Texas closer to coming home; Pelican Island in trouble?
The Battleship Texas Foundation announced this week that it has finalized an agreement with the Galveston Wharves Board securing Pier 15 as the two-world-wars champ’s future new home.
They still have lots of steps to accomplish in the next several months to move the ship from the yard and make her ready to open to the public in 2026:
- Final engineering of the mooring system
- Permitting by the US Army Corps of Engineers and other regulatory bodies
- Dredging the Pier 15 berth
- Finalize plans for shoreside facilities
- Construction of the moorings and other infrastructure
Even then, the (re)birth of the new Texas naval museum site may be the death of another.
The battlewagon’s old home, in the mud pond of the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site, was a good 45 minutes away from Galveston– an hour in Houston traffic.
The new site will be just 7 short miles from Pelican Island, the home since 1971 of the Galveston Naval Museum, a small and unsung facility that hosts one of the last remaining Edsall class destroyer escorts, USS Stewart (DE-238), and the “Lucky Lady,” USS Cavalla (SS-244)— the Gato class fleet boat best known for sinking the Japanese aircraft carrier Shokaku, one of the last Pearl Harbor attackers run to ground. She carries a streamlined SSK conversion superstructure from her Cold War service.
They also have the sail of the Sturgeon-class hunter-killer USS Tautog (SSN-639) and the still very WWII-esque Fleet Snorkel-converted conning tower of the Balao-class fleet boat USS Carp (SS-338), making the museum one of the few places where one can see the difference between three different submarine classes spanning from 1941 to 2005.
The move of Texas to Galveston could be a boon to the smaller ASW-focused museum nearly next door, with visitors coming specifically to see the battleship, then hitting the destroyer-sub museum as a side quest. I wish this to be the case.
However, I can vouch for the rapid decline in interest by a family accompanying dad to see old warships in humid southern seaports, and the side quest may end up being a quest too far. Warship museum burnout can be a thing.
That just leaves Stewart and Cavalla to possibly see their would-be visitors cannibalized by the much more impressive (and better located) Texas. Could you have taken the USS Drum seven miles from the USS Alabama and run it as a viable separate museum? I doubt it. Plus, as both of the Pelican Island vessels have been ashore for years, moving them closer to Texas to combine the museums is also likely a logistical no-go.
Again, I hope the latter is not the case.
Visit them while you can, please!