12 November 2003

Ghost Fleet

There is no catastrophe to report from the Middle East today, only one American KIA, though though Ambassador Bremmer has been recalled from Baghdad for consultations in Washington. I read an interesting Op-ed piece in the Times about how the Presidential candidates are being shaped and molded, preparing us for Hillary in 2008 just in case the economy turns around the war isn't going too badly. Made me shiver. Dan Damon on BBC was talking about the Ghost Fleet, thirteen ominous American ships of death which are being towed across the Atlantic for scrapping in a town called Hartlepoole, which apparently wants the work.

Or somebody does. There is quite an uproar about the ships. They are reported to be filled with PCB-contaminated oil and asbestos. I have an interest in that, since the ships I served in were identical in construction and I am having a civil discussion with the Veterans's Administration on the delicate state of my health. Which is actually about money, as the controversy about the Ghost Fleet is, too.

There is quite a lot of talk about this amongst the Little Englanders. Interviews with residents of Hartlepoole indicate that they are opposed to being poisoned in their beds. I stand four-square with them. But I thought I would check out the Fleet and see if there were any of my ships in it.

According to an article in the Daily Mail by Steve McKenzie, thirteen old naval ships from the James River Inactive Ship Facility were sold to a ship-breaker named "Able UK." The rim has four dry-docks and believes they can do the work safely and in conformance with environmental regulations. The Greens and fellow travelers believe that they can not. So that is the argument in a suitcase. It is a 4,000 mile journey from the James River to Hartlepool, and there has been controversy with every nautical mile. There had been a plan to sail the around the northern coast of Scotland and through the Pentland Firth. There was a hue and cry about that, and the plan was dropped. The Fleet will now ignominiously be towed through the Dover Strait, a route specifically approved by Her Majesty's Government.

The ship's have been waiting quietly, some of them for a very long time. The Navy, in its wisdom, has a practice of laying ships up for a period of time when their active service days are nearly over. They contain useful parts which can no longer be manufactured at reasonable cost for their sisters which remain in service. There are dozens of the ships in the river, protected from the ravages of the open sea. The James River, for what it is worth, was named for the King of Scotland and Britain, and was the first lane of English navigation into the vast wilderness of colonial America.

Don't think that the Ghost Fleet is made up of warships bristling with guns. I ran through the list, and found some old friends. They are, by name, the ex-USS Caloosahatchee, Fleet Oiler USS Canisteo, and 58-year old senior citizen USS Donner. They will be accompanied by Liberty Ships like the ex-USS Mormacmoon, Santa Cruz, Mormacwave, and Santa Isabel, and a grab-bag of auxiliaries like Rigel, Compass Island, Protector, American Ranger, Marine Fiddler and American Banker,

American Banker has 102,811 gallons of stored oil aboard. This will not be the first trip to the UK for many of the ships. In August of 1944, for example, Mormacmoon carried the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion to Cardiff, Wales, as part of the follow-on forces augmenting the troops in Normandy.

I steamed with Caloosahatchee, when she served the Forrestal Battle Group, and knew the Oiler Canisteo. She was launched in 1945 and has 9227 gallons of oil onboard. Both of the oilers were hard working and reliable, even if long in the tooth. They were build to keep up with the battle groups, and were the deep-draft commands for Aviators who would go on to command the aircraft carriers. I didn't know Ex-USS Donner, but she has spilled oil before and got a special inspection before the trip. She was built in April 1945 at the Boston Navy Yard; sponsored by Mrs. W.V. Alexander, Jr.; and commissioned 31 July 1945, Lieutenant Commander P.V. McPeake, USNR, in command. She has called, among other places, at Lisbon, Gibraltar, Villafranch, Algiers, Plymouth England, and Halifax.

The ship that interested me most was one that used to break down all the time. I knew guys who said you hadn't been in the Atlantic Fleet unless you had been in an exerecise in which USNS Compass Island (EAG-153) was towed home. She was launched 24 October 1953 as Garden Mariner by New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden, N.J.; sponsored by Mrs. H. A. Smith; acquired by the Navy 29 March 1956; and commissioned 3 December 1956, Commander J. A. Dare in command. She is 564 feet long, 76 feet on the beam, draws 29 feet of water and displaces 17,000 long tons. She was designed to steam at 20kts, but she hasn't seen that speed in a long time. She was eventually transferred to the Spanish Navy for their purposes and when they were done with her, she was returned to the James River to doze in the sun. Her previous history of Compass Island is much more interesting than her sad latter days. With her sister ships, she helped develop navigation systems tht made the ballistic missile possible. She participated in a demonstration of the navigation system which delivered USS Nautilus ( SSN-571 ), using the Shipboard Inertial Navigational System tested by Compass Island, exactly at the North Pole on 3 August 1958.

I came to know her when we were stealing pumps and other equipment that hadn't been made in fifty years to keep her sister afloat. We were having problems with her sister ship, USNS Observation Island. She is still out there steaming around in the Active Fleet. She is a special range instrumentation ship with some advanced radar capabilities. Her keel was laid on 15 September, 1952, at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey. Following a short career as a merchant ship she was transferred to the Navy for use as the seagoing test and evaluation platform for the Fleet Ballistic Missile Weapons System. The first launching of a Polaris test missile at sea was successfully conducted from the deck of the USS Observation Island about seven miles off Cape Canaveral in September 1959.

Observation Island is operated by the Air Force, though she remains on the Navy rolls as the third oldest commissioned ship in the inventory. The two older ones are USS Constitution and USS Pueblo, which happens to also be known as "People's Museum Number Five" in North Korea. Pueblo is kept on the active list so we can sink her if we ever get the chance.

So, I imagine it would add insult to injury if the people concerned about the oil and the asbestos coming to England knew what Compass Island really made possible. The nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine.