[quote="nedsn3"]I read that one of the problems with all of the ships on display is that none of them sit on their design water lines. None are "combat loaded" or in ready for sea condition so they sit higher than designed, on thinner plates and therefore more susceptible to corrosion.

not saying that you are wrong....but if the ships are sitting higher in the water, then the parts that are in the water would still be in if they were fully loaded. Just less of the sides are in contact. A metal ship that has been in water for 75+ years, and without regular maintence is going to need work.

There's common problem with size and inactivity with museum ships. Nobody seems to understand the immensity and area and volume of a ship like the inert "Queen Mary". An active ship is maintained simply because it has to be. A museum ship is cursed with the deferred maintenance line of thought. The "Mary" was designed to be immense and fast, and a money maker because of the age which brought her into existence. She was built to compete with the "Normandie", the "Rex", and the "Bremen", flying a national flag, moving immigrants, mail, and the celebrated. Fuel was cheap(er), and the service was the fastest in the world. When the technology changed (commercial aviation) the metrics changed as well.
The fall of the liner was so swift, so brutal, and so final.
A ship like the carrier "Intrepid" hold huge, cavernous spaces which are sealed, empty, and unused. The ability to make a museum ship pay, while acres of deck, hull, and compartments requiring constant attention is never appreciated. Below the water line exist outlets, inlets, corrosion, biological predators.
I too, want to see the S.S. "United States" preserved, but she's already been gutted, stripped, and maintenance deferred, since her retirement in 1969. The "Queen Mary" retains so much of her interiors, but subjected to California climate, the brutality of tourists, and paralysis of machinery, how much longer can she last? These are serious questions requiring definitive answers.

Maintaining a steam locomotive is a piece of cake by comparison.

All the museum ships need a viable business plan to support the maintenance and pay the utility bills. Some of them did fairly well for many years with hosting World War Two veterans reunions, but that group is passing, and there is no comparable group coming along that relates directly to the service period of many of the preserved ships. Some museum ships are catering to groups of younger veterans, those the have the ability to provide hot meals on board for their volunteers seem to be doing best at attracting people interested in participating in upkeep and restoration.

But Covid has resulted in a lost year for many museum ships, and now those that have the most effective websites and best interfacing with the public are most likely to survive.

The vessels hardest to maintain, among the WW2 group, are probably the submarines. Some of them are practically floating (or semi-floating) wrecks now, and may end up in unfortunate situations like the USS Ling.

PC

Its worth Noting two groups, Preston mentioned one is the Slater in Albany, and the Cod in Cleveland. I think these are two of the best run, Naval/Ship museum's I have ever seen. Good group of people, and the boats are in fantastic shape. Slater has been drydocked twice recently, and Cod is going in the spring.

The new group saving Ling has made some amazing progress, and they are planning a spring time move down to the Harbor, but I fear they do not understand enough about the Maritime environment and how things "work", and I think they dont quite understand what they are getting into with a 70+ year old, sinking ship.

Even in proper operating trim with all systems functional, a World War Two fleet submarine is a complex balancing and buoyancy problem. As a museum vessel with pumps, emergency power, and control systems non-functional, they can be a potential accident waiting to happen. There is so little buoyancy available in the surfaced structure of a WW2 fleet sub that taking on even a little water through an unexpected leak can result any non-watertight visitor access suddenly going awash and then flooding the vessel rapidly.

For interesting reading on what can happen when a WW2 era fleet submarine loses trim and diving control, look up the final voyage of the USS Chopper (SS-342). After nearly standing on end and going well below rated depth the boat never operated again.

PC

Dave- The bulk of the corrosion takes place at the water line. Warships are designed to be armored at the water line. Armor plating takes longer to corrode through than thinner plates. When the ship floats higher than designed the thinner plates are exposed. Simple. That's exactly what happened with USS Massachusetts and made her dry docking important. Same with Slater and some others. Check it out.

Just read about Chopper. Amazing.

The Chopper is indeed an incredible, and little-known story. The man at the propulsion control cubicle correctly recognized a potentially disasterous operating situation and acted in time to save the ship and the crew.

