Saw this on MSN today.
Very interesting indeed; thanks for the link.
My father’s ship, the U.S.S. Bollinger (APA-234) was at Suisan Bay for a while. She got scrapped quite a few years ago.
There used to be a sizable number of mothballed ships (mainly auxiliaries) in the James River, in Virginia. The Army, at Fort Eustis, was responsible for (sort of) maintaining them. Every so often Newport News Shipbuilding would tow one of them down the river to the shipyard and use it for an exercise in rehabbing, in preparation for some far-off day when the Navy might need them again.
I wonder how many ships mothballed after World War II, beyond the *Iowa-*class battleships, ever actually did get reactivated.
A couple of years ago one of our grad students wrote a thesis about the conservation of several WWII warships that are maintained as “museum ships.” One thing he learned was that a lot of them from that period are suffering leaks and other symptoms of metal fatigue. Steel doesn’t last forever, and it seems that just about every ship built before 1945 is at least starting to have serious problems. I suspect few, if any, of the mothballed WWII fleet is capable of serving again. Sad, but nothing in this world is permanent.
there was a story in the boston globe news paper about 5 yrs ago about just that we have the uss cassin young here as a museum it’s a wwii fletcher class destroyer it was in bad need of repair but they were afraid to move it because as a tin can the hull was only about 1/4 in thick and the stress of moving it across the harbor to dry dock was dangerous but some how they did it i am glad too much history etc is/will be forgotten if they just ignore the prob. as we in this country tend to do more often than not
I share the sentiments that someone should take them in and turn them into dry dock museums. Yes, there’s tons of money and man hours involved to partake to achieve that goal. It’s well worth the effort to do so but sadly, that’s not always the case.
Professional conservators have known for decades that, from the conservation standpoint, floating a ship - wood or steel - in water is just about the worst thing that can be done to it. Lots of organizations shy away from the dry dock approach for two reasons. One - lots of folks get really emotional about keeping them in the water. (“Please don’t take her out of her natural element.”) Two - dry docks cost money - enormous amounts of it.
It would be nice if every ship and boat ever built could be preserved in a museum-type environment. But it’ll never happen. It can’t.
Most attempts to save old ships fail, mainly because the well-meaning folks who take them on don’t know what they’re getting into. To save an old warship, even a small one, requires a permanent commitment of MILLIONS of dollars PER YEAR. In the U.S., the number of organizations that can realistically hope to do that is in the dozens at best.
Given that only a certain amount of money is out there, I often wonder if it’s being put to the best possible use. In my personal opinion the scariest ship preservation project in the country is the U.S.S. Olympia, in Philadelphia. She’s been going through one funding crisis after another for at least fifty years, and her future is still very much in doubt. When a precious, unique artifact like that is in jeopardy, does it make sense to save another Fletcher-class destroyer? Or another Liberty ship? Hard choices.
At the risk of making somebody angry, my un-favorite project proposal of them all is the proposed replica of the 1797 frigate United States, also in Philadelphia. Some nice folks with the best, most honest intentions have been trying to raise money for that one for at least fifty years now. Such a ship would, to the average eye, look almost identical to a genuine preserved ship (the Constitution). The idea of pouring millions into such a project, with the Olympia rotting at her pier just across the harbor, is, to my mind, appalling.
Like I said, hard choices. I wish there was some apparatus for making sure they’re made wisely.
When I was about 5 or so, the Enterprise was cut up for scrap. After reading “The Big E” in school, if ever a WWII ship should have been saved and preserved, she was it. So much Pacific War history went under the cutting torches…
Some of those hulks have useful lives after service. I was on a rescue and salvage tug when I was in the Navy. Once a month we would tow a ship down to Little Creek from Newport News or Portsmouth. We’d tow it out to the bay and practice firefighting and salvage ops on her. We would set her on fire and then put a team on her to put out the fire. I was #1 OBA on my team and I’ve got to say that putting out a real fire on a real ship is nothing like drilling on our ship or training back in boot. When the fire was out a couple of our boats would pull her to shore to beach her. In the morning we would pull her off the beach and back to port.
The number of important, heroic American warships that have wound up in the scrapyards is disturbing. (I agree that if any one WWII warship deserved preservation, it was the Enterprise.)
It should b noted, though, that the U.S. has done a better job of preserving warships than any other country. We have no fewer than eight WWII battleships (the Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, Massachusetts, Missouri, Iowa, New Jersey, and Wisconsin) and thee carriers (the Intrepid, Yorktown, and Lexington). The British have none in either category. (The largest surviving British warship from WWII is the Belfast, a light cruiser.)
So far as I know, the only other surviving battleship in the world is the Mikasa (which is permanently imbedded in concrete).
Every one of those old ships has her own set of serious preservation/maintenance problems. I can’t help wondering how many of them will still be with us fifty years from now.
Interesting thread. I was just at the Port of Brownsville in Texas yesterday and they have the USS Forestal and the USS Saratoga in port to be chopped. Forestal has already been torn down about halfway to the waterline and Saratoga just got started on. The company doing the demolition only reportedly paid a penny for each of these magnificent ships. So much history being scrapped. Very sad.
Suisun Bay is not “off the coast of San Francisco” of course. It’s about 20 miles upriver towards Sacramento.
The current inventory is kind of boring, 60’s era bulk freighters. Was a time though when a T2 or something similar would be towed by where I live.
There has been a fair amount of illegal squatting and other nefarious activities in those ships- it’s a game to sneak in and post pictures online.
Esco on Brownsville"recycles" most of these things. Actually they were PAID a penny each to break the Sara and Forrestal.
Their website has all kinds of interesting stuff for sale, from the manageable ( cargo blocks) to the strictly industrial (deck mounted cable winches).
The process of getting rid of these things is well documented, but as waterway sports people we are are all relieved to see these go, if a touch nostalgic.
AFA surviving (or not) Royal Navy ships of World War 2, two of the Colossus Class light Carriers made it pretty far, and the namesake of the Class made it as the French Arromanches up to 1978
Pardon the omission of italicizes names; it’s just too big a pain on the iPhone.
Warrior became the Canadian HMCS Warrior, and then the Argentine Independencia. She was scrapped in 1969.
Venerable became the Dutch Karel Doorman, then the Argentine Veinticinco De Mayo. She was scrapped in 2000.
Vengeance went to Australia as HMAS Vengeance and then to Brazil as Mina’s Gerais. She was kept running for a bit with parts from the Veinticinco, but was sold in 2001. Famously, she was listed on eBay but the post was taken down under the rules prohibiting the sale of military ordinance. She was broken up on the beach in India in 2004.
when the vengeance was listed on e-bay was it listed to port or starboard [whstl]