11.
SOVIET CRUISER MURMANSK The Soviet warship Murmansk was built during
the early 1950s.
In 1994, it was sold to an India-based company for scraps.
Plans were made to tow the nearly 40-year-old vessel there from the Arctic Ocean.
Shortly after leaving Norway, the tugboat’s cable snapped, causing the Murmansk to run
aground!
The ship remained in place with a heavy list for several years and became somewhat of a
tourist attraction.
Meanwhile, fishermen and conservationists became increasingly concerned about its effects
on the environment.
Experts predicted that storms would destroy the ship, but it stayed in one piece until
2009.
That year, the Norwegian government finally had the Murmansk removed.
The wreck was too damaged to be moved by conventional means, so workers built a breakwater around
the drydock.
Once it dried up, they were able to easily dismantle it piece by piece.
Experts ruled out the presence of polonium and other radioactive substances, but some
researchers suspect that the findings are inaccurate.
If there were dangerous chemicals on the Murmansk, chances are we’ll never know about it, because
the ship was recycled and is long gone.
10.
COLD WAR SUBMARINE GRAVEYARD Russia’s Kola Peninsula is home to a Soviet-era
submarine graveyard that was largely forgotten until recent years.
They sit in a restricted zone near the Finnish border, and the site is connected to a secretive
naval base that’s still active today.
The submarines were dumped and forgotten about during the 1970’s.
At the time, Soviet shipyards were struggling to keep up with orders for warships, and properly
disposing of submarines simply wasn’t a priority.
Rumor has it that some of the decommissioned subs were used for target practice and sunk,
while others were simply left to decay.
But there’s a reason you’re not supposed to just dump a submarine or boat into the
water and let nature take its course.
Over the years, oil and rust polluted the water, and the authorities finally realized
that they needed to act before it got any worse.
At least one submarine was burned, while others were pulled from the water, dismantled, and
their parts recycled.
Some of the submarines were in good enough condition to be used as training vessels.
One ended up on display at a museum.
Satellite imagery showed that as of 2007, there were at least 7 subs still sitting in
the water, and they are visibly beyond salvaging.
9.
HMS PLYMOUTH Back in 1982, Britain and Argentina went head-to-head
in a 10-week-long territorial conflict known as the Falklands War.
One of the most important vessels the British military had at the time was a ship called
the HMS Plymouth.
Soldiers used the vessel to launch helicopters and bomb Argentine forces, and the enemy struck
back.
At one point, a bomb struck the Plymouth’s deck, causing severe damage to the ship.
A fire broke out, but the crew managed to put it out, and thankfully nobody was seriously
injured from the ordeal.
After the war, the Plymouth returned to the U.K. and was repaired and put on display along
the River Clyde in Glasgow, Scotland.
But nobody seems to have taken care of the ship, and it fell further into disrepair.
The Plymouth languished for years before being transported to Turkey, where it was demolished
in 2014.
Locals had fought to try saving and restoring the ship, but unfortunately it never happened.
8.
LOCKHEED MARTIN SEA SHADOW Off the San Francisco coast in Suisun Bay,
there’s a large fleet of disused and decaying military ships.
The U.S. Maritime Administration has ordered for them to be destroyed, but it hasn’t
happened yet.
Most of the ships at Suisun Bay are pretty old, but the Lockheed Martin Sea Shadow was
an exception.
Built in 1984, this experimental stealth ship was extremely sophisticated for its time.
Its twin propeller design enabled it to stay stable even in rough seas, and the craft was
approved for use in waves up to 18 feet (5.5 meters) high.
The Sea Shadow was developed as part of a secret project that wasn’t revealed to the
world until 1993.
Despite its capabilities, the ship never made it past the prototype stage, and the only
one ever made was stored inside a barge at Suisun Bay.
It remained there from 2006 until 2012, when it was dismantled.
The Navy had tried to auction it off, but nobody wanted to buy it.
Although the Sea Shadow itself never took off, the project wasn’t a complete loss.
Its distinctively shaped hull and stabilizer have been incorporated into many ships, giving
them an advantage when it comes to stability-sensitive intelligence missions.
7.
