Pictures of a Battleship

A view of the back of the ship.

You have to walk up a long ramp to reach the ship.

A rather imposing view of the mid-ship towers.  Notice the blue life raft- it looks like part of the boat.  (It 's next to the orange life vest and is blue, the same grey that the entire boat is painted, inside and out.)

Antiaircraft guns lined the decks.  Some of the guns could be positioned- these were the boy's favorites.

We're not sure whether Braden knew he was on a boat or not, but he had fun.

Although not an aircraft carrier, the ship did have a sling shot- yes, a sling shot- that was used to catapult small planes into the skies. 

A typical view of the ship. 

We are not sure what these gears do, but we thought they looked like cartoon swivel chairs.

The life raft.

There was a tiny room behind the big guns- a jungle of pipes, wires, gears, screws, and peek-holes.  That round, brown metal, hole-y thing at the front of this picture is a seat to look into a peek-hole that allowed you to see different views of the gun.  Emily is looking into a peek hole.  We wonder how the views are gotten- mirrors?

Seating at the counter that lined the mess-hall's walls.  So many seats, so little space.

The bakery with its heavy duty equipment: ovens, tables, wall-to-wall shelving to store bread, a huge dough mixer, and even a mechanical loaf slicer.  Being a baker was a night job; you worked from sunset to sunrise mixing, baking, and delivering.  

The room for storing the bakery products, with the bread slicer on the red table in the middle.

A rather blurred view of a piece of the engines.  The engines were in the middle of the ship and the floors surrounding the machinery were metal grating.  You climbed down a steep ladder, and then you look through the floor, to see the floor beneath, and see the floor beneath that one!  Emily and Hannah seemed fascinated by the gears, and gauges.  It could get to over 135 degrees down here!  Huge pipes carried fuel, oil, steam, and exhaust, and a dozen other things in and out.

"This steering wheel is a little too high!"

From Emily's expression, you can probably tell what part of the ship was the sailor's favorite.  One sailor, an friendless orphan, got a single letter from a women's organization who wanted to send mail to orphans.  Naturally he replied that he'd love to get mail, even if it was from total strangers.  Imagine his surprise when a few weeks later, after mail call had been sounded, he got his own personal mail call for THREE full sacks of mail and packages- more mail than he could open in an entire voyage.  He shared the letters and packages with everyone, quickly becoming very popular.

One of the sleeping rooms.  Men slept in the bunks and each had a little box in the metal cabinets to keep personal items.  Anything left out was taken to the 'Lucky Bag', the lost and found room, and had to preform extra work to retrieve the lost item.

You could explore under deck and over deck, walking around the towers and among the many offices and rooms that controlled the ship.  Although all the men slept below decks, often anywhere there was room- including in the mess halls, the doctor's office, and any of the vacant officer's rooms, the captain slept up here so he could be awoken easily at any time.

The big funnels dwarf David.

The huge anchor.

These chains held the anchor in place- each link weighs 80 pounds!

Grassy marsh surrounds the ship, which sits atop the muddy silt of this inlet.  Two alligators, Charlie and Charlene, live next to the boat and can sometimes be seen from the ship's decks.  Remember: never feed wildlife.