Historical US Navy vessels (where are they now

[SlaterDoc]

USS Forrestal

For anyone interested, Forrestal will be heading into the Brownsville Channel in a couple of days.
This webcam is on South Padre Island and shows the ship channel in the background. We should be able to see Forrestal heading in when she arrives.
It does not look like the image auto-refreshes. You have to refresh your browser. There is a link at the bottom of the feed to open a full screen view.

http://www.spadre.com/southpadresurfcam.jpg

[Dreadnought]

I have to vent! The more I read the angrier I get!

So, now Patriot's Point wants it's "volunteer" veteran crew on a schedule!!!
They have driven away some of their most committed!
from Facebook page of a former crew member!
For the last 7 years, I have volunteered at PATRIOTS POINT here in Charleston SC giving visitors tours of the USS CLAMAGORE SS 343, which was the second Sub I served on.
I would do this when work permitted due to the fact I work at nights and am gone most weekends running in honor of a fallen hero.
They now want all volunteers to commit to a schedule,which I can not do,so for the first time in my life,I have been FIRED as a volunteer.
What really angered me was in the E_MAIL sent out to volunteers was this statement,"VOLUNTEERING IS A PRIVILEGE,NOT A RIGHT" So,for the last 7 years,I had the PRIVILEGE of driving 30 min each way and spending my own money for fuel. I had the PRIVILEGE of doing jobs that they would have had to pay people to do, for free.
I will pack up the jackets and shirt they issued me, and return them,then give my last tours of the old 343,which they are going to sink as a reef soon Sunday.

I don't know where these idiots that are suppose to be "curators" of our historical treasures are at in their minds! But, they are certainly not what this particular museum needs!
No one thinks out of the box anymore!
The costs associated with prepping the sub and towing it out are ceratinly more than...say..trying something different? Since the biggest maintenance problem is because she is in the water...TAKE HER OUT! Contact some of the marine salvagers that worked in Louisiana after Katrina putting ships and barges back in the water (with the air bag rollers for example) to move her up on the shore!
Then the "volunteers" can repair the hull at an affordable pace while the sub is still open!
[ATTACH]35466[/ATTACH]

I for one intend to email them and the local media about such stupidity and incompetence!

Doc,
Im not advacating for either side here but since times have changed ,many things have changed aboard the museum ships. It was only a matter of time before it reached your location. Several (so far) of the museum ships have had to tighten up. Even the unpaid. Your definately not the first, and you wont be the last by a long shot.

But you do it for a reason, unlike others that do it for a paycheck.

The only thing I could possibly offer you is ... Its a labor of love and one of respect, not of a paycheck.

Reasons that many would never understand. BUT, something that you've experienced and lived, something that can NEVER be bought for a paycheck, no matter the price. Like many in your same position, NO MATTER THE PRICE!.

You are far above that, You will always be far above that. Remember that. Always.

Hang in there, do your best, and "carry on" as always.:);)

[SlaterDoc]

Doc,
Im not advacating for either side here but since times have changed many things have changed aboard the museum ships. It was only a matter of time before it reached your location. Several (so far) of the museum ships have had to tighten up. Even the unpaid. Your definately not the first, and you wont be the last by a long shot. But you do it for a reason, unlike others for a paycheck.

The only thing I could possibly offer you is ... Its a labor of love and one of respect, not of a paycheck. Reasons that many would never understand. Hang in there and "carry on".:);)

