is giving him an honourable way out, and that’s the frustrating part.”