The Battleship New Jersey

The boys are interested in all things Army. So when I suggested we go see a real battleship they freaked out. So I had a friend watch Eliza so I could go on a date w/ just my boys. Thanks Kaysha! Here we are at the Camden Waterfront waiting for a shuttle to take us over to the Battleship New Jersey.

Here she is! And it's HUGE!!! It was part of the Ohio class of ships and served in WWII, the Korean war, Vietnam war and the Persian Gulf war. She now is decomissioned and has been here for 10 years as a museum. It's so incredible and all that was missing was having my dad tour it with us.

There are 3 different tours and we chose the "fire power" tour. All of the docents are WWII Vets (which is seriously the cutest thing ever) and he showed us all the gun turrets and all things guns. I have honestly never seen my boys so attentive and quiet. I was surprised at how much they listened and enjoyed this. I have to take them again when my Dad is in town. This is the front of the boat w/ 3 of the 6 gun turrets. They're huge!

It still has the original teak deck and it's in pretty bad shape. It would cost about 5 million dollars to replace it so until they can raise that cash it remains in disarray. Other than that I thought the ship was in really good shape.

Me and my boys. You can see on the deck over the years guns have been removed leaving obvious marks on the deck.

We also got to see living quarters. These beds are actually 3 high. I'd feel smothered!

This freaked me out a bit. I forget all the names for everything, but we climbed under and up into one of the gun turrets to see how the huge ammo is loaded and shot. Tight stuffy quarters and these men were in the South Pacific w/ no A/C!

Inside the gun turret looking through the, um. What's that called? My dad must read this and tell me. You can see outside of the ship at incoming planes and such. I hate when I can't think of words...not telescope, right?

This is the area where the captain, generals and other high-ranking officers ate. This is the main table where the captain ate. No one sits or eats until the rank above them is doing it. There's also a really cool model of the ship.

There's cute Frank our docent in the background. All of them are wearing Navy hats and shirts and then the old-school sailor jeans. Loved it! Frank served in the Canadian Navy and then moved to the states where he worked for our Government until he retired. He's been a docent here since it opened and helped paint and clean and fix up the ship to get it ready to become a museum. He's pretty awesome! And this is Ty sitting in the captains chair. it has a pretty good view!

Mr. Chase. Or shall I say Captain Barno?

The Captain's View. That's the Ben Franklin Bridge to take you into Philly there in the distance.

I can't remeber what this is but there was alot of huge bullets in there and Chase was super interested. At the completion of the tour you could continue on your own and check out the post office, chapel, laundry, etc. We didn't have time so we went to the mess hall where the men ate and had a snack. They serve food there the whole time and it was really fun. It was completely renovated for the Persian Gulf war so it's not super vintage, but still very cool.

And when we stepped out this is what we saw. That's the BF bridge again and everyone was a little nervous. The docent had just been talking about 9/11 b/c this ship was supposed to carry all the living WWII vets that served on this ship from Washington to the Philadelphia Port in the end of September 2001. After 9/11 they weren't allowed to so it was pulled by tugboat w/out the Vets. So after discussing that we walk out to this. Fortunately it ended up being a chemical explosion in a building and I don't think anyone was hurt. Drama drama!!  So anyway-we had a great experience and the boys loved it.