Today's Washington Post (which I had to "buy" by leaving an IOU in the bundle that's STILL sitting in front of the shuttered drug store as 2 feet of snow piles up!) had a story on the "ghost fleet" anchored in Newport News, Va. Some interesting facts and ships, including the fact that it costs ca. $25,000 a year just to keep each ship afloat and at anchor!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14607-2003Feb15.html
lner4472@bcpl.net

a story on the "ghost
> fleet" anchored in Newport News, Va.
> Some interesting facts and ships, including
> the fact that it costs ca. $25,000 a year
> just to keep each ship afloat and at anchor!

There is a move to scrap some of these ships, and soon.
Many have the hulls rusting through, which could possibly create an eviormental disaster in the river from leaking oils, TCBs, etc.. According to a story in yesterdays DAILY PRESS, Congress has appointed 11 million to allow for the scrapping, but this will only cover 4 ships! Most obsolete ships are to be disposed of by 2006, but it is said that this deadline is nearly impossible to achive.

The SAVANNAH is also anchored there with the rest of the fleet, but sits alone for obvious reasons.


NFDRwy@Cox.net

The ship they mention several times in the article is the Albert J. Myer which was built in Wilmington, DE. It was upgraded in the 1980's and retired in 1994. She was the last of the Wilmington built ships in service for Uncle Sam. Wilmington was once a great center of ship and railcar building.

Tom Gears

tom@forgottendelaware.com

Tom and others:

There is another lay up fleet near (san Francisco) here in San Pablo Bay.

The last 8 Victory ships are there as well as the famous Glomar Explorer

Also the Battleship IOWA slated for a future museum ship.



ted_miles@nps.gov

> The SAVANNAH is also anchored there with the
> rest of the fleet, but sits alone for
> obvious reasons.

My brother, who has a long-running project to document various Cold War "leftovers", was able to make arrangements to photograph the SAVANNAH awhile back. I don't think his website (www.duotone.com) has any photos of the ship, although he does have some other interesting examples of his work there.

Alan Maples

AMaples@aol.com

> The SAVANNAH is also anchored there with the
> rest of the fleet, but sits alone for
> obvious reasons.

What is the obvious reason that SAVANNAH is sitting alone? She's just an AOR that decommed in 1995, not much different than many of the other ships in Philly, Portsmouth, Bremerton and Pearl.



hayesw@bataan.navy.mil

> What is the obvious reason that SAVANNAH is
> sitting alone? She's just an AOR that
> decommed in 1995, not much different than
> many of the other ships in Philly,
> Portsmouth, Bremerton and Pearl.

Bill, your thinking of AOR 5, U.S.S. SAVANNAH; but Russell is talking about the Nuclear Steamship Savannah; which was a floating museum for awhile, but I assume it failed.

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a

james1@pernet.net

Beleve it or not, there are 180 steamships ALONE that make up our nation's "ghost fleet". (There are also several diesel powered vessels, and barges as well.) They are mostly concentrated in three locations: Suisan Bay in California, the James River in Virginia, and in the Neches River here in Beaumont. The James River Reserve Fleet alone has 73 steamships in it.

The fleet contains several warships that are awaiting transfer to a museum, resale to another government, or scrapping. It contains several cargo ships, ranging from the hulks of Victory Ships (as Ted mentioned) up to more modern container ships that could and have been activated for use in transporting military equipment overseas. It also contains several passenger steamers that were retained as training vessels or for transporting troops; the ARTSHIP and the S.S. Independance will both go back to Suisan Bay. As mentioned previously, the N.S.S. Savannah is also in the James River Fleet.

All of the above are listed in "Surviving World Steamships". I have also had the good fortune of making a contact who went through the James River Fleet, and took dozens of photographs for my "Surviving World Steamships" CD-ROM. Roughly a dozen of these photographs are currently included on the CD-ROM; the cover picture below is one of them; a Victory Ship hulk and a picture of the N.S.S. Savannah are two others.

As I mentioned before, there was an article in the Beaumont Enterprise about the reserve fleet a year or two ago. The article stated that the United States would no longer sell ships to overseas breakers for scrapping because they do not protect their workers from hazardous chemicals including asbestos, lead paint, and PCBs. This has had the effect of slowing down the scrapping rate; since the price of scrap metal here in the States is not that great.

If it costs that much just to scrap three or four; I think they should use that money across the fleet to stabilize them all instead. Some are slowly being sold for scrap; others are being stripped for sinking as artifical reefs. (The training ship "Texas Clipper", aboard which I had the pleasure of an engine room tour back in the 1980s, will have that fate.) Others will hopefully become floating museums one day.

In the meantime, as I mentioned before, they are the largest "private" museum in the world, all being preserved with US government dollars. They are not assessible to the public; you can only barely see the top of some the Beaumont fleet from public property.

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a

> Today's Washington Post (which I had to
> "buy" by leaving an IOU in the
> bundle that's STILL sitting in front of the
> shuttered drug store as 2 feet of snow piles
> up!) had a story on the "ghost
> fleet" anchored in Newport News, Va.
> Some interesting facts and ships, including
> the fact that it costs ca. $25,000 a year
> just to keep each ship afloat and at anchor!


Surviving World Steamships

james1@pernet.net

> Bill, your thinking of AOR 5, U.S.S.
> SAVANNAH; but Russell is talking about the
> Nuclear Steamship Savannah; which was a
> floating museum for awhile, but I assume it
> failed.

> -James Hefner
> Hebrews 10:20a

Thanks James...last time I was in Charleston SC in 88 the NS Savannah was there and I never heard that she had been moved. So there are two Savannahs in the James River now. She is a National Historic Landmark.

Bill Hayes


hayesw@bataan.navy.mil

Anyone know what became of the Navy's mothball fleet in Philadelphia? Several big-gun cruisers (Des Moines; Newport News that I can remember) were there.

Trainorders.com thread on B&O museum
jcpdeke@aol.com

Des Moines is still there and a group is trying to raise funds to make her a museum. There are many other ships there still.

Tom Gears


tom@forgottendelaware.com

> Anyone know what became of the Navy's
> mothball fleet in Philadelphia? Several
> big-gun cruisers (Des Moines; Newport News
> that I can remember) were there.

Right now there are 39 ships on the register in Philly, including the carriers Forrestal, Saratoga, and America, as well as Des Moines. There are old DDGs, LKAs, FFGS, a sub tender, a destroyer tender and a PG from Vietnam era.


hayesw@bataan.navy.mil

> Right now there are 39 ships on the register
> in Philly, including the carriers Forrestal,
> Saratoga, and America, as well as Des
> Moines. There are old DDGs, LKAs, FFGS, a
> sub tender, a destroyer tender and a PG from
> Vietnam era.

Many of those ships were moved to Rhode Island several years ago, incuding both CVN59 and CVN60, IIRC.

When the Navy shipyard was sold to Kvaerner for a new commercial shipbuilding project (they are building some new container ships there now), the big Navy ships had to go to make room.

As so often happens, there are several groups competing (fighting is a better word) to get the carriers and the Des Moines.