Jeremiah
No, not another post about getting grifted by a hobo (although there have been a few more) , this one’s about an old salty called The USS Jeremiah O’Brien.
After our visit to the decommissioned submarine a couple days before, we caught glimpses of the Jeremiah behind a locked gate and despite our efforts of finding an alternative entrance amongst a teamster filled car park we settled for the common sense approach and asked someone. He told us, “Tis’ closed, come back ‘tween nine ‘n four ta’morrow” – which we did, as tomorrow is now today.
Old' jezza
Old jez, up close
This ship was actually a Merchant Navy ship in WW2 and is 1 of 2 of this class that is still on top of the water, alot of them were targeted and destroyed during the war and others were salvaged post-war. Remarkably the Jeremiah is still in working order and regularly takes people out on cruises….. the bugger of it is, one of those days was tomorrow, which is the day we fly out! The plus side of it is that there were doing final engine checks which meant that during the tour we got to hear, feel and see the ship engine cranking.
First things first, lets check out the guns, unfortunately the really cool mounted machine guns which are dotted all over the ship are off limits so no cool Rambo photos folks… We do have some good 3 inches though!
these are awfully complicated bagpipes!
phallic symbol?
I’ve been on a few ship tours before, but this is the first that let you actually go into the engine room. One of the old engineers poking around in bowels suggested that it was probably an insurance thing, since the engine room is basically a tangled mess of greasy, low hanging pipes and potential concussion inducing steel girders. They don’t seem to care here though, in fact they even had the engines on at the time.
into the boiler room
The first thing you notice when you start making your way into a working engine room is that it is HOT, real sweaty hot. The first thing I thought when I felt the heat and then saw full jumpsuit clad, engineers working 3 decks below us was, ‘Poor fellas probably pray for leaks in the hull so they can cool off’. Then as you descend deeper into the lowest levels, it becomes cool again. Thankfully.
some reflective, polished steel thing. Perhaps an entertaining circus mirror for the engineers
Two Big Tools
The final part of the self-guided tour is a diorama of the Normandy invasion, situated in the main cargo hold next to some army jeeps and trucks – ( DAD: you would love these jeeps, painstakingly restored and immaculate).
sample cargo stored in the hold
Normandy Invasion
Leeane, describing the length of the ship
Poster boy for the Navy
We head off to Vegas tomorrow. All in all, I think we covered everything we possibly could in San Fran, except maybe the Zoo and Coit Tower but we can see all these when we come back in October for the flight to Tokyo. San Fran is a great place, it has really grown on us these last ten days. Even the bums.
Looks like youve had a good time. Where will you be this saturday? old morts is out of commission.
Really enjoying the blog and your descriptions make us feel like we are there!
Hello Sailor: you are some poster boy (after your escapades at Hooters, George said get the phone numbers).
George wanted the phone numbers? Arg, is that guy still around.. ? “kick it to me kick it to me….” 😉
Keep up the posting Rob 🙂
I was at Hooters enjoying some well earned shoreleave after a long stint at sea on the USS Jeremiah.
George has to find his own floozies, these ones are mine… I’ll ask them if they have friends though.