Ship Dry Dock Quotes

We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.

What the youth needs to be told is that a ship is a-building in his own mental dry dock, a ship with freedom of the seas.

as we watched seaward-moving ships pass between the cliffs of burning skyline, she said: 'years from now, years and years, one of those ships will bring me back, me and my nine Brazillian brats, because yes, they must see this, these lights, the river-- I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.' And I said: 'Do shut up,' for I felt infuriatingly left out-- a tugboat in a dry-dock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination steamed down the harbor with whistles whistling and confetti in the air.

He loves you,’ I said, and smoothed the tumbled hair off her flushed face. ‘He won’t stop.’ I got up, brushing yellow leaves from my skirt. ‘We’ll have a bit of time, then, but none to waste. Jamie can send word downriver, to keep an eye out for Roger. Speaking of Roger …’ I hesitated, picking a bit of dried fern from my sleeve. ‘I don’t suppose he knows about this, does he?’ Brianna took a deep breath, and her fist closed tight on the leaf in her hand, crushing it. ‘Well, see, there’s a problem about that,’ she said. She looked up at me, and suddenly she was my little girl again. ‘It isn’t Roger’s.’ ‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘It. Isn’t. Roger’s. Baby,’ she said, between clenched teeth. I sank down beside her once more. Her worry over Roger suddenly took on new dimensions. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Here, or there?’ Even as I spoke, I was calculating – it had to be someone here, in the past. If it had been a man in her own time, she’d be farther along than two months. Not only in the past, then, but here, in the Colonies. I wasn’t planning to have sex, she’d said. No, of course not. She hadn’t told Roger, for fear he would follow her – he was her anchor, her key to the future. But in that case – ‘Here,’ she said, confirming my calculations. She dug in the pocket of her skirt, and came out with something. She reached toward me, and I held out my hand automatically. ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.’ The worn gold wedding band sparked in the sun, and my hand closed reflexively over it. It was warm from being carried next to her skin, but I felt a deep coldness seep into my fingers. ‘Bonnet?’ I said. ‘Stephen Bonnet?’ Her throat moved convulsively, and she swallowed, head jerking in a brief nod. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you – I couldn’t; not after Ian told me about what happened on the river. At first I didn’t know what Da would do; I was afraid he’d blame me. And then when I knew him a little better – I knew he’d try to find Bonnet – that’s what Daddy would have done. I couldn’t let him do that. You met that man, you know what he’s like.’ She was sitting in the sun, but a shudder passed over her, and she rubbed her arms as though she was cold. ‘I do,’ I said. My lips were stiff. Her words were ringing in my ears. I wasn’t planning to have sex. I couldn’t tell … I was afraid he’d blame me. ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, and was surprised that my voice sounded calm. ‘Did he hurt you, baby?’ She grimaced, and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them against herself. ‘Don’t call me that, okay? Not right now.’ I reached to touch her, but she huddled closer into herself, and I dropped my hand. ‘Do you want to tell me?’ I didn’t want to know; I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, too. She looked up at me, lips tightened to a straight white line. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to. But I think I’d better.’ She had stepped aboard the Gloriana in broad daylight, cautious, but feeling safe by reason of the number of people around; loaders, seamen, merchants, servants – the docks bustled with life. She had told a seaman on the deck what she wanted; he had vanished into the recesses of the ship, and a moment later, Stephen Bonnet had appeared. He had on the same clothes as the night before; in the daylight, she could see that they were of fine quality, but stained and badly crumpled. Greasy candle wax had dripped on the silk cuff of his coat, and his jabot had crumbs in it. Bonnet himself showed fewer marks of wear than did his clothes; he was fresh-shaven, and his green eyes were pale and alert. They passed over her quickly, lighting with interest. ‘I did think ye comely last night by candlelight,’ he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. ‘But a-many seem so when the drink is flowin’. It’s a good deal more rare to find a woman fairer in the sun than she is by the moon.

The TS American Sailor was built in Seattle, Washington, in 1919. Like the TS American Seaman, she was launched too late for World War I. Originally the two ships were intended to be used as dry cargo ships, but not knowing what to do, the government assigned them to the United States Coast Guard. In 1941, with the start of World War II the Bethlehem Steel Company in Baltimore, Maryland, converted both vessels into Maritime Commission training ships. By the time I arrived at the Academy, the TS American Seaman had already been scrapped, and the TS American Sailor was well past her time. During my first year at the Academy she was towed to the breakers, thus making room for a newer training vessel. To accommodate the expected ship, coming from the government’s “Defense Reserve Fleet,” a new sturdier dock had to be built…. In the interim, the school borrowed New York Maritime College’s vessel, the TS Empire State II. Upperclassmen, including my friend Richard Cratty, whom I have known from my days at Admiral Farragut Academy, were assigned the task of going to New York to bring her back to Castine for our 1953 training cruise.