Thanks Dread! I respect your neutrality! BUT .... I was venting my frustrations for another not myself!
We on the USS Slater are lucky to have a director and staff that make some of these other museums look like a bunch of amateurs! I think another factor is the make-up of our board of trustees. Our chairman was an XO on a Navy ship off Viet Nam in the 60's. We have a number of other former sailors and officers that get it! Probably the main thing is the dedicated veteran crew and volunteers. It seems so many museums problems lie mainly in dollars and the decisions they make loose the "vision of the mission". You would never see our ship turn away or turn off a single volunteer (vet or otherwise). The USS Slater thrives because of dedication, sweat, honor and the "Navy can do" attitude! I read that Patriot's Point is and has been run at times by "political" types. I think their troubles may be more easily defined than "they" can see!
When I try to explain how the Slater has managed to get to where she is now and where she can go, I tend to use the same demonstrable explanation. When the DE vets found out about Slater in Greece in the early 90's, most said "you'll never get her back"! They did! When it was learned it would cost over $300k to bring her back, many said "you'll never raise that much"! They did! When she arrived in NY and many saw her condition, they said "you'll never restore that hulk"! Boy, did they! There are still nay sayers around. But, when something needs doing it gets done! It may take some time, some struggling, some ingenuity and a lot of determination. But, a way will be found! Some of those other museums need a bunch of lessons on those traits!

But, thanks for the support anyway! ;)

[DonBelt]

It seems to me, and I'm no expert, I just have what I know from my 7 years Navy enlisted, visits to northeast museum ships, what I read and what I've learned from "listening" to what people in the know here have to say, but the best way to care for a ship is to treat her like a ship. Doc, the Slater has a crew that "owns" her and maintains her like a ship and not a floating building with exhibits. You have ex-Navy officers and former enlisted who know how to set up maintenance schedules and have the skills necessary to carry it out. It seems like others just had a business model and just wanted to show a ship like it was the world's biggest ball of twine or some other oddity, but didn't have the spirit to bring it to life. I know it takes money and the market is saturated with museum ships but a crew is what brings a ship to life and I think it tells when the public comes to visit and they will reward it with return visits and support.

[tbm3fan]

It seems to me, and I'm no expert, I just have what I know from my 7 years Navy enlisted, visits to northeast museum ships, what I read and what I've learned from "listening" to what people in the know here have to say, but the best way to care for a ship is to treat her like a ship. Doc, the Slater has a crew that "owns" her and maintains her like a ship and not a floating building with exhibits. You have ex-Navy officers and former enlisted who know how to set up maintenance schedules and have the skills necessary to carry it out. It seems like others just had a business model and just wanted to show a ship like it was the world's biggest ball of twine or some other oddity, but didn't have the spirit to bring it to life. I know it takes money and the market is saturated with museum ships but a crew is what brings a ship to life and I think it tells when the public comes to visit and they will reward it with return visits and support.

What you describe we, on the Hornet, have had to deal with over the years. There were a few in Admin who looked upon the ship as a floating building vs. a ship. If something was in the way why couldn't it be cut out, trimmed, a passage way be cut through or whatever was needed. Naturally there was tremendous blow back from the ship's volunteers. At times it might be needed to alert relevant Government agencies about unauthorized changes to the ship. Fortunately we won every one of those instances and halted all changes to the ship. Those people have since left the ship or retired and the Hornet has remained an unaltered Essex Class Carrier.

We now have a new Ship's Engineer, from the merchant marine side of things, who seems to know his stuff. I am so far pleased to hear how he is showing the paid crew how they are to do their work correctly. I have always bitched about waxing decks without cleaning off all the dust and debris. Especially after spending days and days on my knees cleaning the tile with 000 steel wool. Nothing worse than taking our hard work and then having the ship's paid crew come in and damage what we finished. So with him, and the fact that the ship is now turning a profit, I feel a bit more positive about our condition and situation. I just wish we had more hands on ship restoration volunteers to deal with the exterior like me. None of our 70+ older guys work on the outside much less like to be climbing the sides of the ship.

[SlaterDoc]

tbm, I will take literary liberty here and transform an old platitude! from "great minds think alike" to "like minds think great things"!

With all this "stuff" going on with museum ships, Forrestal's scrapping and the battle for money to keep a museum alive, I asked an old salt that I know for some thoughts. Yep, he used email!
What I received for a response could have not had more of an impact! They are very wise those "old salts"!

