BUFFALO, N.Y. — As we have been reminded, The Sullivans which made it through the combat of war and weathered the high seas, its now partially sunk with the stern or back stuck in the river sediment under 16 to 18 feet of water.
And it's fragile as noted by US Coast Guard Commander Bill McKinstry, "It is an 80-year-old ship and there is going to be some damage over time you know that we are anticipating. At this point I know they've done dives in the past on it to survey the hull. We're gonna have to do that again just to make sure we have all of our - all of the issues are being addressed - making sure that it's gonna be a safer re-floating."
That will also require a controlled de-watering process with carefully coordinated pumping. A source tells us a $2,000 a day consultant from the T & T Salvage firm, which specializes in large-scale maritime emergencies and repairs, has been brought in to guide that process.
They will examine ship design documents from the 1930s and 40s and then help determine where the pumps should be placed to prevent more potential damage.
McKinstry says he cannot directly confirm a previous estimate of three million gallons of water that may have flooded into the stricken ship but did say, "There's quite a bit of water that's on that vessel right now and that's gonna be the biggest charge for all of us is to get out of there safely."
Historic museum ships being in trouble is not new. Consider the case of the much smaller US Navy WW2 minesweeper called the USS Inaugural which broke loose from its mooring and then eventually sunk in a Mississippi River flood back in 1993 in St. Louis. It was then eventually raised and scrapped.
Then the much bigger 100-year-old USS Texas battleship which the Lone Star state has decided to fix for over $35 million. It will be towed to a Texas shipyard to be placed in a dry dock for repairs before being put on display again in Texas.
As we explained previously, other ships like the USS North Carolina and USS Alabama have been placed in protective cofferdams which allow water to be pumped in and out of a structure to better allow for effective hull repairs. And the USS Kidd, which is a World War Two sister ship of The Sullivans is actually resting on a cradle structure in the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
So is that a potential future option for The Sullivans? Again some say it may be too fragile with its age weakened already very thin hull to be placed undertow and moved. But officials with the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park definitely say it will not be scrapped.
We asked Commander McKinstry who replied this way on the dry-docking question.
"It would be a difficult challenge. And I'm not a naval architect so I can't speculate on all that it would take to do that. But you know from what I'm seeing now it would be definitely something that would be difficult to undertake and certainly something that Paul Marzello and those folks who are part of this process would have to really look at it in order to do that in the future."