Posted on 04/12/2017 7:07:41 PM PDT by Oatka
"The harpies of the shore . . ."
The decommissioned aircraft carrier, USS Independence has passed Costa Rica on the first leg of its trip from Bremerton and onward to Brownsville, Texas.
The first leg of the long 16,000 mile journey that will take the 60,000-ton super carrier around the tip of South America (not the Panama Canal), transiting the Strait of Magellan and eventually into EMR Group’s International Shipbreaking yard in Brownsville, Texas.
USS Independence left on her final journey on March 11 from the Kitsap Naval Base in Bremerton, Washington to Brownsville, Texas and is expected to take just under three months.
The carrier is being towed by the Dino Chouest and the journey will involve navigating down the West coast of the Americas and then back up the East coast of South America.
She follows two of her fellow Navy vessels to the same site in Brownsville – the USS Constellation and the USS Ranger (of Top Gun fame).
The Brownsville site is a metal recycling yard operated by International Shipbreaking Ltd., part of the EMR Group. The company won the Navy bid to recycle the 60,000-ton vessel, the last of the Forrestal-class of “supercarriers.”
“The scale of the logistical and towing preparation to set the USS Independence on her final voyage has been enormous. Preparations at the Brownsville yard are complete and the team is ready in anticipation for her arrival,” said Chris Green, the senior manager of the Brownsville site. “We take great pride in having been awarded another US Navy ship recycling contract. It’s testament to our parent company EMR’s investment in the International Shipbreaking Ltd. facilities that we are able to complete large scale ship recycling contracts in a safe and environmentally responsible manner.”
Associated article Ex-USS Ranger Has Seen Better Days – Drone Video (She was sold for a penny.)
Yep. It’s gonna croak.
A salute to a Navy ship that served our country.
I must say, I hate scrapping. Scrap a tank. Throw a gun into a crusher. Chop off the wings of planes as they did with our B52’s for SALTII.
There is something different in the scrapping of a ship. Something almost living about it. There always feels to me to be an emotional component to it.
I don’t care what anyone says. You do develop a bond of some kind with a ship, even if you sometimes hated being on it. It does become home.
The stories of sailors, having a ship sunk beneath them, weeping as the vessel rolls over and goes down, are legion. Sure, they shed tears for the predicament they find themselves in, but there is something I would think that is akin to standing on a sidewalk, watching your home of many years burn down.
These things hit me. So I love what they did for the USS Oriskany.
And I like what they did with the USS America. She served her country to the last, providing in her death, information that will help keep a generation of sailors alive. She hopefully went down by the stern, keeping her head high, and she gets to sit at the bottom of the ocean, in keeping with the Fighting Lady she was.
I like that thought.
With all this global warming they should have used the NW passage instead of going south as it is shorter.
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea.
Yes, I agree as I described in my post (I didn’t see yours, but we feel the same way)
Scrapping of a ship is a moment in the times of most men who ever served on that ship.
If you have been blessed to live long enough to see your vessel die of old age, you take notice, in much the same way you do when you read the obituary of someone you once knew well, many years ago. Perhaps an old girlfriend or someone who had a major influence on your life. I think it makes you feel your mortality.
But I must say, I always loved the story hearing about the scrapping of the first destroyer my Dad served on. Sure, it was hard to hear she had been sold to the Chilean Navy, and when they had no more use for her, sold her to Korea, where she was broken up for scrap. But that slow death of neglect and obsolescence that humans and ships sometimes share, was offset by an interesting twist.
My dad reported to the USS Rooks (DD-804) as a LTJG in June 1951 at San Diego, CA, they went via the Panama Canal to Newport, RI, where they operated up and down the East coast until April 1952, when they went BACK down to the Panama Canal and on to Korea where he spent four or five months operating in and around Korea. They went into the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, and back to Newport, RI in April 1953.
It was an around the world cruise in the destroyer.
During that deployment, he had proposed to my mom in a letter (with the wonderfully corny but delightfully appropriate and sincere “Marry me and I’ll show you the world) and the wedding date was set for May 9th, 1953 after the ship was due back in its home port of Newport, RI.