I am 92 years old and not long for this world in time remaining! Although, back in 1944 when my ship was under attack by Kamikazees I thought my time was up then! I lost many firends and shipmates during that war. Many who never came home even in a box. They are still out there with their ships!
I got the chance last year to make a visit to the WW2 memorial in Washington. While it was impressive and gave one a sense of pride and thoughts of those shipmates, there were some other feelings that rose up in me that have grown since.
1st thought: Millions of dollars were spent to raise another granite or stone memorial in the "City of Memorials"! Are there enough there now? How many people or entities made some money on that? All those millions went somewhere!
2nd thought: No battles or even a skirmish of that war was fought even close to there! It is appropriate and fitting that there are memorials to the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War in Washington. A lot of blood was spilled in that area!
3rd thought: When the younger generations visit this memorial,what will they see and feel? In my opinion, not much! They will see a whole lot of granite,stone and plaques. Yep, it is pretty and impressive! But, so is the sports stadium!
4th thought: What did we fight for? Why did we as just teenagers run and volunteer to put our lives at risk and travel many miles into harm's way? What drove us? For me part of it was what I learned from my father's sacrifice in WW1. From him I got a deep understanding of what it meant to be an American and free!
5th thought: My son who fought in Viet Nam, to this day does not believe he or his veteran brothers felt the same way as my generation. Though many did, there was less clarity on the objective. We had not been directly attacked and our freedom was not as much at risk.
6th thought: When I am gone, what will my shipmates that were lost legacy's and history be? Like a leaf it will wither and disintegrate! In time it will be buried beneath all the other leaves of history.
7th thought: What would I want for a memorial if given that choice? I will be rotting away amongst a bunch of other plots marked by similar headstones. You don't see a lot of tourists and school children touring the cemeteries! Nope! I want my memorial to be right out there for all the younger generations to see, feel and be able to touch! You can not stop my flesh from rotting away! But you can keep my ship from rusting away! It doesn't have to be the ship I served on. She's already been scrapped years ago anyway! But, when one of those vessels that was there and carried many young men into battle and harm's way can be saved, it should be! It would be a living memorial that continues on beyond my existence! Yes, those ships do live! They hold the souls of many! I know I intend to ask that my soul be delivered to one of those ships if the big guy upstairs will listen! Let the children walk those same decks, lie down on that rack and train that gun! They will see first hand the same things I did as a teenager. More importantly they will wonder what it was like! That's how learning begins! When they begin to wonder a lot of souls will smile! Those souls will in unison feel "job well done"!
Final thought: Keeping a ship as a memorial costs a lot of money. Well, not as much as some think! But, how much did that big granite memorial cost? What's the real "return on investment:"? I'll take that child "wondering what it must have been like"!
Can't get that from a stone!

[85 gt kid]

Those are some great words from a wise source Doc thanks for posting! I wish I could do more to work on some of the museum ships just to keep these old girls looking good! Although my girlfriend does wanna move to Wilmington so that'd work . But you hit it right on the head Tbm! It seems like most museums have no passion for their ships like you guys or the crew for the Slater. I commend you guys for your hard work.

[qaz14595]

We on the USS Slater are lucky..... You would never see our ship turn away or turn off a single volunteer (vet or otherwise). The USS Slater thrives because of dedication, sweat, honor and the "Navy can do" attitude!

When I try to explain how the Slater has managed to get to where she is now and where she can go, I tend to use the same demonstrable explanation. When the DE vets found out about Slater in Greece in the early 90's, most said "you'll never get her back"! They did! When it was learned it would cost over $300k to bring her back, many said "you'll never raise that much"! They did! When she arrived in NY and many saw her condition, they said "you'll never restore that hulk"! Boy, did they! There are still nay sayers around. But, when something needs doing it gets done! It may take some time, some struggling, some ingenuity and a lot of determination. But, a way will be found!

Think quoting this from the Spring 2009 HNSA's anchor watch newsletter helps to show what type of volunteer environment we have aboard -



Secondly; this from the Jan 2013 SLATER SIGNALS shows Tim's (Our executive director) way of explaining how SLATER got to how she is..


So I’m sitting here signing another huge pile of Winter Fund thank you letters, and I get to thinking. Turn the clock back to 1993. Can you imagine me sitting with a group of Wall Street investors in suits and explaining our business plan?

