THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12 ,1996 TAG: 9605110425
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 175 lines
At first glance the James River Reserve Fleet looks like a floating graveyard.
In the middle of the river, off Fort Eustis, are rows of aging ships.
There's a range of sizes and colors: some Navy and others commercial. Some are clean and ready to sail, and others are rusting and unable to move under their own power. The skyline above them is lined by clusters of old radio masts. All are lashed side by side, nearly a dozen ships to a row.
The empty flotilla eerily lives up to its nickname: the Ghost Fleet.
But that name makes the officials that oversee the 99-ship fleet cringe. They don't like it. It's an active fleet, they say.
This is one of three sites around the country where the federal government stores military and cargo ships that are no longer in active service, but may still be useful. The other locations are Beaumont, Texas, and Suissan Bay, California.
Ships are moved in to, out of and around the fleet nearly every three days. Maintenance workers are always checking on different vessels. The military and law enforcement organizations are routinely using the old ships for exercises.
One recent Friday morning about 50 Marines from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina were conducting helicopter exercises on a ship there and a dozen Navy Seals were practicing taking over a hostile ship. Nearby, shipyard workers from Norfolk were shutting down the Cape Carthage, a Ready Reserve Force cargo ship that had been out for sea trials the week before.
Last year more than 17,000 people visited the fleet.
The U.S. Maritime Administration employs more than 100 people at the site, including guards, maintenance workers, engineers and administrators.
The fleet even hosts a mating pair of osprey on an old piling and several falcons have taken up on one of the ships.
``We're here as custodians, providing security to these ships,'' said Paul J. Smith Jr., the fleet superintendent.
The James River fleet is stuck between Fort Eustis on the river's north side and Isle of Wight County on the other. The fleet is on both sides of the James' main channel to Richmond, 19 miles from the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel.
There are three types of ships in the fleet: inactive Navy vessels; ships in the Ready Reserve Force, which can be quickly called up; and National Defense Reserve Force vessels.
The last includes the oldest vessels out there. ``Some of those clunkers would probably never be activated,'' Smith said. ``They're waiting to be scrapped.''
The Maritime Administration wants to scrap nearly 70 ships, about half from the nearby fleet.
``There are 12 I'd like to see out of here now because of the problems we've had with them,'' Smith said.
Each ship has a white hash mark on its bow, several feet above the waterline, so inspectors or guards can tell if it might be sinking.
Unfortunately scrapping the oldest ships won't be as easy as it once was. The scrapping program is on hold pending a survey of the amount of asbestos and PCBs aboard the ships, Smith said.
The U.S Environmental Protection Agency has banned the export of any PCBs. The environmentally dangerous compound is an insulator on old wires aboard the ships.
Still the Navy has recently sold three aging ships out of its more than 30 vessels in the fleet to James River Ventures, an affiliate of Richmond-based Peck Recycling Co., which is scrapping the vessels in Norfolk and Richmond.
The fleet also hosts two vessels with nuclear-power plants on board. The first is the sleek-hulled Savannah, the only nuclear-powered commercial ship ever built. The other is a brutish looking Army Corps of Engineers nuclear power barge. This particular barge provided electricity to U.S. installations in Panama.
The Savannah was an experimental vessel built by the Maritime Administration in the early 1960s. The distinctive white ship could carry 64 passengers in addition to a load of break-bulk cargo. For many years Farrell Lines operated the ship, but could never make it profitable.
``Her lines were just too fine,'' said William Martin, the Maritime Administration's ship operations and maintenance officer for the South Atlantic region.
The Savannah's raked bow made it difficult to load enough cargo to make her viable, he explained. But it also made the ship beautiful.
She joined the James River Reserve Fleet a few years ago, after spending several years as a museum in Savannah, Ga. Plans for the ship are uncertain now.
The James River Reserve Fleet was built on ships that, like the Savannah, had outlived their commercial usefulness. It was founded in 1900 by a private firm as mostly old wooden cargo ships were laid up.
