This week, the Battleship Texas marked the fourth anniversary of its move from the San Jacinto Monument to Galveston’s Gulf Copper shipyard. By the fifth, if all goes well, the ship should be moored at its long-term berth across the harbor at Pier 15.
Meanwhile, the once-fathomless list of repairs required for the ship to reopen to the public continues to dwindle. The radar stub mast was recently reinstalled after being repaired on land, and extensive restoration continues on multiple decks and the steel floor plating in the air castle, which houses the ship’s 5-inch guns. With a cost in the $75 million range, most of that provided by the taxpayers of Texas, it’s an epic undertaking for a warship that is 575 feet long, 95 feet wide, weighs 27,000 tons, and was launched during the William Howard Taft administration all the way back in 1912.
“This ship’s been closed for a very long time, and we’re ready to get her back open to the public and show off all the good work that Gulf Copper has done, [and] all the myriad vendors who have worked on the ship have done-and to show the people of the State of Texas what their tax dollars paid for,” Battleship Texas Foundation Vice President of Operations and Chief Operating Officer Travis Davis told Chron last week.
The foundation is also deep into the weeds of laying the bureaucratic groundwork for the ship’s climactic move, for which Davis pegged the second quarter of 2027 as a realistic estimate. “The longest pole in the tent,” as he put it, is the foundation’s application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to sink the pilings and other infrastructure needed to safely moor the ship at Pier 15.
The ship’s decks haven’t been this clean in decades. (Hunter Miertschin/Battleship Texas Foundation)
A host of federal and state agencies have already reviewed the application and “everything’s still green,” Davis said. “We’re full speed ahead.”
The more immediate step is dredging the channel in front of the slip that will become the battleship’s berth. According to Davis, because a disposal area for the dredged material became available sooner than expected, that operation could be done by October or November, opening the door for construction on the moorings to begin once the Army Corps permit comes through.
After that, Davis said a soft opening to the public could occur sometime next summer, though work on the visitor center planned for the quay probably won’t begin until the project’s next phase.
“Things are gonna start moving fast,” Davis said. “I mean, for us, they’re gonna be very fast, but externally they’ll [be] maybe not as fast, but they’ll still be happening fairly fast.”
The foundation has also been installing new insulation in the officers’ staterooms, which will eventually contain museum exhibits related to the ship’s service as one of the U.S. Navy’s most feared floating weapons. (Hunter Miertschin/Battleship Texas Foundation)
Case in point: in another week or two, Davis expects the foundation will have selected a museum services company to help conceptualize and arrange the exhibits planned for the battleship, which he imagines as “a traditional museum experience plus some new technology.”
In other words, holograms could be involved.
“I think we want to integrate some more technology into how we tell the ship’s story, but not overwhelm the public [or] the ship with technology,” Davis said. “Because ultimately, the ship is the attraction, right? The ship is what people come for.”
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This article originally published at Battleship Texas preparations still ‘full speed ahead,’ caretakers say.