It goes like this.
A bunch of really old guys are going to get together and pool our money. We’ve got this old ship over in Greece. None of us have actually seen it, but we hear it’s in pretty good shape. Well, it’s kind of a fixer-upper. I mean it’s totally gutted on the inside, but we’re pretty sure we can find all the parts to put it back together. It’s got all the guns!
We’ve got a deal with this Ukrainian tugboat Captain. He’s going to cut us a good price to tow it across from Greece, because he’ll be picking up a couple destroyers to tow back to Greece. He doesn’t want to make the trip over empty. We understand Ukrainian’s like their vodka, but that shouldn’t be a problem with all the modern electronics, they should be able to find their way over.
When she gets here we’re not sure where we’re going to put her, but something will work out.
We can’t afford to pay people, so once it gets here, we’re going to ask for volunteers to help restore it. While they are working on it, we’re going to weave their stories into a newsletter and send it out to all our potential supporters. It will be kind of like Huck Finn painting the fence. People will start to identify with these guys and want to be a part of this effort. Since a lot of them will live too far away to physically help, they’ll support us by sending donations. When we get the ship cleaned up, we’ll open it up for tours and sell tickets and souvenirs. We’ll open the ship one area at a time as the volunteers get it fixed up.
At the same time, we’ll develop educational programs including guided tours, youth group overnight camping, an extensive website, and historical newsletter. We’ll become a center for collecting Destroyer Escort memorabilia, documents, photographs and oral histories. We’ll enlist Navy volunteers to be tour guides who can speak from the heart about their personal experiences aboard these ships. We’ll stress the patriotism and sacrifices made by our greatest generation, and the difficult conditions they encountered living aboard these ships.
We know we have to close for four months a year, and we won’t have any operating income. So we’ll plan an annual fund drive at the end of the year when we close for the season. We’ll call it the Winter Fund and use the tagline, “Help keep a volunteer warm this winter.” That way the donations come in when we need them the most, and at the time of the year when we have the resources to process all the donations. And that way the volunteers can keep working on the ship all winter.
I think that’s about it. That’s a reasonable business plan, don’t you think?
That was 1993, and frankly, I think I’d have been laughed out of the room. Though apparently by the time the 2008 crash rolled around, Wall Street was investing in much shakier propositions than SLATER. It’s now 2013. In August we will celebrate twenty years of SLATER being back home. How have we done? Thanks to the efforts of Larry Sowinski who gave us temporary shelter at the INTREPID and then to Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings and Port Commissioner Bob Cross, we have a permanent home. And we can’t forget Michele Vennard and Gordon Lattey who first listened to Marty Davis’s pitch, looked at the ship and pronounced the project doable, and all the support we got from the New York State Department of Military and Naval Affairs in getting set up.
Thanks to the efforts of all the volunteers in Manhattan, Albany and from all over the country, I’m sitting on one of the best restored ships in the country. All those missing parts? We’ve found everything that a CANNON-class DE would have had aboard in 1945 with the exception of the evaporators and the donkey boilers that the Greeks removed. I can’t think of anything else we are missing, from wardroom china to dummy ammo. Okay, a few more depth charge arbors would be nice. We’ve got extensive educational programs in place, one of the best Historic Navy websites in the country. Our volunteers gave 17,000 hour last year.

And thanks to our nationwide network of over 3,000 donors the endowment fund is growing every day. When the bills are paid at the end of every month we don’t owe anybody a dime.We average 15,000 visitors a year; bring $2.5 million to the Albany economy, and spent two months last season as Tripadvisor.com’s number one tourist attraction in Albany. We have received our Absolute Charter from the NYS Department of Education and been designated a National Historic Landmark.
It’s no small fact that the project leadership changed this past year when Sam Saylor and Frank Lasch made way for BJ Costello and Tony Esposito, who have taken the reins without missing a beat. Way back in the day, Marty Davis used the phrase “snowball’s chance in hell” to describe our chances for success, and he was just talking about getting the ship over here. If I were an investor, I think that’s what I would have thought the odds of getting this far were. Knock on wood, but it’s a good day. Nobody’s bleeding, no water is coming in and nothing is on fire. And Erik just brought me another stack of thank you letters to sign. It hardly seems enough considering your faith in this project.

