After 70 years, and more than four years in limbo at Mare Island, the future remains uncertain for a former World War II ship that once was the California Maritime Academy’s training vessel.The current owner of the 8,300-ton vessel, International Maritime Security Alliance LLC, may be struggling with its plans for the vessel, a Lennar Mare Island spokesman said Wednesday.
The ship was dubbed Artship by a Bay Area nonprofit organization in 1999, before its arrival at Mare Island in 2004.
Lennar Mare Island’s Jason Keadjian, who represents the company that owns the berth where the Artship is docked, said International Maritime Security Alliance obtained the ship in 2007, with plans to reuse the vessel as a data center.
“We understand that those plans have fallen through,” Keadjian said this week. “We’re currently trying to establish the intentions of the owners for the ship … We’re currently working through a process to determine a future for the ship.”
ESCO wanted to tow her to India to scrap her but was told by the EPA that they couldn’t export a ship with Asbestos still aboard but that they could tow her to Brownsville to cut her up. I have no idea at all why they didn’t do that except that they must have found a buyer to save them that expense.
Of course, the new owners could have done an INDEPENDENCE with her and towed her away without any permission which I fully expected to have happened already. I guess because the owners of the INDY got busted has now made it impossible to sneek the GOLDEN BEAR outta town.
She certainly is worth alot less now that a couple of years ago when scrap prices were at record highs. MarAd is back to paying scrappers to taking their rotting old tonnage away to be disposed of.
I sure wished that instead of the ridiculous FARTSHIP project that the GB could have been a Maritime Museum…there had been some talk about taking her to New Orleans since she was named for that city. That obviously won’t happen but NoLa sure would have been a nice home for that classic old gal.
it was enough to make the most hardened of mariners hang his head and weep like a baby!
Project Bandaloop and The Artship Dance[B]for Our Ship[/B]
Under artistic director Amelia Rudolf, Project Bandaloop will present a vertical dance performance. Collaborating with Artship Dance Theater members and Slobodan Dan Paich the performance will present poetic enactment of the relationship between humans and machines in the historical context.
This outdoor performance is based on the working ship’s energy and often unappreciated beauty of the unity between the ship’s cranes, hard working machinery and the people who operated them.
To think it was for this that a wonderful, classic, beautiful ship had to spend its last days before becoming the corpse she is now!
Oh, the humanity!
Lol we almost snuck aboard that thing one night and were gonna paint a big F in front of the ARTSHIP name. Got too wasted though. Man I wish we had done it…
She is / was a beautiful ship. I’ll always cherish the time I spent on her as cadet…in hindsight.