Suisun Reserve Fleet to shrink again

Three more ships, including one that was towed Tuesday, have been given their dates of departure from the Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay – in the waters surrounding Martinez – the Maritime Administration announced Monday.

The SS Bay, the ship being removed for preparation for towing to a recycling contractor, should be the last to leave this year.

The other two, the SS Dawn and the USNS H.H. Hess, are scheduled for January departures.

The three will be the 14th, 15th and 16th ships to leave the area since Oct. 22, 2009. That was when the Obama administration sent U.S. Transportation Deputy Secretary John D. Porcari to Benicia to announce that ships on the department’s non-retention list would be towed to dry docks in San Francisco for cleaning and preparation, then sent to recycling contractors for dismantling.

The administration expects to have 57 obsolete ships removed from Suisun Bay by Sept. 30, 2017, with the 20 in worst condition gone by Sept. 30, 2012.

Until Monday’s announcement, the old, deteriorating ships had been hauled to contractors in Brownsville, Texas. Those departing next month will also go there.

But the SS Bay will be sent to a Chesapeake, Va., a recycler that has been qualified by MARAD for the job, the administration said.

“The Bay is the first Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet ship that Bay Bridge Enterprises of Chesapeake, Va., (will have) recycled for the Maritime Administration,” said Cheron Victoria Wicker, director of the Office of Congressional and Public Affairs for MARAD, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“Their contract award for recycling the Bay was based upon price, performance schedule, and past performance,” she said, saying the company agreed to do the job for $397,182.

Though this is the first Suisun Bay ship the company has recycled for MARAD, it has recycled obsolete ships from the James River Reserve Fleet. The company has been a MARAD contractor since 2002, Wicker said, and has been qualified to bid on obsolete ships since 2005.

California Dry Dock Solutions of Petaluma has been awarded contracts for a total of $3.1 million to clean and dismantle two of the obsolete ships at the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard. However, it still has more preparatory work and dredging to do before it can start recycling.

Each of the three ships will begin their last voyages by being towed from Suisun Bay to BAE Systems San Francisco Ship Repair, where each in turn will be drydocked and scrubbed clean of any loose exterior paint and marine growth.

The SS Bay, like the USNS H.H. Hess, was a merchant vessel built in the 1960s by National Steel and Shipbuilding (NASSCO), a General Dynamics San Diego company that has been designing and building ships for both the U.S. Navy and commercial markets since 1959.

The Bay was laid down as a MARAD type C3-S-46a breakbulk cargo ship named the SS Export Bay. About 1961, it entered service with American Export Lines, at the time the leading U.S.-flag shipping company between the American East Coast and the Mediterranean on that company’s U.S. Gulf-Western Europe route.

The Export Bay served in the commercial trades during its entire career. It was turned over to MARAD in 1983, which renamed it “Bay” and moved it to Suisun Bay in 1984.

The administration used it as a parts hulk for its sister ships that MARAD acquired and activated with the Military Sealift Command. Those sister ships have been dismantled in New Orleans.

The next ship to leave is the SS Dawn, expected to depart for San Francisco on Jan. 6, 2011. The Dawn was built in the 1960s by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., a company that opened in 1938 and now is part of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding.

Like the Bay, the Dawn was a merchant vessel that entered the national Defense Reserve Fleet when its active career concluded in 1988.

The USNS H.H. Hess is slated to be pulled from the fleet on Jan. 14.

While it was built at the same time and place as the Bay, the Hess eventually changed careers from merchant vessel to service with the Military Sealift Command.

Launched in 1964 and originally named the SS Canadian Mail, it first was part of the American Mail Lines fleet.

The ship was acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1977, renamed the USNS H.H. Hess, and converted to a hydrographic survey ship in preparation for its change of purpose.

It served in the MSC until l992 and received Navy Battle E Ribbons and a national Defense Service Medal before it was deactivated and towed to Suisun Bay. It was withdrawn from the Ready Reserve Fleet in 2003.

After failing to qualify as a historic ship in 2006, it was designated for disposal either by scrapping or as a target for live fire practice.

Wicker said the removal of the ships is subject to change in case weather interferes with the towing.

Source: By Donna Beth Weilenman, Benicia Herald Staff Reporter, December 30, 2010

http://www.martinezgazette.com/news/story/i1943/2010/12/30/suisun-reserve-fleet-shrink-again