(ex-USS New Jersey, one of four Iowa-class Battlewagons BB-62 at her resting place. Photo Socotra).
 
We walked past the entrance to the indoor Seaport Museum to take in the vista of bedraggled Camden across the Delaware River. There, the Iowa-Class battlewagon ex-USS New Jersey (BB-62)  looms like a long gray mountain across the slate gray water.
 

(SS United States, rotting at Pier 82. Photo Richard Rickyar)
 
Three miles down stream the two sleek stacks of the SS United States are visible above the low warehouse buildings of Pier 82. She has languished there, disintegrating, sine 1996. She was the largest ocean liner constructed entirely in the United States, the fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic in either direction, and still holds the speed record for a passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service.
 
In the immediate foreground, though, is the lady we had come to see. Olympia, the Queen of Steam, a chunk of history so astonishing as to be out of time an mind.
 
I took the opportunity to get shots of her upper works, since the plan was to have a personal tour of the engine room and the steam plant and boilers. It was pure steam punk. The hull bristled with guns. Two round oil-can turrets sat, fore-and-aft, eight inches, if what I read was correct. Other, smaller rifles protruded from armored barbetts.
 
The superstructure was not gray, but a sort of jaunty butternut, and the wheelhouse was shellacked walnut and brass that gleamed under the sun.

(Bow of the Protected Cruiser Olympia. Photo Socotra 2010)

The transition from sail to steam, two tall masts adorned her, with real crow’s nests, The proud prow is rakish, slanting forward and appearing to cut the water although she has not moved in more than a half century.
 
The nice young woman in the kiosk gave us the military discount, which made me feel a little guilty. Considering that the lack of money is what may doom this proud ship to become an artificial reef off Cape May, I reached in my wallet to get a $20 bill and slip it in the big jar labled “Donations.”
 
I was reaching in that direction when a voice tinged with the rasp of the river boomed out:
 
“Not so fast. Don’t put it there. The crooks are the ones who collect that one. I’ll tell you how you can help to save the Olympia.”
 
I looked around at the wiry man with salt-and-pepper hair and a big gap-toothed smile coming down the ladder. “Crooks?” I said in surprise.
 
“Hi,” he said and stuck out his hand. “I am Captain Harry Burkhardt, and I am going to give you a tour the like of which you have never seen.”
 
I shook his hand, and wondered what we had walked into.
 
Tomorrow: Walnut and Brass

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Subscribe to the RSS feed!