Whipped Cream Difficulties

Hey! Guess what!

The battleship New Jersey is in dry dock.

Being completely fair, this is a good story, especially if you’re interested in history, ships, the Navy, or some combination of those three.

It was years overdue for the routine maintenance required to keep it safely afloat for the next couple of decades in the Delaware River. And preparations for pulling the 887.7-foot ship about six miles, from Camden to Paulsboro, N.J., and then to Philadelphia, were complete even before the $10 million it will cost to finish the job was secured.

But it isn’t without annoyances.

“They don’t do this, anywhere, very often,” said Libby Jones, the museum’s director of education. “If you’re into this kind of stuff, this is it — this is the Super Bowl.”

Ahem. Ahem.

The Texas also cost a lot more, but it had gone without maintenance for much longer, too.

(Also being scrupulously fair, the Texas is now out of dry dock and in a new permanent location. On the other hand, the Texas was in dry dock for 18 months, not the two months estimated for the New Jersey, and anyone who wanted to had plenty of opportunities to go see it.)

A YouTube channel [Ryan Szimanski] and Ms. Jones created at the start of the pandemic to offer programming while the museum was closed now has nearly 240,000 subscribers. Tickets for the dry-dock tours that Mr. Szimanski leads are selling for $1,000. (Tours led by other guides are $225.)

$1,000? Really? Nothing against Mr. Szimanski: I do watch the New Jersey YouTube channel sometimes. But $775 seems like a steep YouTube premium. (As I recall, the dry dock tour of the Texas was $150.)

It is kind of nice to see the New Jersey is selling merch (though they already had an online store). But can you get Battleship New Jersey 1911 grips? As far as I can tell, no.

(Okay, that’s a trick question: you can’t get Battleship Texas 1911 grips either. Except for the deck pattern ones, which I personally don’t like. The other two patterns seem to come into stock and sell out very fast. One of these days I might be lucky enough to snag a pair.)

What’s the takeway from this, other than dry dock tours of old battleships are fun?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 3rd, 2024 at 2:30 pm and is filed under 1911, Guns, History, Ships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.