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MOUNT Pleasant — For more than 30 years, the submarine Clamagore has served as a tourist attraction at Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum.
But the last surviving vessel of its type may soon go underwater one last time.
“She needs a lot of work,” said Mac Burdette, executive director of Patriots Point. “The ballasts are paper thin and the hull is in better shape, but we don’t have the money to fix it.”
He estimates the cost to repair the 1945- commissioned submarine at $5 million to $6 million, money the state agency doesn’t have and most likely won’t come from the state since Patriots Point still owes more than $8 million on the last ship the state saved from sinking into Charleston Harbor.
That leaves two options, Burdette said Friday.
One is to see what has to be done for it to become an artificial reef off Florida, he said. The other is to see if anyone else wants it.
Asked if there was any consideration for a third option about repairing it, Burdette said, “I can’t see us going to the General Assembly and asking for money. There are other more important areas to spend that money.”
The state loaned Patriots Point $9.2 million in 2009 to repair the destroyer Laffey, which sprouted so many leaks it was close to sinking in the harbor before it was hauled up the Cooper River for refurbishment that same year.
Shiny as new, it returned to Patriots Point in January and took over the Clamagore’s berth parallel to the World War II-era aircraft carrier Yorktown.
The 322-foot-long submarine was moved to the south end of the carrier in January and has been off limits to visitors since then. Once a new gangway is installed, it should reopen by Fourth of July festivities, Burdette said.
Unlike the Laffey and Yorktown, the Clamagore never saw combat. But Burdette said visitors enjoy going inside the submarine to imagine what the living conditions were like in the cramped quarters.
The Clamagore, named for a fish, called Charleston its home base until 1959 and came to Patriots Point in 1981 as a museum piece. It was decommissioned in 1975 and is the nation’s last remaining GUPPY type III diesel-powered submarine. GUPPY stands for Greater Underwater Propulsion Program.
Word of its possible demise brought sadness to former sailors of the ship.
“It pains us to think it is going to be towed away and maybe made into a reef,” said George Bass, treasurer and past president of the USS Clamagore SS343 Veterans Association. “We would hate to see it go.”
The group, which once boasted several hundred members, meets every other year in Mount Pleasant for its reunions. Last year 102 attended.
Bass, 85, of Salisbury, N.C., served on the submarine from 1948 to 1957 and is keenly aware of the Clamagore’s state of disrepair.
“It’s in terrible condition,” he said.
He also knows that Patriots Point doesn’t have the money to repair it. He has asked congressmen and senators, even media mogul Ted Turner and other well-heeled businessmen for the money, to no avail.
“They all say Patriots Point took it and they should take care of it, but they will never get the funds,” he said. “They will have a hard time paying off the loan on the Laffey.”
Bass believes they are now fighting a losing battle.
“I guess they will tow it out and make a reef out of it,” he said with resignation.
“That would be sad,” fellow Clamagore veteran Michael Burk, 62, of Ohio said. “As everybody gets old, though, I don’t know who is going to take it.”
Burdette said the board will decide on the Clamagore’s fate in about three months, but it could take up to a year for it to move, especially if it becomes a reef.
The sub still has batteries and possibly some fuel that would have to be removed, Bass said.
“It would have to be cleaned up,” the former submarine electrician said.
The Patriots Point board also approved the agency’s $9.6 million spending plan for the new fiscal year starting July 1, including $425,000 for advertising, an increase of $250,000 over the current outlay.
(CNN) -- When Al Charette traveled to the North Pole, he went under it.
The USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, made history when it reached the North Pole on August 3, 1958, beneath the ice.
Charette, who was part of that Cold War crew, recalls how this milestone was of much more significance than being a historical first.
"What we did," he says, "is really expose 3,000 miles of coastline of the U.S.S.R."
Submarines, which submariners call boats, played a pivotal role in intelligence gathering and nuclear deterrence at a time of political tension between the United States and Soviet Union. Attack submarines sought out and tracked Soviet ballistic missile submarines, while U.S. Navy missile boats tried to keep from being discovered.
"We didn't want to make any kind of a noise that a fish didn't make, " the 79-year-old Charette remembers.
The Cold War may be remembered as a conflict without any battles, but for submariners, the danger on the front lines was real.
