ELISSA entering drydock, click for larger image

Thanks to Kurt Voss for this post on the repairs to the Tall Ship ELISSA.  Over thirty years ago Kurt became one of the original stateside volunteers for the 1877, 150-foot sailing vessel ELISSA. He has been a member of the ship’s sailing crew and has served as vice chairman of the ELISSA Committee and was the past director of the Texas Seaport Museum and 1877 Barque ELISSA.  He is also the author of the GALVESTON’S THE ELISSA: THE TALL SHIP OF TEXAS.

1877 Barque ELISSA to Sail Again Soon by Kurt Voss

When Jamie White took over as director of the Texas Seaport Museum and 1877 barque ELISSA, he thought most of his time would be spent on the “cocktails and khakis” circuit. Instead, less than three months after taking the helm, he discovered the ELISSA’s future as an active sailing vessel faced profound challenges. During her routine dry-docking early in 2011, White and his staff found that electrolytic corrosion caused by Hurricane Ike had attacked 16% of the ship’s hull plates, nearly all of which were part of her original 1877 iron fabric. Last week, after a year and a half of planning, using experts from around the globe, the ELISSA entered dry-dock to begin repairs that will allow her to sail again.

ELISSA in drydock, click for a larger image

The path to the shipyard was much longer than the ten nautical miles between the ship’s berth in Galveston and the shipyard in Texas City. It began over 18 months ago when volunteers from the American Bureau of Shipping, including chief technology officer Todd Grove and senior principal surveyor Pete Malunat, verified that the damage was indeed due to electrolytic corrosion. Jamie White’s next task was to determine what had caused such unusual harm. Since Galveston Historical Foundation acquired the vessel in 1975, the interval between dry-dockings for ELISSA has never been more than three years (Coast Guard regulations require that she be dry-docked twice every five years, on a two-year/three-year cycle). Prior to January 2011, every time the ship came out of the water, inspectors found that the cathodic protection system (about 55 large zinc anodes) had always done its job. Likewise, for decades the ship’s onboard electrical system was maintained by retired U.S. Navy chief Del Sprague, who served as a senior electrician on nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and the nuclear merchant ship SAVANNAH. White was pretty sure that the shipboard systems were correct and sound, but before the ELISSA left dry-dock in 2011, he hired Rio Marine, a professional marine electrical contractor, to verify that nothing electrical was amiss on the vessel.

Through process of elimination, White and his team began investigating what could have changed since the ELISSA’s last dry-docking in January 2008. The most obvious answer to that question was Hurricane Ike, which struck Galveston on September 13, 2008. Although no smoking gun was found, White’s team of experts began a rigorous process of elimination and determined that such unprecedented corrosion had to have been related to the storm. After a year of testimony, even FEMA accepted Galveston Historical Foundation’s argument that regardless of the exact details, the electrolytic corrosion was not present before Hurricane Ike and it has not been present since.

ELISSA in drydock, click for a larger image

If ELISSA was an ordinary vessel, the repair plan would have been fairly straightforward—simply crop out the damaged riveted plates and replace them with new ones using welded steel. But ELISSA is a National Historic Landmark and as much as possible, White wanted to adhere to The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Vessel Preservation Projects. Since most of what constitutes historical artifact on ELISSA are the iron hull plates, the primary aim of the repair plan was to retain as much of the original fabric as financial realities would allow. For over a year White gathered information from leading experts in the field of maritime preservation and ship repair (especially from American Bureau of Shipping volunteers). The culmination of that research was a 114-page repair plan that was submitted to the U.S. Coast Guard last month.

Finally, on September 10, Captain Jan Miles, assisted by chief mate Chris Welton, bosun Mark Scibinico, and the ELISSA’s volunteer crew, took the ship from her berth in Galveston to Bollinger Shipyard in Texas City. After several days of slow, careful hydro blasting at 40,000 PSI, all coatings were removed below the waterline, allowing a bevy of specialists to conduct a preliminary inspection last Friday. This group included experts from the U. S. Coast Guard Texas City Marine Safety Unit, the Coast Guard’s Vintage Vessel National Center of Expertise, volunteers from the American Bureau of Shipping, Terry Jagielski from Hansen Industries in Toledo, Ohio (an expert in rivet repairs), as well as senior staff from Bollinger and the Texas Seaport Museum.

More inspections will follow as details of the repair plan are adjusted and a timetable is developed. At first blush, however, it appears that the vast majority of the rivet points attacked by electrolytic corrosion are repairable, allowing many of ELISSA’s original 1877 iron hull plates to remain on the vessel. The high-pressure water blast did reveal that a number of steel plates renewed during the ship’s restoration thirty-five years ago were thin in places and will need to be repaired or replaced. Such a discovery was no cause for alarm for the staff; similar shell plate repairs have been made at every dry-docking since 2001.

Although there were still no cocktails and khakis in the shipyard, Jamie White was glad to have his vessel in dry-dock and on her way to sailing again in the Gulf of Mexico. Having sat in his chair for well over a decade, I can say the ELISSA is fortunate to have such an able, talented, and caring steward. As I left her last Friday, I’m sure I heard ELISSA breathe a sigh of relief.