USS ORISKANY The United States has more aircraft carriers
than any other nation.
One of them, the USS Oriskany, was built for the U.S. Navy.
Nicknamed “Mighty O,” it entered service a few years after World War II ended.
The ship operated mainly in the Pacific until sometime during the ‘70s.
It received two battle stars for its service in the Korean War and 10 battle stars for
its participation in Vietnam.
A catastrophic fire broke out on the Oriskany in 1966 after a magnesium flare was accidentally
lit.
Forty-four soldiers died in the tragic blaze.
In 1976, the ship was taken out of service.
Someone bought the Oriskany for scrap in 1995 but never did anything with it and it was
repossessed.
For several years, the ship bounced back-and-forth between various shipyards in California and
Texas.
Finally, the Navy decided to put the Oriskany to good use by sinking it in the Gulf of Mexico
as an artificial reef.
After aimlessly traveling from one storage location to the next for so long, the ship
found its forever home on the seafloor 22 miles (35.4 km) south of Pensacola.
At 911 feet (277.7 km) long, it’s the world’s largest artificial reef and one of the most
popular diving sites of all time.
6.
CHASSELOUP-LAUBAT The port of Nouadhibou in Mauritania is home
to the world’s largest ship graveyard.
At any given time, there are over 300 hulls from abandoned vessels rotting away at the
site.
But there weren’t always this many ships at Nouadhibou.
The first one to be abandoned there was the French Navy cruiser Chasseloup-Laubat.
It was built during the 1890s, when the French were becoming increasingly concerned about
the growing capabilities of Italian and German naval fleets.
The Chasseloup-Laubat sank at Nouadhibou in the year 1926, marking the beginning of the
massive ship graveyard that’s there now.
The collection built up slowly over time, largely because corrupt officials took bribes
from people who wanted to dump their ships without having to follow environmental laws.
At one point, the Chasseloup-Laubat was converted into a floating theater.
But it eventually went back to being nothing more than a floating hunk of rusting metal,
much like all the other vessels in the port.
The ship graveyard is a fascinating sight, but it’s hugely dangerous to the environment,
especially since Mauritania lacks the infrastructure necessary to properly dismantle the boats.
5.
CLEMENCEAU Nicknamed “le clem,” the Clemenceau was
an aircraft carrier for the French Navy.
It was one of the Navy’s largest aircraft carriers, and the sixth vessel of its type
to be built for France.
The ship was especially valuable to the French because they designed and built it themselves
at a time when they were heavily reliant on British and American military technology.
It was equipped for carrying and firing nuclear weapons but also hosted guest artists, who
spent anywhere from a week to two months living aboard the ship.
The Clemenceau served a lengthy 40-year career and was in a handful of wars before it was
decommissioned in 1997.
Altogether, it traveled the equivalent of circling the globe 48 times.
Originally, the plan was to take the Clemenceau to India for scrapping.
India’s Supreme Court ultimately decided not to allow the vessel into the country due
to its potential to cause pollution.
Over the next several years, the ship traveled to many countries and changed hands numerous
times.
It was finally dismantled in 2010 in the U.K.
4.
MINSK The Soviet Kiev class aircraft carrier Minsk
was launched in 1975.
She served in the Pacific for the Soviet and Russian Navies from 1978 until she was decommissioned
in 1994.
A major accident ended the vessel’s military service, and to this day, the details are
a mystery.
From there, the Minsk was supposed to be scrapped.
But environmentalists stopped the South Korea-based buyer from following through with these plans
and the ship was instead sent to China to be scrapped.
A group of video game arcade owners fought to save the Minsk and ended up buying it for
$4.3 million.
The ship’s career took a bizarre turn in 2000, when she housed a military theme park
in Shenzhen, China.
Known as Minsk World, the park operated until 2016.
During that time, however, the Minsk went through several different owners before ending
up in the hands of a Chinese real estate company.
In 2016, the Dalian Yongjia Group announced that the ship was being towed to a location
near Shanghai for a refit.
But that never happened, and the Minsk has been wasting away in the same spot for several
years now.
Drone footage revealed that the ship is in very poor condition, and it appears as though
no work has been done on it like its owners claimed were their plans.