They called her names. They spoke derisively of her and made jokes about her. They dubbed her a ‘white Elephant’ and they referred to her as a ‘sick widow.’ When in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani conflict it was reported that she was in dry dock, they sarcastically asked ‘When was she not?’ To Admiral N. Krishnan, FOC-in-C, Eastern Naval Command is, however, attributed the grand slam retort. To scoffers he quipped, ‘After all, what is wrong with a lady getting indisposed once a month and dry docking every nine months? Every ship needs to be serviced once in nine months, even as every motor car has to be serviced every 1,000 miles of run. This is a normal practice and it just happened, a pure accident, that when the Indo-Pakistani conflict broke out in 1965, VIKRANT was on its nine-monthly visit to the hospital!

As cadets, we constantly hammered, scraped and wire brushed rusting steel, before applying red lead paint. Most of the paint we used was Navy surplus or a concoction made up of fish oil, lampblack and china dryer. We found that by mixing all different color paints, we would wind up with a paint we called “Sh-t Grindle Brown.” Inventiveness was key as we repaired, replaced, and painted the State of Maine from stem to stern. This work, being in addition to our studies, consumed all of our time. How we managed to fit all of this into the time we had, is still a mystery. The conversion of the ship was labor intensive and expensive, but the U.S. Maritime Commission contributed to the Academy’s financial needs where possible. The mounting expenses remained a challenge but we didn’t give up. We never did finish the entire conversion prior to our first cruise, but one thing we managed to do was paint over the name “USS Comfort” and hand letter in her new name “State of Maine.” If you looked carefully, you could still see her previous name outlined by a welded bead, but this was a minor detail that would eventually be taken care of. Perhaps because of my experience with the letters on the front of “Richardson Hall,” the task of lettering her name and her new homeport on the stern became mine. Much of the ship’s superstructure was still covered with a sticky preservative made up of paint and crank case oil, which never really dried and indelibly got onto our working uniforms. However, from a distance, you couldn’t tell the difference and it looked all right, but more importantly it prevented further rusting. One bulkhead at a time, using a mixture of gasoline and paint remover, we scraped the gunk off and repainted it. The engineers had been busy rebuilding the pumps and generators, as well as repacking steam pipes with asbestos wrapping. We finally got the ship to where we could sail her to Portland under her own power. The twin Babcock and Wilcox heater-type boilers had to be repaired and re-bricked there. After this, we would continue on to the dry dock in Boston for additional work and the hull inspection that was required below the water line.

We passed the dry dock and then it and the ship were gone. It would be a number of years before I got a better look at it.

Construction of the SS Morro Castle was begun by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in January of 1929 for the New York and Cuba Mail Steam Ship Company, better known as the Ward Line. The ship was launched in March of 1930, followed in May by the construction of her sister ship the SS Oriente. Both ships were 508 feet long and had a breath of almost 80 feet and weighed in at 11,520 gross tons (GRT). The ships were driven by General Electric turbo generators, which supplied the necessary electrical current to two propulsion motors. Having twin screws both ships could maintain a cruising speed of 20 knots. State of the art, each ship was elegantly fitted out to accommodate 489 passengers and had a complement of 240 officers and crew. It is estimated that the ships cost approximately $5 million each, of which 75% was given to the company as a low cost government loan to be repaid over twenty years. The SS Morro Castle was named for the fortress that guards the entrance to Havana Bay. On the evening of September 5, 1934 Captain Robert Willmott had his dinner delivered to his quarters. Shortly thereafter, he complained of stomach trouble and shortly after that, died of an apparent heart attack. With this twist of fate the command of the ship went to the Chief Mate, William Warms. During the overnight hours, with winds increasing to over 30 miles per hour, the ship continued along the Atlantic coast towards New York harbor. Early on September 8, 1934 the ship had what started as a minor fire in a storage locker. With the increasing winds, the fire quickly intensified causing the ship to burn down to the waterline, killing a total of 137 passengers and crew members. Many passengers died when they jumped into the water with the cork life preservers breaking their necks and killing them instantly on impact. Only half of the ships 12 lifeboats were launched and then losing power the ship drifted, with heavy onshore winds and a raging sea the hapless ship ground ashore near Asbury Park. Hard aground she remained there for several months as a morbid tourist attraction. On March 14, 1935 the ship was towed to Gravesend Bay, New York and then to Baltimore, MD, where she was scrapped. The Chief Mate Robert Warms and Chief Engineer Eban Abbott as well as the Ward Line vice-president Henry Cabaud were eventually indicted on various charges, including willful negligence. All three were convicted and sent to jail, however later an appeals court later overturned the ship’s officers convictions and instead placed much of the blame on the dead Captain Willmott. Go figure….

