John F. Lehman and Christopher M. Lehman have a new plan to save the historic but endangered USS Olympia in Philadelphia.  John John F. Lehman served as secretary of the Navy and Christopher M. Lehman served as special assistant for national security affairs in the Reagan administration.  Rather than attempting to find a new home for the ship, they are suggesting permanently drydocking her in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, historic Dry Dock No.1.

The USS Olympia, commissioned in 1885, is the the only surviving naval vessel from the Spanish-American War and the world’s oldest floating steel warship.  The problem is that she is just barely floating. The Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia has no money to maintain the ship. (An ex-museum president is still serving a fifteen-year sentence in federal prison for fraud and embezzlement.) The museum has been threatening to either sell the ship for scrap or sink her as an artificial reef.  Ironically, the museum may not even have enough money to scrap or sink the ship. One estimate suggests that it will cost $10 million just to dredge the slip where the Olympia has been tied up since the mid 1950s so that the ship can be removed.  The ship has not been drydocked since 1945.

For the last three years, the Independence Seaport Museum has sought new stewards for the historic ship. Four groups that were vying to take over have now dropped to two and each is having difficulties in raising the tens of millions of dollars necessary to move and preserve the Olympia.

The advantage of the Lehmans’ proposal is that the old ship will not have to be moved any significant distance, reducing both the cost and risk to the ship.   By putting the ship on display high and dry in a dry dock the reportedly highly corroded hull plates along the waterline will no longer be at risk of leaking and sinking the ship.  The dry dock itself is is a suitable historic complement to the Olympia. It is a graving dock designed by and constructed under the supervision of Adm. Robert E. Peary, a famous explorer of the North Pole. It was commissioned in 1891, a year before the launching of Olympia.

A plan to save the USS Olympia