[Dreadnought]

Thanks Dread! I respect your neutrality! BUT .... I was venting my frustrations for another not myself!
We on the USS Slater are lucky to have a director and staff that make some of these other museums look like a bunch of amateurs! I think another factor is the make-up of our board of trustees. Our chairman was an XO on a Navy ship off Viet Nam in the 60's. We have a number of other former sailors and officers that get it! Probably the main thing is the dedicated veteran crew and volunteers. It seems so many museums problems lie mainly in dollars and the decisions they make loose the "vision of the mission". You would never see our ship turn away or turn off a single volunteer (vet or otherwise). The USS Slater thrives because of dedication, sweat, honor and the "Navy can do" attitude! I read that Patriot's Point is and has been run at times by "political" types. I think their troubles may be more easily defined than "they" can see!
When I try to explain how the Slater has managed to get to where she is now and where she can go, I tend to use the same demonstrable explanation. When the DE vets found out about Slater in Greece in the early 90's, most said "you'll never get her back"! They did! When it was learned it would cost over $300k to bring her back, many said "you'll never raise that much"! They did! When she arrived in NY and many saw her condition, they said "you'll never restore that hulk"! Boy, did they! There are still nay sayers around. But, when something needs doing it gets done! It may take some time, some struggling, some ingenuity and a lot of determination. But, a way will be found! Some of those other museums need a bunch of lessons on those traits!

But, thanks for the support anyway! ;)

Doc, It is always nice to have a Navy man or from other service advocate for the ships needs. Atleast you know they hold true interest.

[tbm3fan]

tbm, I will take literary liberty here and transform an old platitude! from "great minds think alike" to "like minds think great things"!

With all this "stuff" going on with museum ships, Forrestal's scrapping and the battle for money to keep a museum alive, I asked an old salt that I know for some thoughts. Yep, he used email!
What I received for a response could have not had more of an impact! They are very wise those "old salts"!

He is so right about the ships being more alive than a granite stone memorial. Even a memorial of a ship's prop doesn't really do it either. I can honestly say that every time I am standing in Pri-Fly, looking down on the after flight deck, my mind can go back in time seeing the planes of yesterday landing on that moving deck. Same holds for standing on the Nav Bridge or Admiral's Bridge and looking forward. Actually my best part is when I finish up at 7:00PM and start down fron the top of the Island turning out lights and closing hatches. I make my crossover from aft trunk to forward trunk at the O5 Level and look out across the flight deck. I am usually the last person left on the ship as I work my way down to the hanger deck and walk off the Security Brow closing the gate behind me. Can't believe I am that lucky to be working on her and to have had a good day bringing her back. My only worry is what happens 20 years from now when I am 80 as to who will care for her.

[DonBelt]

That's why it's called "living history"! I feel the same way when I've been on museum ships and I feel the same way at places like Minuteman National Historic Park with all it's witness houses. It's as though you could look at them and squint a bit and the modern world fades and the past reasserts itself a bit. You can almost see it, like looking thru a foggy window.

[surfgun]

Forrestal is at Brownsville.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/new...tml?mode=image
http://www.kztv10.com/news/uss-forre...ping-facility/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHbOxqZU-Gw

[85 gt kid]

Hard to believe a supercarrier is gonna be scrapped. I guess one great thing coming from this is the jobs it will create.

[tbm3fan]

Hard to believe a supercarrier is gonna be scrapped. I guess one great thing coming from this is the jobs it will create.

Don't forget where this place is located. All Star Metals is 3.87 km from the Rio Grande.

[blidgepump]

So what your saying is ......

Don't forget where this place is located. All Star Metals is 3.87 km from the Rio Grande.

All Star will encourage a number of able body workers up in the frigid northern plains states to drive to a warmer work climate in the South ???? ;)