I was confident that we could negotiate the rough coral, having done it several times before. But not this time. A coral head knocked off one of the tracks. There we were, helplessly immobilized some fifty to one hundred yards from dry land, unable to go one way or another, inaccessible by boat. My experience with previous track problems assured me that its repair would be at least a two-hour job. Admiral King, at his best, was not an easy-going man. When he understood the situation it took him only a moment to address a few plain words to me -- words not intended to contribute to my long-term peace of mind. Then, without hesitation, he clambered over the side -- starched white uniform and all -- followed by his aide, who was not happy either. They waded ashore to the accompaniment of the admiral's cursing, thumbed a ride to the dock two miles away, and finally made their way back to the Wyoming. Members of the staff told me later that the admiral was still enraged when he boarded the ship, making his feelings known to General Smith loudly and without restraint. The general, in a living disclaimer of his nickname, "Howling Mad," never reproved me.

Then Annabeth was running along beside him, reaching out her hand. ‘Thank the gods!’ she called. ‘For months and months we couldn’t see you! Are you all right?’ Percy remembered what Juno had said – for months he has been slumbering, but now he is awake. The goddess had intentionally kept him hidden, but why? ‘Are you real?’ he asked Annabeth. He wanted so much to believe it that he felt like Hannibal the elephant was standing on his chest. But her face began to dissolve. She cried, ‘Stay put! It’ll be easier for Tyson to find you! Stay where you are!’ Then she was gone. The images accelerated. He saw a huge ship in a dry dock, workers scrambling to finish the hull, a guy with a blowtorch welding a bronze dragon figurehead to the prow. He saw the war god stalking towards him in the surf, a sword in his hands. The scene shifted. Percy stood on the Field of Mars, looking up at the Berkeley Hills. Golden grass rippled, and a face appeared in the landscape – a sleeping woman, her features formed from shadows and folds in the terrain. Her eyes remained closed, but her voice spoke in Percy’s mind: So this is the demigod who destroyed my son Kronos. You don’t look like much, Percy Jackson, but you’re valuable to me. Come north. Meet Alcyoneus. Juno can play her little games with Greeks and Romans, but in the end, you will be my pawn. You will be the key to the gods’ defeat. Percy’s vision turned dark. He stood in a theatre-sized version of the camp’s headquarters – a principia with walls of ice and freezing mist hanging in the air. The floor was littered with skeletons in Roman armour and Imperial gold weapons encrusted with frost. In the back of the room sat an enormous shadowy figure. His skin glinted with gold and silver, as

Later, with the benefit of hindsight, some would contend that this unusual use of water damned the ship, but at the time, Arizona was a dry state and, according to the Times, “the ‘teetotalers’ and the rest of the Arizonians demanded that the Arizona be named with water as well as wine.” As the ship slid faster and faster down the ways, one estimate claimed it bested fifteen knots by the time it hit the water of the East River and floated off in the direction of the Williamsburg Bridge. A flotilla of tugs swarmed around the hull and shepherded it to a dock in the Navy Yard for completion.2 Afterward, before an invited luncheon crowd of nine hundred guests, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels expounded at length on the role of the United States Navy on the global stage. When it was her turn to say a few words, Esther Ross came right to the point: “Mr. Secretary, friends,” she told Daniels and those seated before her, “this is the proudest day of my life, because I have christened the largest battleship in the world with the name of the greatest state in the union.”3

Then, Japanese pilots found the range, and five bombs struck the ship. Three hit forward of Turret No. 1 and left the bow a mangled mess. One of these ignited a gasoline storage tank and started a blaze that might have proven as catastrophic as that on the Arizona but for the fact that as part of a regular ammunition rotation, the Nevada’s crew had yet to reload twenty-eight hundred bags of powder into its main magazines. The other two bombs exploded at the base of the main mast and smokestack, damaging the director stations on the foremast. Rather than risk the ship sinking and blocking the entrance channel, the senior officer afloat ordered the Nevada to beach near floating Dry Dock No. 2, adjacent to Hospital Point.