During World War I, the entire fleet was activated to transport troops and goods to Europe. It was reconstituted by the federal government after the war, though mostly with steel ships. World War II prompted the activation of the entire fleet again.
After that war the fleet grew to more than 900 ships, many of them the famed Liberty ships that hauled cargo and soldiers across the submarine-infested North Atlantic to Europe.
Nearly all of those vessels are gone now, having been scrapped for their steel. The Protector, which is still in the fleet, is one of the last remaining Liberty ships in the world. The Navy is planning to take the ship's engine out of its rusting hull for a museum.
Ships in the fleet have been activated for the Korean conflict, the Vietnam War and the recent war with Iraq in the Persian Gulf called Desert Storm.
It was that deployment that's led to some big changes for the Ready Reserve Force part of the fleet.
Before the war, the entire force was maintained with a budget of just $30 million. The ships sat out at moorings, largely unattended. When the call came for activation, many took a lot of work to get underway. Some were months late.
After the war the budget was boosted to more than $300 million to get the fleet up to speed and improve readiness. The Maritime Administration now spends about $160 million to maintain the 92-ship Ready Reserve Force.
High-priority ships are being maintained in what's called a ``reduced operating status.'' These ``hot'' ships have partial crews that stay aboard. Most can be ready to sail in five days or less.
``A big part of the problem in Desert Storm was crews that had never seen the ship,'' Martin said. ``If you're already at (reduced operating status), it's a lot easier. It's just a matter of getting fuel, provisioning the ship and getting the rest of the crew on board.''
These reduced-operating-status ships are being taken out of the James River and other reserve fleets. For example, two crane ships are being taken out of the fleet to become crewed for 5-day activations.
The Cornhusker State and the Flickertail State are used to unload cargo from other ships in ports without modern facilities. Both will likely be based in Newport News.
Other Ready Reserve Force ships are staying in the fleets, but being better maintained than before. Nearly all these ships are designated to be activated in 10 days, up from 20 or 30 days just a year ago.
One such ship is the Cape Carthage. She had just returned from sea trials on a recent Friday.
Every ship in the Ready Reserve is now periodically activated and put through sea trials. Anything wrong is fixed before the vessels are deactivated.
``Lay-up procedures are a lot different now,'' said Mark Richards, port engineer for OMI Ship Management Corp., which was hired by the Maritime Administration to maintain and operate the Cape Carthage and three of her sister ships. ``I know they had a lot of problems getting ships out for Desert Storm.''
Richards was working in the engine room of the Cape Carthage along with several employees from Marine Hydraulics International Inc., the small Norfolk shipyard that had activated the ship for the trials.
They were buttoning up the Cape Carthage. It had been moved into a row of other Ready Reserve vessels.
Soon she would be a silent as her neighbors; all of them sealed up, their interiors dehumidified to keep the boilers dry and each alarmed to protect against trespassers.
The only sounds heard on her decks will be the lapping of the water, the creaking of wooden bumpers, the occasional groan of steel and the wind whispering through the masts and lanyards.
But now the Cape Carthage could be ready to sail in 10 days, if her country needs her. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
MIKE HEFFNER/The Virginian-Pilot
The rusted railings of the Compass Island, a former Navy missile
range instrumentation ship, frame a portion of the James River
Reserve Fleet. The ``ghost fleet'' consists of about 100 ships
anchored between Fort Eustis on the James Rivers' north side and
Isle of Wight County on the other.
William Martin, ship operations and maintenance officer for the
Maritime Administration's South Atlantic Region, explains the James
River Reserve Fleet. Some ships are waiting to be scrapped and
others are just waiting to be called into service.
Photo
MIKE HEFFNER/The Virginian-Pilot
The Savannah is the only nuclear-powered commercial ship ever built
in the United States. The former passenger and cargo ship has been
anchored with the James River Reserve Fleet in Newport News for
about a year.
KEYWORDS: GHOST FLEET JAMES RIVER RESERVE FLEET by CNB