Fascinating, how people make recommendations for me to write about. I had no idea these articles would be so popular… or that they would enable old shipmates to contact me.
Every so often in the life of a Navy ship, it becomes necessary to enter a shipyard for various reasons – repairs, upgrades, removal of prototype equipment… and nuclear vessels require refueling. Sometimes, the ship is required to go into dry-dock, but not always. I’ve been to five different shipyards (one military, four civilian) in the course of my twenty years of service, and only one required a dry-dock.
Not every time, but many times it’s necessary for the crew to have to be moved off the ship into alternate berthing, especially when habitability is one of the reasons for being in the yards. Currently, I’m living on a berthing barge – and in this instance, we are also messing aboard the barge. If it was necessary, the barge also has facilities for sickbay, the ship’s store, and other functions of normal ship’s routine.
We conducted the bulk of the move in one day. In the morning, the crew – all hands - moved all the mattresses, pillows and rack curtains from the ship’s berthing spaces to the barge via a massive “conga line”. In the afternoon, we moved the contents of the reefers (refrigerators & freezers), dry stores rooms, and galley (pots, pans, etc) using the same method. Let me tell you, that one way of getting your physical fitness workout for the day out of the way.
Afterwards, that afternoon and evening, those of the crew that lived aboard packed up their belongings and moved aboard the berthing barge (or, in some cases, off the ship altogether with another shipmate). Those that lived ashore had mostly taken their possessions off over the weekend. The barge berthing spaces are much the same as the ship berthing – three racks high, two lockers per person – though the racks and lockers are a bit older. I recall the time when USS Samuel Gompers (AD-37) was in dry-dock in San Francisco we were berthed on an old troop ship – two crew per stateroom. Ah, luxury…
Keeping in mind that a ship is an industrial environment, this is even more vital to remember safety when in a shipyard. All hands are required to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) – plastic hardhat, safety goggles, and have their hearing protection with them. Uniform of the day is coveralls, unless on watch. One usually must also wear their PPE in civilian attire, when transiting between their personal vehicle and the ship. Because of the extra height, thanks to the hardhat, I am usually ready to believe I’ve lost an inch of height, from banging into things I normally would not have hit.
And then all those shipyard workers start coming aboard to do their work. The first wave of workers set up for follow-on waves. Remember the safety article, in which I talked about hoses and cables? Well, it gets more crowded in the shipyard. Cables & hoses (drainage hoses, air hoses, etc.) are run (temporarily) through door openings and in the overheads (and sometimes along the deck), fire hose stations topside, hoses and cables both running along the weather decks… one must be more aware of their surroundings. In some cases, bulkheads are cut open, so that equipment can be removed (some things just don’t break down enough to fit through a water-tight door), and ladders between the decks removed. In Engineering, it’s not uncommon to have deck plates removed to access the machinery. The ship & shipyard are not good places to be walking around absent-mindedly.
Fortunately, to help minimize damage to the interior decks, the first wave of shipyard workers prep them with heavy plastic sheets, and then rubber diamond tread matting – all taped down with duct tape. Gotta be careful, though, because that builds up a bit of a static charge that day. In previous shipyards, it was plastic sheets and plywood.
