JUNEAU, Alaska — The USS/USCG Glacier is far from her prime and floating in a federal mothball fleet, but both of Alaska’s U.S. senators have moved to get the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration to save this piece of floating history from the scrapyard.

The ice breaker that helped found McMurdo Station on Antarctica and performed a record-breaking 39 Arctic and Antarctic deployments may become scrap despite more than a decade of repairs and studies aimed at making the ship a museum or medical and scientific ship.

A nonprofit group has invested millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours to fix up some of the ship’s systems and test the Glacier’s hull soundness. The ship was once the most powerful U.S. icebreaker in the fleet and the flagship of polar explorer Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd.

The running clock on a “Save the Glacier” website has ticked down to 11 hours and change for the nonprofit Glacier Society, as the maritime administration, also known as MARAD, is poised to decide whether Glacier would join 58 other vessels marked for scrapping.

It floats among the 58 vessels in the maritime administration’s Non-Ready Reserve fleet in California’s Suisun Bay. Many other vessels, most rotting hulks, have been stripped of toxins and towed through the Panama Canal for scrapping in recent years.

The staff at Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Washington, D.C., office were “huddling up” Monday and getting to work on the issue, said Communications Director Matthew Felling.
Sen. Mark Begich’s office fired off a letter Monday to Maritime Administrator David Matsuda in the ship’s defense.

In his letter to Matsuda, Begich stated the Glacier Society has sunk $3 million into the project, structurally surveyed the heavy-hulled ship and made plans for rehabilitation at a Bay Area shipyard.

Glacier’s final destination under current plans would be Florida, where it would serve as a museum.

The ship “has a storied history of service to our nation through its polar exploration and establishment of our base at McMurdo Sound. I request MARAD return the Glacier to donor status, save it from the scrap heap, and expedite its transfer to the Glacier Society,” Begich wrote.

Efforts to save the old ship have come close before to success, but perhaps never so close to failure. Earlier plans were for the Glacier to become a medical ship serving remote communities in the Arctic Circle, as well as a floating research platform. At one point the government was poised to sign the ship over to the Glacier Society.

Glacier Society Chairman Ben Koether began a public relations blitz last month at the culmination of a 14-year rollercoaster effort to break the ship out of mothballs. His message a month ago was one of desperation.

“We are at a critical time in the life of the storied Glacier, perhaps more difficult than any passage the storied ship has made in unforgiving environments,” said Koether, chairman of the Glacier Society and once a rookie Glacier navigator. The Society credits him as discoverer of “Koether Inlet” in the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica.

On Monday night, Koether was busy sending off letters.

Koether said a shipyard offered to trade another vessel for the Glacier and deliver the Glacier to its new home port in Miami, but MARAD refused.

Current plans call for the ice breaker to be towed from Suisun Bay through the Carquinez Strait as soon as Tuesday to a former Navy shipyard in nearby Vallejo, Calif., for cleanup. Within 30 days the ship could be towed under the Golden Gate Bridge and to a Gulf Coast scrapyard, he said.

In a prepared release, the scientist in charge of the Glacier Society’s museum project said the “ship has a unique role in U.S. history and its future.”

The vessel was a cold warrior, serving in “Operation Deep Freeze” in competition with Russian ice breakers as America rushed to explore the polar regions. It was the flagship for Byrd during the 1955-56 mission. The Glacier was in the Navy for years before donning Coast Guard orange in the 1960s, making its last trip to a pole in 1985. It was decommissioned by 1987.

“No other ship afloat can speak so well to the environmental issues we face both locally and on a global scale, such as rising CO2 levels affecting the Polar regions,” said Charles Green, founder of the environmental museum initiative and lead adviser to The Glacier Society. “The Glacier will be the most important museum in the world for people that want to discover information on environmental, oceanographic, polar and earth-sciences.”

Koether said the ship’s historical significance and environmental importance must be recognized and celebrated through its use as an interactive museum.

As the clock ticked, Koether vowed to keep working toward getting help from Congress or the Obama administration to make that happen.


http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/04/ap-move-under-way-save-storied-ice-breaker-glacier-041712/

The Coast Guard Enlisted Memorial is planned for the grounds of Training Center Cape May, NJ, the current birthplace of the U.S. Coast Guard's enlisted corps. 