PC

Dave- The bulk of the corrosion takes place at the water line. Warships are designed to be armored at the water line. Armor plating takes longer to corrode through than thinner plates. When the ship floats higher than designed the thinner plates are exposed. Simple. That's exactly what happened with USS Massachusetts and made her dry docking important. Same with Slater and some others. Check it out.
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agreed...BUT, those thinner plates would still be under water when the ships is sitting lower, so they would still be suffering corrosion.

The plates at the waterline are alternating between wet and dry.

The Iron hauled sailing ship Star of India built in 1863 received a doubler plate or box at the waterline while in preservation because of the waterline corrosion. The Star of India is said to be the oldest iron hauled ship afloat. Displayed at the Maritime Museum of San Diego she is normally sailed one weekend a year by a volunteer crew.

USS Halibut (SS-232) was a Gato-class sub with a 300 foot maximum operating depth. During WWII combat on November 14, 1944, she was forced to 420 feet with other dameage. She returned to Pearl Harbor and declared a total loss as a combatant and became a school ship, never to dive again. Supposedly the pressure hull was dished inward around the frame members.

USS Chopper (SS-342) was a later Balao-class sub with a thicker pressure hull and a 400 foot test depth. USS Tang (SS-306), another Balao-class sub, dove to 612 feet while evading a depth charge attack but was able to continue in service only to sink herself on a later patrol when a Mark 18 electric torpedo made a circular run and sank the boat that had launched it.

Phil Mulligan

While saltwater does no good, and sitting in mud makes it even worse-

What many people fail to understand or acknowledge is the bulk of corrosion on old boats, be it tugs, submarines or ships is:

They almost always fail from the INSIDE out.

Water, rain water, condensation, leaks, etc., sit on frames and just sizzles away. Under any kind of hatch is always the worst. Under pumps, under water lines, sewage lines. I cant tell how many boats I have been on that went down this road. This is why I go into convulsions when I see photos of volunteers needle gunning INSIDE and UNDER the waterlines. I have kept way more then my share of tugs and barges afloat with emergency repairs due to rust issues from the inside.

Ling was famously reported that vandals entered the boat and opened valves and sunk it. Nope, and everyone I worked with called it - she had a hole, from the inside that they found when they pumped it out.

A previous poster mentioned the originality of Queen Mary's interior. In comparison with the SS United States, which has NO interior to speak of, a higher percentage of QM's interior is original. However, much of the interior below "C" deck, which is the third deck below the main deck, was stripped out in the late '60s to create 400,000 square feet of museum space for Jacques Cousteau's Living Sea Museum (which closed after less than 10 years.) Modifications included removing all of the boiler rooms, the forward engine room, the turbogenerator rooms, the ship's stabilizers, and the water softening plant. The aft engine room and "shaft alley" were retained for tourists to view (and they are pretty impressive). In fact, the SS United States is probably more complete and original mechanically than the Queen Mary.

Additionally, many of Queen Mary's public spaces have been extensively renovated more than once for different restaurants, lounges, retail spaces, support facilities, and offices. Not even the wireless room, while is filled with vintage equipment, is original, just a replica built in a different location on the ship. I was quite disappointed when I toured the Queen Mary in 2004 to discover how much had actually been changed. It's still a beautiful ship though and I hope its problems can be solved.

OT and just for information, the depth achieved during the excursion of USS Chopper was estimated as 720 feet at the stern and 1011 feet at the bow. The vessel was nominally 311 feet long when built, the submarine was slightly less than vertical when it achieved maximum depth. I was told that the hull was also dished between frames and the sub was shorter after the incident than when it was built. It became a stationary training vessel afterwards.

Additional, totally off-topic submarine trivia occasioned by some e-mails while we have been discussing this. The submarine "Corsair" (Not related to USS Corsair SS-435) in the 1943 movie CRASH DIVE is USS Marlin, SS-205, the submarine that had Alco diesel engines. Her appearance in the movie was filmed late 1942 before superstructure alterations. The sub in the movie is incorrectly identified in some internet sources as sister ship USS Mackerel.

PC