Saturday, May 26, 2007

Anchors Aweigh


In honor of Memorial Day weekend, we took a tour of the USS Slater this morning in Albany.

This was originally supposed to be a Cub Scout trip, but most of the families dropped out of the trip for one reason or another. So it wound being just us and one other family.

The Slater is a Destroyer Escort that hunted German U-boats in the North Atlantic during World War II.

In fact, it's the last WWII-era Destroyer Escort still afloat in the United States.

The Navy decommissioned the Slater in 1947. About four years later she was transferred to the Greek navy. Forty years after that the Greeks donated her to the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum. Over the next several years, volunteers -- mostly former sailors -- raised money and faithfully restored the Slater to her former glory. She's been on display in Albany for about 10 years now.

This was our first visit to the Slater. It's an amazing piece of history to have right in our neck of the woods.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Roon-
If you enjoyed the Slater,have someone in your cub pack contact Battleship Cove in MA. The boys can go and actually SLEEP ON the ship; same racks as when the USS Massachusetts was in WWII, eat in the mess, tour the workings of a battleship... I think I enjoyed it as much as the boys did.

Best to all

Paul DeGeorgio

Roon said...

Our pack did go on that trip, but Nolan and I sat that one out.

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