When my dad’s ship came in just a couple of weeks before the wedding, and he was able to finally get off and head up to Massachusetts for the wedding that was to take place in the next few days, he realized after he arrived home that he had forgotten his dress shoes and the marriage license in his rack back on the ship.
He drove all the way back to the ship in Newport got his shoes and license, but when he got back up the Massachusetts, he couldn’t find the wedding license. He went back down again and went aboard the ship where he scoured the compartment and his rack, to no avail. Crestfallen, he had to go back without the license, but the office was closed for the weekend and he was unable to get another one. Someone he knew pulled a few strings, got the guy to come back in and he got a license, so the wedding went ahead as planned.
In the early Eighties, my mother got a call from South Korea (I think, but not sure) and the guy said they were breaking up a ship for scrap, and they had found a wedding license with her and my dad’s name on it. They were breaking up the USS Rooks, and when they were tearing the compartment apart, they found it in a bulkhead. Apparently what had happened, was my dad had got the certificate, put it on his rack, raised the mattress up to get the shoes underneath, and when he did, the license must have slid down a minuscule gap into the bottom of a dark bulkhead where it lay for 30 years until they tore it down. They offered to send it to her, but I think my parents had been going through some tough marital times at that point, and the last thing on her mind was a piece of paper from her past, so I don’t think she had them send it!
Park it in a harbor and turn it into condos. Keep the reactor going to power the ship, and to power whatever city it’s at.
Did two deployments on the Indy, ‘83 and ‘84. At the time never would imagined that she wouldn’t go on sailing forever. I am getting so old...
The Indy was conventional, not nuclear. Just FYI.
Actually, the reasons they are so hard to sink is also the reason why US carriers are only scrapped in US shipbreaking yards or sunk in extremely deep water in midocean. There are secrets to their construction - learned through hard experience in combat - that the United States doesn’t want exposed to hostile powers.
A link to a post I made concerning the Indy a long time ago...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1006322/posts?page=259#259
I’m wondering if any FReepers might know how much ship breaking companies pay for vessels. Obviously it’d be priced by the ton and have numerous offsets for hazardous material disposal and stuff like that, but it’s got me curious, because...
Years ago I went with a buddy down to San Diego with the thought of purchasing a long-line tuna trawler for scrap. If memory serves me, she was a little over 170 feet long and was in a state of disrepair that would not permit any realistic future use. Plus, she had the unfortunate distinction of having been the vessel caught by the Coast Guard with over 13 tons of pure cocaine hidden inside her years earlier. But I had the opportunity to pick her up for a price tag in the low-$40,000s range and figured that she’d be worth significantly more than that in scrap value. We toured the boat from bow to stern, saw the living quarters (cramped and basic, to describe it generously), checked out the holds for the fish, looked in the engine room but didn’t bother walking around, then told the owner we’d get him an answer by the following Friday since he needed to get it moved from its location as quickly as possible.
I checked and checked for a place on the west coast that might be interested in it, but as was posted in a reply above, shipbreaking seems to not be done in California, Oregon or Washington. So the deal fell through and I’ve always wondered what kind of profit could have been made if only there was a shipbreaking company within reasonable towing distance.
Enviro extremists killed a lot of industries out there.
I like your idea of a bronze coin.
I did some work years ago in the dry dock in Bremerton - working underneath the USS Constellation. They had the entire thing sitting up on wooden timbers. The juxtaposition of this huge “modern” steel warship being supported by wood was weird - and then walking (hunched over) below her doing work.
They were stripping her before heading her out to be salvaged. The propellers were already off.
You are correct about the feelings that are associated with seeing a ship one served on being scrapped.
I was in Catapults on CVA-42 (USS FDR), 6th Fleet, in the Med. Finished active duty in ‘62, after seeing other carriers there like the Saratoga, Shangri-La, etc., plus a couple of the comparatively more “modern” carriers.
A few years later, my mom sent me a news clipping about the FDR heading for scrap. Its sister ships were the Coral Sea and the Midway. .....I had to sit in a room by myself and consume a few brews, without interruption from wife or kids. It was like a close relative had died and I just sat there recalling memories.
Great story! Thanks for that.
The marine traffic tracker I user doesn't show the Independence, but shows the track of the tow, speed, and reported positions.
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