Once
again I made the trip to Camden for a day onboard Big J. I went to
the Brass Shop and checked to see what items Bruce had scheduled for
polishing. With the ships opening looming ever closer, our emphasis
for the past several weeks has been to clean up places on the proposed
tour route. On the top of the list was shining brass items in the
Upper Handing Room for Mount 55, so off I went. There is an Upper
Handling Room located directly below each of the 5" Mounts, and the
one for Mount 55 will be a "Look In" stop on the Tour. I
spent all day polishing the brass on the twin shell hoists in that area
along with other pieces of equipment. The day seemed to fly by and
shortly after lunch all volunteers were told to clean up whatever they
were doing and prepare to leave the ship. In the past, myself and
many other members of the Brass Team have stayed onboard until 5:00 or
6:00, but on this day we were being booted off it seemed. By 3:00
all the volunteers were off the ship and several of us stood in the
parking lot wondering what was going on. Some of the ships crew had
indicated there had been a bomb threat, others had indicated it was
because there had been a couple of compartments flooded earlier that
morning, but at that time none of us had any idea as to the real
reason. Little did we know that in less than 24 hours the ship was
going to be moved secretly to her new home, 1.5 miles up the Delaware
River. I usually do most of my photo taking at the end of the day,
and since I was kicked off early, I didn't get to take very many photos
this day. Below are a couple showing my handy work for the day in
the Upper Handling Room. When you take the tour and do the look in
under Mount 55, you'll be seeing some of my efforts. Anyway, sorry
for the lack of photos, never expected things to happen the way they did
though, pretty sad...
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