Last shot at preserving Battleship Texas under way
LA PORTE, TX
Once touted as the most powerful weapon on the planet, the
nearly century-old battlewagon has endured some 60 years as an
historic relic moored in the brackish Houston Ship Channel,
corrosion from water outside and inside munching at its steel and
patchwork repairs.
"Our boat's been sitting in the water and rusting away, so we
get it out of the water," says Andy Smith, the Texas Parks and
Wildlife Department's manager of the battleship site east of
Houston.
That's the goal as work finally is beginning to permanently
remove the Texas from water by constructing a unique dry berth for
the 573-foot-long, 34,000-ton vessel. It's the most complex project
ever for the parks agency and isn't likely to be complete until
late this decade.
Texas voters three years ago approved a bond package that
included $25 million to save the ship moored since 1948 at the
equally historic San Jacinto Battleground. The project also is
being designed to not repeat the cycle of past repairs that cost
millions of dollars but failed to ensure the long-term future of
the ship launched in 1912.
"It's not going to be done again to this vessel," Neil Thomas,
project manager for the agency's infrastructure division, says of
the overhaul. "We've got one shot, and we've got to do it right."
The department signed a contract Oct. 26 with AECOM, a worldwide
architectural and engineering firm, to design a dry berth for the
Texas. Teams involved in the project met aboard the ship for the
first time earlier this month.
Some topographic surveys and soil tests are under way and a
preliminary design from the firm is expected by next spring. Public
comment, compliance with environmental assessments and government
agencies and regulations could take another two years. Construction
bidding is expected by mid-2014 with project completion anticipated
by summer of 2017.
Smith said a couple of vessels in England have been dry berthed
but nothing like the magnitude of the Texas, commissioned in 1914
and the oldest of the eight remaining American battleships. It's
the last the Dreadnought class, patterned after the British
battleship that featured unprecedented speed and armaments at the
turn of the 20th century.
In World War I, it served as U.S. flagship in the British Grand
Fleet. In 1940, it was named flagship of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet
and participated in D-Day in 1944. It experienced casualties when
hit by German artillery off France, then provided support for World
War II battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the Pacific, using its
main battery of 10 14-inch guns to fire 1,500-pound shells up to 12
miles .
It was decommissioned in 1948 and came under care of the Texas
Parks and Wildlife Department. A berth was carved out on what was
known as Santa Anna Slough, a swamp that empties into the Houston
Ship Channel. The muddy acreage is where Gen. Sam Houston and his
army of Texans in 1836 defeated Mexican Gen. Santa Anna to win
Texas' independence and it's across the channel from one of the
world's largest petrochemical complexes.
"You have one of the most significant battlefields on the North
American continent with one of the most significant naval ships in
the world," Smith said. "You could argue that both definitely are
one of a kind."
Dark blue paint, matching its look when in the Pacific at the
end of World War II, masks some of the surface problems.
"You're dealing with a metal artifact sitting in a brackish
environment in high humidity," Smith said. "How do you treat an
artifact? Traditionally we put it in a climate controlled space
where you control for temperature, humidity and light. You can't do
that with an almost 600-foot-long ship."
The first long-overdue major repairs occurred in 1988 -- 40 years
after it arrived. By then, it had become stuck in mud. Flooding
inside had caused serious corrosion. It gingerly was towed to a
Galveston shipyard and essentially given a new hull.
"But they didn't get into as much of the inner part," Smith
said. "They had a limited budget ... And things didn't get done.
It's no fault or no blame, just the reality of the situation."
The ship continued to deteriorate. There have been two serious
incidents this year, including one where a pump failed, water
poured in, the ship got lower and weak spots normally just above
the water line began taking more water. By the time the leaks were
plugged, 100,000 gallons needed removal.
"One of the things you have to understand about a ship like
this is it was in a weird sort of way designed to leak," Smith
said. "It was a battleship designed to take a lot of damage and
inflict a lot of damage. The way it is set up is you can flood a
lot of it and it's still OK.
"The problem we have is in combat, its normal life, you have
almost 1,800 men working on it. We have about 18."
The dry berth permanently removes it from the water and
hopefully eliminates the problem of water inside that causes "this
downward spiral," as Smith calls it, of more corrosion and more
holes.
Thomas described the task for project architects as "variations
of a boat in the bathtub and getting the water out of the
bathtub."
One early suggestion was putting the Texas on a floating barge.
That was dismissed after considering the ship is 120 feet tall from
top to keel and would damage the look of the battlefield it shares.
"One of the things we want to do is respect the context,"
Thomas said. "We have to be sensitive to the fact that the ship
itself is the artifact, but it's actually sitting in a sea of
artifacts. So that brings a whole other level of complexity and
care we have to take because we're certainly not in the business of
saving one artifact at the expense of the other."
There is also an environmental concern if the site -- a wetland --
is drained and turned into a dry area.
About 100,000 people a year visit the ship, which should be less
costly to maintain when it's permanently out of the water.
Voters who approved the $25 million in bonds showed they wanted
the Texas preserved, Smith said.
"We want to make sure that money is spent well, that we do the
right thing that is permanent," he said. "We talk about how to
preserve the ship for the next 100, 200 years. We're not talking
10, 15, 20, 50 years."