My First ship! She ALWAYS was On-Time!
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.