With the help of a local
house mover, an historic piece of a nuclear submarine is expected to be
rolled to a new home on the Mare Island waterfront by week's end.Phil
Joy of Benicia has volunteered to rig together a series of dollies with
a total of 32 wheels, and move the 65-ton structure less than a block
away to the island's Building Waterways 2. The sloping cement waterways
ramp leads into the Mare Island Strait and is adjacent to historic Dry
Dock 1.
The antique tower is a piece of the USS Mariano G.
Vallejo submarine, painted black with the number 658 in white. The
structure has been preserved on Mare Island since 1996, when it was
salvaged from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and displayed between Dry
Docks 1 and 2.
"It (weighs) a little bit more than a house," Joy said of the 40-foot submarine conning tower and sail. "It's really
top-heavy ... I'm kind of building a thing underneath it that's really wide."
Joy expects to get the structure rolling by Saturday.
"Some
guys were going to donate moving it by water, and move it to where
ships are launched," Joy said. "They can't bring a barge in there,
(though)."
The move will present some challenges for the
house mover, however, as the cement blocks beneath the tower have been
"squished to the ground," he said.
"I might as well (donate my services) -- nobody's got any money anyway, and it's a piece of history," Joy said.
The Mare Island Historic Park Foundation, which oversees the submarine remains, was given
a Dec. 11 deadline to relocate the tower so the city and property
developer Lennar Mare Island could complete environmental cleanup on
the land "Phil Joy is being great about this project," foundation
Board President Ken Zadwick said. "Based on my conversations with the
city, that could be or should be the permanent home."
Zadwick
said the tower will be enclosed behind a chain link fence, to protect
the structure from anyone climbing on it and being injured (Original News).
Posts
