SUBMARINEMUSEUMS.ORG Forum
Individual Submarine Boards => USS Clamagore (SS-343) => Topic started by: Buggsy on February 19, 2010, 08:39:26 PM
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I can't speak for the future of the boat in regards to her future but hopefully a little step forward may be happening. ???
I've been talking to some of the staff at Patriots Point and hopefully we are about to begin an interior deep cleaning project on the old girl. A good, old fashion Field Day! This will be a volunteer effort to clean areas that haven't seen a foxtail since the old girl came here. :-[ She's getting a refurbished name board next week too.
Perhaps as the cleaning progresses some other areas can be opened for public viewing, such as the conning tower. Tiny steps perhaps but perhaps its a positive step in the right direction.
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Sounds great. I sure wish I could have met up with some of you volunteers when I was down there last summer.
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Please contact me about doing this,want to be involved since I volunteer at the Point. Big problem with opening the Con is the safety and insurance issue,having civilians climbing up and down the ladder to the Con is not safe,to much chance of people falling adn suing.
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The Drums conning tower has ben open to the public since 1969 and we have not had a single injury (knocking on wood extremely hard). It is not any more hazardous than the Cods vertical entrance ladders, in fact not as bad because it is a shorter distance to fall.
Tom
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I'd take a wild guess and say that 5 out of 6 visitors won't climb up into the conning tower anyway. Just us weirdos do it. :uglystupid2:
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The Clamagore has unsupervised tours(one thing I wish we could stop),so there is no control to prevent the many children who are un supervised by parents (some are and the parents dont seem to care) from running full speed around the boat. I am positive that if the Con was opened,we would have broken arms,legs and possible deaths with in the first day.
Another problem is that this would become a bottle neck,people waiting to go up into the Conn,and the people trying to come back down.Lets face it,these boats were never built with the idea that one day they would become museums. I have seen the RazorBack and the Torsk,and they have guided tours,so control can be maintained,that seems to be a better way to display these great ships.
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The only time that I know that the Torsk has her Conning Tower open is when the Volunteer crew is onboard and the only people that get to go up are subvets and crew, and when we are not onboard we have a metal grate covering it so you can still look up into the conn. And I wish that our tours were truly guided, we have docents onboard but as far as true tour guides :2funny:
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Perhaps as the cleaning progresses some other areas can be opened for public viewing, such as the conning tower.
Please note that in my original post I stressed public viewiing, not public access! ::) The Clam needs help and nothing has irritated me more than everyone telling me what we can't do! We need positive action not idle chatter why we can't or shouldn't do this or that. >:( Perhaps, with some restrictions, we can get folks greater access and perhaps only a look through a piece of plexi glass or steel grate but first we have to remove the DIRT.
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The Drum is totally unescorted or supervised and the conning tower does create a bottleneck. We are thinking of closing it with a viewing cage at the top to end the vandalisim. People today don't supervise their kids and have no respect for history.
Tom
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The cage has paid off for us at the top of the ladder. We had one family get up thereby accident during an event weekend and wouldn't you know it, they broke a bakelite knob off of the sonar gear. :tickedoff:
The latest vandelism that I observed was the 1MC power indicator (lamp) cover missing. Not happy at all.
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The Drum is totally unescorted or supervised and the conning tower does create a bottleneck. We are thinking of closing it with a viewing cage at the top to end the vandalisim. People today don't supervise their kids and have no respect for history.
Tom
Tom, if you devise a cage, please make it where it could be unlocked and opened easily for us "special" visitors. Also, give me a key. ;) And maybe try to make it where visitors can still use a camera to take a photo of the conn through the cage.
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Indicator lens, and knobs are the most pilfered and the covers for the phone jacks and electric outlets. We were working under the deck today and heard a bunch of noise coming from the conning tower. I went inside and there was about 6 guys from a school group and I think they were trying to get into the locked lockers, I chased them off the boat. Parents today just don't raise their brats right and some of the parents are just as bad.
Tom
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We have the Christmas tree crystal's removed all the time, along with the 21/27 MC microphones and for us to keep the JA phone connectors on the boxes and the list goes on and on and on :knuppel2: For Paul and the folks on the COD they are the truly lucky ones because they are a 1 ship museum and they have a true choke hold going in and out of the boat and in and out of the park, they can leave silverware and just about anything they want out and not worry about it being bothered or broken let alone stolen :tickedoff:
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Choke hold on our visitors??? :tickedoff:
I haven't choked anyone in a decade!!! (That body finally stopped smelling only last year in Tube #7)...