It’s possible that the project is delayed; whatever the case, it seems like the vessel
is deteriorating while its future remains up in the air.
3.
HMS BRONINGTON The HMS Bronington was a British minesweeper
that Prince Charles of Wales once commanded.
It was one of 119 Ton-class British vessels that were built during the 1950s.
The British Navy was undergoing certain changes when the Bronington launched in 1953.
At the time, the military was modernizing with the use of metal and synthetic materials.
But the Bronington had the trademark mahogany hull that the British “wooden halls” were
known for.
It was one of the last of its kind ever built.
Between February and December 1976, Prince Charles was in charge of the ship as part
of his service in the Royal Navy.
The Bronington was decommissioned sometime before it was purchased in 1989 by the Bronington
Trust.
It spent several years berthed in Manchester before being acquired by the Warship Preservation
Trust in 2002.
The vessel was relocated, but the Warship Preservation Trust went into liquidation in
2008, bringing any future plans for the Bronington to a screeching halt.
Nature took over from there, and sure enough, the ship had a tree growing on it and was
starting to sink.
In 2016, the Bronington sank at her moorings.
Plans were made to scrap the vessel, but the vessel hasn’t moved from where it started
sinking and remains partially submerged.
For a few years, efforts were made to pump water out of the ship, but that eventually
stopped happening.
Not everyone has given up on the Bronington.
Speaking with The News, a former Navy engineer named Mike McBride said that he believed the
ship could be saved if someone would finance the project.
While the possibility has not been completely ruled out, it seems unlikely that someone
will fund it, including taxpayers.
2.
USS SACHEM The USS Sachem was built in 1902 as a luxury
yacht for a renowned railroad tycoon.
During World War I, the U.S. Navy acquired the 186-foot-long (57 meters) steam-powered
vessel and repurposed it as a military ship.
The government used the Sachem to investigate German U-Boats, which were a top threat to
the military.
Thomas Edison sailed the boat from New York Harbor to Florida and the Caribbean while
trying to figure out an efficient strategy for sinking U-Boats.
During the Great Depression, the Sachem functioned as a fishing boat.
Then, in 1942, the Navy bought it for $62,000 and put it back into military service.
After that, it served as a New York City tour boat.
The Sachem retired from the tourism industry in 1983.
In 1986 after being remodeled, it served as the backdrop for Madonna’s “Papa Don’t
Preach” music video.
On the 4th of July, Robert Miller, the boat’s owner at the time, sailed the Sachem to attend
Ronald Regan’s re-lighting of the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
The vessel had a very busy and accomplished career, to say the least.
Ironically, the Sachem’s glory days ended rather uneventfully.
Miller abandoned the ship in 1987 along the Ohio River in Petersburg, Kentucky where it
remains today in a decrepit, ever-worsening state.
1.
“FORGOTTEN” MILITARY VESSELS The section of the Columbia River that runs
through Portland, Oregon is home to two derelict military vessels -- a World War II Navy tugboat
called the Sakarissa and a Coast Guard cutter called the Alert.
Ever since their owner passed away, they’ve been falling further into disrepair and becoming
an even bigger eyesore to locals.
Last year, authorities noticed both boats listing and realized how dangerous it could
be if they still had fuel in their tanks.
And, as it turned out, they did.
The Coast Guard and government officials worked together to remove tens of thousands of gallons
of fuel from the Sakarissa and the Alert.
Residents have been pushing the authorities to remove the vessels from the river entirely,
but so far, they haven’t budged.
Local news station KGW8 recently reported that the boats have become “magnets for
vandalism and drug use.”
There are an estimated 200 or more abandoned boats in the Portland metro area, and taxpayers
foot the bill for their removal and for any environmental precautions that are taken.
So it’s a long and complicated process to get these vessels out of the water.
In the meantime, transients have turned some of the boats into their homes.
While this may seem harmless, abandoned vessels are often dangerous, and living on one does
little to help solve the bigger problems surrounding homelessness, including a need for stable
housing.
For now, it seems as though the Sakarissa and Alert will continue to fall apart before
people’s eyes while providing unsafe shelter to some of the most vulnerable members of
society.
Thanks for watching!
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