Budgets May Conquer the Survivor of 2 Wars
LA PORTE, Texas — Age, relentless corrosion from saltwater and tight budgets are doing what no bombs, torpedoes or bullets have accomplished.
Sixteen years after the state spent $14 million to help preserve the nearly century-old Battleship Texas -- the only remaining battleship to survive World Wars I and II -- the ship needs an overhaul to keep it from rusting away.
"The ship is in need of significant repair," said Steve Whiston, director of the infrastructure division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which maintains the 573-foot-long, 34,000-ton vessel in a berth on the Houston Ship Channel. "There is corrosion at the water line. We're continuing to experience problems that cause us concern. And the ship, given its age, is pretty fragile."
So fragile that chronically leaky air tanks -- known as blisters and added to the exterior during the 1920s for stability -- sprung a serious leak one night. By morning, the ship was listing 4 degrees to starboard.
"It got all of us excited but we're satisfied it's stable," Whiston said.
The water was pumped out and the leak patched, at least temporarily.
"If you are going to acknowledge you're going to keep some historic ships, there is a very strong argument this is at least as good, if not the best, one to keep," said Barry Ward, curator of the Texas.
Ward said the ship was a unique piece of technology in terms of the time period it represents.
"This goes from the very beginning of the age of flight through the nuclear age," he said.
The oldest of the eight remaining American battlewagons, the Texas is the last of the Dreadnought class, patterned after the British battleship that featured unprecedented speed and armaments at the turn of the 20th century. Launched in 1912 and commissioned two years later, the Texas was touted as the world's most powerful weapon.
In World War I, it served as U.S. flagship in the British Grand Fleet. In 1940, it was named flagship of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, took part in D-Day in 1944, later experienced casualties when hit by German artillery off France, and provided Pacific support for World War II battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Decommissioned in 1948, the Texas eventually was put under the care of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which keeps the ship as part of San Jacinto Battlegrounds State Park near Houston.