Jack Gallimore started on diesel-electric submarines, including the USS Hardhead and the USS Sablefish in 1958. Cat-and-mouse games of two superpowers aside, risks remain even today for sailors who head out beneath the waves, says Gallimore, now 73.
"All the submariners," he says, "when they go to sea, they're in harm's way."
Gallimore remembers an incident that happened during the turnover of older diesel subs to the Greek navy. He and other crew members acted as observers during the training phase. During a dive, the boat angled down steeply and the propellers shook. The sub managed to surface eventually, yet Gallimore insisted the danger was part of the job.
"We've all experienced when something went wrong," Gallimore says.
Before any sailor can be called a submariner, he has to earn his "dolphins," a pin that's the equivalent to a pilot's wings. The sailors must qualify on the submarines they are to serve by knowing the systems inside and out. The training and testing are rigorous.
Greg Kane, 63, another Cold War veteran, qualified on the ballistic missile sub USS George C. Marshall. Earning that qualification was an enormous source of pride, he says.
"When you had those dolphins on," he says, "you were a submariner. You were a part of the brotherhood of the fin."
The standards to be part of that "brotherhood" exist to this day. Surrounded by a hostile environment at all times while submerged, any mistake by a single submariner could prove dangerous or even fatal for the entire crew.
"My life depended on my other shipmates," says retired Master Chief Bud Atkins, 77, "and it didn't matter whether they were a seaman or a captain." Atkins, who spent time in diesel-electric and nuclear-powered boats, served below the waves from 1950 to 1980, when he retired.
In addition to meeting these tough standards, submariners also faced the responsibility of knowing their boats might have to launch nuclear warheads at a foreign country. Kane, who maintained the launching systems for Polaris missiles during the Vietnam War era, says crew members underwent vigorous psychological testing well before even seeing a submarine.
Various scenarios were thrown at them: What if your boat was called to launch a strike? Could you do it?
"The whole idea was really being aware of what the world situation was, what the dire consequences would be if you ever had to go through it and what would happen ... if you didn't have a deterrent force out there to stop something like that from happening," Kane says.
Tom Russell, whose 20-year Navy career took him on a variety of vessels, also served on fleet ballistic missile boats in the 1960s.
"We just hoped that every time we went to battle stations that it was a drill because we all knew if it was not a drill, home would be in pieces," says Russell, 82.
All these retired submariners speak of their service with pride, but they are guarded when it comes to details of their missions long ago.
Charette grows nostalgic when recalling how a submarine could be in harbor or along a coastline and go unnoticed. Or suddenly surface somewhere unexpectedly just to send a message.
Asked if he could describe any of these experiences, he replies with a grin, "Not that I care to talk about."
Thanks for all you do with the sub musems
the ship inside looked to be in fair condition though their were alot of rooms you couldnt get into..the bad part about the cavalla is that you cant even look inside the conning tower becuse the hatch is closed to go up their ...but honeslty after going to galveston..i relize that theyv done a great job with the submarine..and i say SUBMARINE! becuse once u get to the stewart..im sorry but i didnt like the stewart..once you got onto her you couldnt go below deck at alll to the engine room or to the wardrooom and such bedroom ECT. their were some rooms you could go into..but they need alot of work deffintly as in the rooms theirs alot of things missing..parts wise...things that a tourist would wanna see..once u got to the gun areas..honestly..some of the guns you couldnt go onto them becuse ither they were so rusty you couldnt stand on them or they were blocked off and some of the guns had parts hanging by a thread on them...the control tower..well that was...umm...yea their hardly was ANYTHING IN IT...the only thing was the wheel and a couple phones and some wires..and thats it..their was alot of stairs to climb up too..and they were skinny as crap haha i had to watch my little cusin try to keep his balence on them..and im lucky i didnt fall as well..but yea once your on the ship theirs alot of rust...sorry for being soo critiical i just musems..by honesty...overall though the stewarts pretty nice its apart of galveston history really so the place where its at is a great place ..heres a funny thing..when i went to go get a suvenior..they only had a hat..no t shirts..and they had only 1 hat left..and it was about 20 bucks....so yea a lil pricy ..overall i give the musem a B- ..nice submarine though )I Would say if ur a submarine ethusists this is BY FAR A place for you..and if ur a destory escort person then yea you should deffintly go...but the cavalla is deffitnly better i am gonna post pictures later