The whole issue of how to present a boat could fill a New York phone book several times and would be different for every sub. But like the man said, "gotta remove the dirt first!"
Good luck Clam! You deserve it.
Now Darrin... I have a choke hold for you pal!!! :knuppel2:
Only you're bigger than me.... :-*
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Paul,
Geeez ya wanta choke me for tellin da truth :'( You have your gift shop at the gate (the only entrance to the park) and you don't have your weapons shipping hatches removed and stairs installed, what more could a museum want :smitten:
Just remember that IF you would have had a TM onboard you wouldn't have had to smell what was coming out of tube #7 for all of those years, we would have shut the drain and the vents :2funny:
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Smelly tubes? What kinda AFT are you running Paul? Gees us TMs would not let that happen - it tends to fowl up your gilly when it's brewing.
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Getting back to the original topic ::) we have started the field day on the Clamagore. ;) No great change is apparent yet but a lot of dirt is on the move and we are finding things that haven't seen the light of day perhaps since 1975 or so. Several interesting items have been recovered and we are only getting started.
Its been awhile since I have worked young sailors and I had forgotten what it was like. At first I was disappointed until I reminded myself of what I was like back then. This is a massive task, to clean something so dirty, so I guess they need motivation too.
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Good to hear, keep the faith, it is a long rough road but the rewards are great in personal satisfaction that you are making a difference.
Tom
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The Marlin and Hazard are only open when we have docents to give tours. It solves a lot of problems and just as importantly, it makes sure those who go through are educated about our boats and Navy. It also means that the people visiting come away with more of a feeling for what they have seen, which means they tell more people and that brings more visitors and more money to the boat. I took one middle school girl through the Marlin and with in three days, I had six new fans of the Freedom Park Facebook page. Since she presented her talk on subs at the district competition, I have had more sign up. I have also gained two volunteers.
It goes back to running things as a business and to finding ways to get more volunteers involved. I also know that isn't the easiest thing to do. Perhaps as we have done with the park, some of you could organize one day a month to have volunteers there to give guided tours, then you could have a conning tower open for that day and closed when a tour isn't being given. As more people are found to give tours then you can open more times a month. Freedom Park is going to be open for tours,two Saturdays a month, starting in April and tomorrow I meet with officers from Stratcom to get some of the active duty Navy people there involved and I'll have them take another Saturday or Saturday and Sunday to give tours.
As to how well the tour guides do, well, educate them. I am writing a curriculum, with lesson plans and evalutation instruments, for school groups who will be coming and I am going to use the same information to put together cards for each compartment in the ships that the docents can use so as to get out what is known in an accurate fashion. We already have a fact sheet put together by one of our volunteers for the Hazard and we'll soon have the same thing for the Marlin. For those who haven't taught school, here is a good online site that gives the basics of what I had to spend hundreds of hours in learing. http://cfmmodules.mc.duke.edu/curriculum/intro/fullparts.html
Setting something like this up about your boat is well worth it in that the school groups will learn more, and since it makes it easier for the teachers, they will bring more groups aboard. Also since all who come aboard will learn more, the interest will spread throughout the community.
The volunteers are also are encouraged to write down questions that are asked that they don't know, then we all learn and can do a better job. I have a couple of people from other museum boats sending me copies of what they use and while the info is different, it provides a format to make sure that types of info are covered.
HNSA has a collaberation project for their ships and while I haven't found much about it yet, would assume it is a matter of people helping others to show how to present and learn facts. I think that a lot of our museum boats are probably in the Balao and Tench classes so would think that some of the information about one boat might also be used for another of the same class and then the differences filled in. Perhaps what would help is if there were some lesson plans designed for visitors written for those two classes, then others could take them and adapt to their boat. This then could maybe go up on the HNSA site already written up for others to use.
This to me is also a good way to get subvets and other volunteers involved in the right way in working with our boats and in helping out with what they do know the most about. Having something in writing for all volunteers that says here is why you are here and this is the way we work together to make the boat, park, whatever, be shown in the best manner is a good way to ensure that all are on the same page and that things work smoothly. It also will make both managment and volunteers more comfortable with what is going on.
Each of us, as already mentioned, works under different conditions and different rules, but we can find ways to increase the use of volunteer help and certainly those who have served on subs can be good volunteer help. Think I mentioned elsewheres that I do have freedom park set up as a RSVP site now. This will bring in volunteers who are used to working in the volunteer atmosphere and they do a good job of learning what they are to talk about. Once again , more volunteers, means more hours that tours can be given and other jobs can be done and that ends up down the road with more money to keep the boat going.
Viejo