Diving operations on the Nevada began in mid-December as a joint effort with units in Pearl Harbor who had divers attached. Divers from submarine rescue vessels Widgeon and Ortolan excavated mud from under the stern and dynamited and removed sections of her bilge keel in an effort to attach a large patch over the forty-eight-foot-long, twenty-five-foot-high torpedo hole. The patch was made by the shipyard, and the bottom of the Oklahoma was used as a pattern because she was a sister ship of the Nevada. The divers from the Widgeon and Ortolan tried to secure the patch for more than a month before a halt was called to the work. After the Nevada was dry-docked, it was discovered that the torpedo blister on the side had blown outboard about two feet, which explained why the patch would not fit. Eventually, the patch was aborted and diving efforts were concentrated on isolating and making watertight all interior bulkheads contiguous to the hole. This required closing watertight doors and fittings, welding or caulking split seams, and driving wooden plugs in small holes. Our crew from the Salvage Unit was assigned this work. At the same time, Pacific Bridge civilian divers fitted and secured wood patches over bomb holes in the Nevada’s outside hull.

During the chaos of the morning attacks, planes inbound from Enterprise, as well as a squadron of B-17 bombers coming from the mainland, had come under assault—from the attacking Japanese as well as the defenders. That was somewhat coincidental and to some extent unavoidable. Enterprise lost six planes in the melee. Halsey had been right to be worried. They were indeed shooting at his boys. By evening, however, defenders should have been alert to distinguish between friend and foe. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, incoming friendlies,” the control tower on Ford Island advised all ships and shore installations as this second group of aircraft from the Enterprise, the six Wildcats, entered the pattern with landing lights ablaze. But over the dry docks, nervous gunners on the Pennsylvania opened fire. That was all it took. The entire harbor erupted in gunfire. Four of the six Wildcats were shot down and three American pilots killed.

When Arizona emerged from dry dock with new steel plates welded into place on the portside blister to close the gash from the collision, there was a far more noticeable and ominous change in the ship’s appearance. The Navy’s peacetime color scheme of light gray had given way to a dark bluish-gray applied to the hull and superstructure up to the level of the bridge. Only the foretop and maintop enclosures on the two tripod masts and the tops of the masts themselves were still light gray. This was a form of wartime camouflage that supposedly made the ship less likely to stand out against the horizon.

Getting underway again, Arizona cleared the Pearl Harbor entrance and steamed off for night battle practice. On the evening of October 22, Arizona, as part of Battleship Division One along with Nevada and Oklahoma, was still at sea conducting maneuvers. As darkness fell, Admiral Kidd, as COMBATDIV One on Arizona leading the way, ordered the three ships out of column and into a line abreast. As the lead ship, Arizona occasionally flashed a searchlight off low-hanging clouds as a reference point. Nonetheless, the distance between Arizona and Oklahoma to port decreased until it became uncomfortably close. Aboard Arizona, Captain Van Valkenburgh ordered hard right rudder and signaled for flank speed. On Oklahoma, its captain ordered full astern as his ship was constrained from turning left by the proximity of the Nevada on his port beam. Both ships sounded collision sirens, but it was too late. Oklahoma, having a reinforced bow meant for ramming, struck the Arizona, a glancing blow on the port quarter. The portside torpedo blister meant to absorb torpedo attacks took the brunt of the blow. It resulted in a V-shaped gash in the blister four feet wide and twelve feet high. The structural integrity of the Arizona’s hull was not compromised, but this damage necessitated the ship’s return to Pearl Harbor for a week in dry dock. The Oklahoma got off easy with only the jack staff on its bow bent out of shape from the force of the impact.10

He experimented with pulleys, by which he demonstrated his famous leverage principle, “that with any given force it was possible to lift any given weight.” This enabled him to stage one of his most famous coups de théâtre in front of King Hiero and the entire city of Syracuse. Archimedes tied a series of pulleys to a dry-docked three-masted ship loaded with cargo and passengers, and then, to the crowd’s stunned amazement, he lifted it into the harbor by himself. This led Hiero to declare, “From this day forward, Archimedes is believed no matter what he says,” which led Archimedes to reply in the full flush of triumph, “Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I shall move the earth.

That ship has not only sailed but has been dry-docked and turned into a museum.