New voyage for Battleship New Jersey celebrated
CAMDEN, N.J. — Assisted by four tug boats and surrounded by the anticipatory buzz of a watching crowd, the nation’s most decorated war ship was expected to leave Camden on Thursday.
A celebration of the Battleship New Jersey’s departure began to draw a crowd around 10 a.m., when the public was admitted to the ship’s pier for a send-off ceremony.
The temperature was just above the freezing point, and a chilling wind blew across the ship. But the crowd’s energy was warm with excitement and camaraderie.
The ship’s gift shop quickly drew a crowd, with elderly veterans and other participants huddling to escape the nipping cold.
John “Johnnie Q” Quinesso, a 98year-old Navy veteran of World War II, described the day’s events and the turnout as “wonderful.”
Quinesso didn’t serve on the battleship, but came to the pier as a tour guide in 2001 to “get back on the water.”
Seeing fellow vets and volunteers on Thursday “brings back the Navy days,” he said.
Volunteers greeted onlookers at the ship’s pier, distributing American flags and programs to people already carryijng blankets, cameras and Navy memorabilia.
The battleship, a staple of the city’s waterfront, was to leave the pier for a maintenance project, with a weeklong pit stop in Paulsboro before heading to a Philadelphia shipyard for dry docking.
“Just getting to today was a gigantic task in and of itself,” said Marshall Spevak, Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial CEO.
Thursday’s sight-and-sound spectacle included a helicopter flyover and a salute from one of the ship’s thunderous guns.
As a bugler played the national anthem, the only other sounds heard were the winds whipping the battleship’s flages and the whirring blades of distant helicopters.
In remarks opening the ceremony, Spevak described the historic ship as a “tapestry of 45,000 sailors and Marines.”
He also drew laughter from an audience of some 2,000 people by describing the ship as “another in a long line of truly great Jersey girls” who doesn’t pump her own gas.
More than 400 people, bundled in layers and military paraphernalia, gathered on the pier.
Many more were massed along a waterfront walkway..
The museum ship was taking to the river for the first time in two decades.
It was to spend a week in Paulsboro, being prepared for a two-month stint at the Philadelphia Navy Yard for dry docking and maintenance.
Dry docking involves exposing typically submerged parts of a ship, like the hull, in a shipyard for cleaning, inspection and repair.
Navy regulations require decommissioned vessels to be dry docked for maintenance every 20 years, but the USS New Jersey has lapsed over 30 years since its last dry dock.
Other speakers at Thursday’s event were to include Camden Mayor Vic Carstarphen, who was to read a letter from President Joe Biden, and Gov. Phil Murphy.