The site will be centered around three granite walls which identify by name the 1,400 Coast Guardsmen who have perished in the performance of duty. Names are included from 1915, the year the Revenue Cutter Service and U.S. Life Saving Service were merged and Congress formalized the existence of the U.S. Coast Guard. Marble benches provided for mourning and reflection will face these walls. Also central to the site is a flagpole surrounded by plaques emblazoned with the emblems of those services which acted as precursors to the modern Coast Guard. A brass ship's bell held in a marble enclosure will be located at the front of the site for use during ceremonies. Sponsor plaques listing those who provided substantial donations and support will be also included and positioned along the perimeter of the site. The entire memorial will be illuminated by in-ground lights. 

For more information go to: www.cgemf.org

The following article was submitted by LTC Ted A. Morris, USAF (Ret) who served in the U.S. Coast Guard from 1944 through 1948. After being Honorably Discharged from the Coast Guard, he immediately joined the U.S. Air Force and served until he retired on 1 September 1973.

The 24th of August 1985 marks the 40th Anniversary of the last major Coast Guard vessel sunk during World War II, the USCGC MAGNOLIA (WAGL 231).

The “Maggie” was rammed amidships and sunk by the SS Marguerite Le Hand, a brand new type C-3 cargo vessel on its maiden voyage.The Magnolia had just cleared the sea buoy in the Gulf of Mexico preparing to enter Mobile Bay. The time was 23:28 hours, 24 August 1945.

The Magnolia and the Marguerite Le Hand had exchanged one blast of the whistle signaling for a portto- port passing when the Marguerite Le Hand came hard aport. The Magnolia went hard starboard in an attempt to avoid collision and was rammed amidships, the bow of the Marguerite Le Hand slicing deep into her port side. Almost immediately, the Marguerite Le Hand reversed its engine and backed out, leaving a gaping hole in the Magnolia’s hull nearly to the keel. Having virtually no water-tight compartments, the Gulf of Mexico poured in and the Magnolia sank in less than two minutes.

Fifty-nine crew members survived primarily because the night was exceptionally hot. The ship had practically no ventilation into the lower crew quarters, so the majority of the men had gone topside to sleep wherever they could find a level spot. One man was lost in the sinking.

The Magnolia was unable to launch life boats. She carried a 26 ft. motor launch and a 26 ft. pulling boat, plus several life rafts. The pulling-boat was smashed when someone on the Marguerite Le Hand released a 15 ton slide-mounted life raft onto the Magnolia at almost the moment of the ramming impact. Most crew members did not have time to don life jackets and had to spend several hours treading water to stay alive.

The Marguerite Le Hand launched several life boats, searching for and picking up survivors. The Magnolia used a very thick bunker “C” fuel oil and the majority of survivors were coated with it. Many of us swallowed quantities of the foul stuff’ requiring hospital treatment after being landed in Mobile.

Built in 1904 at Baltimore, MD for the U.S. Lighthouse Service, the Magolia was 173 feet long with twin reciprocating steam engines driving twin screws. The Coast Guard inherited the Lighthouse Service and the Magnolia in 1939. Part of the “Flower Fleet” of ships, she performed the hard, dirty job of maintaining aids to navigation of all types, from lighthouses to buoys.

Shortly after the collision many of the Magnolia’s crew went to Norfolk, Virginia to man the CGC Salvia (WAGL 400), (then a relatively new 180′ buoy tender), bringing her to Mobile to replace the Magnolia.

Albeit, while the Magnolia was not sunk by enemy action, it was the last major Coast Guard ship sunk during World War II and as the survivors would attest, the water was deep, oily, very wet ••• the night very long waiting to be rescued.

As an 18 year old Sl/C (QM) with 18 months service, I was the youngest crew member onboard the Magnolia when she was rammed and sunk on 24 August 1945 during the final days of World War II. Following the Magnolia I incident, I went into Coast Guard Aviation serving another three years as an Aviation Machinist Mate.

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