By Ashley Fletcher Frampton
aframpton@scbiznews.com
Published Aug. 17, 2009
Two of Patriots Point’s four ships are leaving the Mount Pleasant tourist attraction this week, and only one will return.
Early Wednesday morning, tugboats will pull the USS Laffey, a naval destroyer, to Detyens Shipyards in North Charleston for hull repairs.
State officials are lending Patriots Point $9.2 million to fix the ship, which has had multiple holes from rust in its decades-old hull. The ship will return to Patriots Point after three or four months at the dry dock.
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On Thursday, the USS Ingham, a Coast Guard cutter, will leave Charleston and will not come back. After its hull is repaired at a dry dock in Florida, the Ingham will go on to a museum in Key West, Fla. The Ingham will join the Coast Guard cutter USS Mohawk, a floating museum, at Memorial Park at the Truman Waterfront.
Officials with the Key West museum contacted Patriots Point several months ago about taking ownership of the Ingham, according to Dick Trammell, interim executive director at the local attraction. The museum had heard about Patriots Point’s financial troubles, including its search for funds to fix the Laffey.
Trammell said it made sense to let the Ingham go because it is the only Coast Guard ship at Patriots Point. The other three historic ships — the Laffey, the USS Yorktown and the USS Clamagore — were in the Navy’s fleet.
Patriots Point agreed to contribute $250,000 toward the Ingham’s repairs and transportation to Key West. But in the long run, Trammel said, Patriots Point will save money.
Patriots Point has been spending about $80,000 a year to maintain the Ingham, Trammell said. “By letting the ship go to Florida, we’ll save that $80,000 a year,” he said. “We’ll be able to redirect the maintenance crews to the other ships to catch up on some other maintenance.”
In addition to ongoing maintenance costs, the Ingham needs about $2.7 million in repairs to its hull, a responsibility the Florida museum will take on. Trammell said the Ingham’s hull problems aren’t as severe as the Laffey’s, though they need to be fixed as soon as possible.
“We didn’t have that kind of money,” Trammell said. “We had to borrow the $9.2 million from the state to take care of the Laffey, so we certainly didn’t have another $2 million-plus to take care of the Ingham.”
The 327-foot Ingham was at sea for 52 years before being decommissioned in 1988. The cutter’s first mission was chasing opium smugglers in the mid-1930s, according to Patriots Point’s Web site. Before long, its mission shifted to the seeking out and fighting of German submarines during World War II. Later, the Ingham served in the Vietnam War.
Patriots Point’s main attraction, the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier, also needs costly repairs, officials have said. But the state-created Patriots Point Development Authority, which operates on a self-generated budget of $8 million a year, lacks the money for those repairs. The authority does not receive funding from the state.
Officials are seeking $20 million in the federal appropriations bill this year, part of which would repay the state its $9.2 million loan for the Laffey.
Trammell said the earmark is not yet in the spending bill, despite a request by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. Trammell said Patriots Point officials plan a trip to Washington in the coming weeks to talk to the state’s congressional delegation about the needed money.
The new hull that the Laffey is set to receive should last for 40 years, Trammell said.
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