by If you ask me, one large ship looks just like another. Ditto a submarine. But Doug seems to think there’s a difference, plus these had a museum to go with them, so here we are.
The Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1961 and is situated on the Delaware River at Penn’s Landing. It was founded by J. Welles Henderson, who recognized Philadelphia’s long maritime history and significance, and was disappointed by the lack of attention to the topic. I mean, the United States Navy was founded right here in Philadelphia, for Pete’s sake!
Today the museum’s collection has more than 10,000 objects and one million documents. A boat shop is on site, “dedicated to the skills and traditions of wooden boat building and sailing.”
The complex is home to the warship USS Olympia, which we explored on a self-guided tour. The Olympia served the United States Navy from 1895 to 1922, and was famous during her day as the flagship of Commodore George Dewey during the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish–American War. She also had the honor in 1921 of transporting the first Unknown Soldier back to the United States, who is now interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Olympia is the oldest steel American warship still afloat, though in 2010 it was announced that the ship needed $10-to-$20 million in hull repairs to prevent her from sinking – ouch. The museum has been working on raising funds and has completed the first phase of repairs.
Also on site is the USS Becuna, a submarine in service from 1944 to 1969. She is credited with sinking three-and-a-half ships during World War II. We took a guided tour of “Becky,” where we got a close-up look at the Torpedo room. There are so many pieces of equipment needed to make a submarine function it seems impossible. Also seemingly impossible: it holds 84 crew members.
In 2007 the former museum president was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for misappropriating about $2.5 million dollars. Using museum money to buy yourself two boats and a carriage house for a home in Cape May does seem hard to justify. Anyway, this story (which of course I did not read about until I went to Wikipedia afterwards) was much more fun than the submarine, if you ask me (though Doug will probably disagree).
The cover photo to this post shows both the USS Olympia and USS Becuna.
