Greetings Family and Friends,
Evansville, Indiana hosts a true maritime rarity – a museum ship that is still capable of getting underway on her own power and in fact does so on an annual basis. That ship is the USS LST-325 and is also my last museum ship of this road trip. By the way, the Star of India, a sailing ship in my hometown of San Diego, is another such museum ship that still sets sail on an annual basis. Most museum ships, however, are well beyond their active years when they could make way on their own.
The USS LST-325 is an amphibious assault ship from World War II. I visited another LST earlier in my road trip and covered it in the post “Three Neighborly Vessels”. Kindly review that post for more general discussion of LSTs and their capabilities. The USS LST-325 spends most of the year homeported in Evansville, Indiana where she acts like a typical museum ship – providing tours to interested folks visiting Evansville. But once a year for roughly a month she goes on a cruise on the rivers of America to visit typically three cities and provide a museum ship experience to visitors. The various cities have been spread over 11 states so far: Alabama, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. According to my tour guide Chris, the number of visitors during the cruises far surpasses the number of visitors over the year at home.
The tour itself covered a fair amount of the ship as you can see in the photos below in the gallery. In one of the photos you will see a large poster board on the wartime contributions of Evansville. A realistic assertion can be made that Evansville on a per capita basis led the country in wartime related production. Another interesting photo below is of the LST model which is made of LEGO style pieces. Lastly, I asked Chris how many crew were needed when the ship went on the annual cruise. The response was roughly 50 but as low as 45. He also indicated then as well as later that they are always looking for volunteers and prior military experience is not necessary. Volunteers come from all over the country – fascinating!
Spent a bit of time looking for interesting architecture in town near the river. Came across the splendid Old Courthouse which was built in 1891 and was the courthouse for Vanderburgh County until 1968. Nowadays it is an event center and office space. The first part explained why as I was walking around taking photos, people kept arriving on all sides in their Sunday best – probably a wedding. The church in the photo is Presbyterian, if I remember correctly.
That’s it for now. As always, feel free to share this link with anyone who expresses an interest. Next stop will be at the “Gateway to the West”.
Until later,
Papi