{"id":29647,"date":"2010-09-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/WP-IMPORT\/2010\/09\/29\/are-national-treasures-worth-saving\/"},"modified":"2010-09-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T03:00:00","slug":"are-national-treasures-worth-saving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/are-national-treasures-worth-saving\/","title":{"rendered":"Are National Treasures Worth Saving"},"content":{"rendered":"<table width=\"750\" border=\"0\" align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\">\n<tr>\n<td align=\"left\" valign=\"top\" class=\"style1\" scope=\"col\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/localhost\/WP-IMPORT\/wp-content\/uploads\/old-imgs\/9-29-10-national-treasure.jpg\" width=\"580\" height=\"348\"\/><br \/> <strong>(Five-inch naval rifle on the port side of ex-USS Olympia, facing BB-62 ex-USS New Jersey. Photo Socotra.) <br \/> <\/strong> <br \/> I was standing with Captain Harry Burkhadt in the starboard coal bunker of the Protected Cruiser ex-USS Olympia. I looked at my watch. The train back to Washington was going to leave at four; it was clear I could stay and listen to him spin stories for a month.<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> I could feel the weight of the river on the other side of the bulkhead pressing in. I could feel something else, too, something that made me want to stoop down and get out of the low coal hatch and climb back to the light.<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u201cThe female ghost Karen touched me in the rear of the engine room at the shaft alley, There is another one, Thomas Hook, who actually follows me around the ship. It is a sort of intelligent haunting. They react to questions and respond.\u201d<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u201cThat is incredible,\u201d I said.<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u201cWait till you listen to what we recorded. I will send the files along to you. We are having a bunch of volunteers come to spruce up the ship next weekend- we are going to have the Ghost Hunters come and do a segment on our EVP\u2019s. Anything we can do to make people aware of how special this is, and get the word out about how desperate the situation is.\u201d<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> We stooped to get out of the bunker and walked aft through the boiler room to the ladder up to the light.<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u201cAre they with us now?\u201d I asked.<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u201cCourse. They don\u2019t have anything else to do. \u00a0We also got a recording in Italian of a voice saying \u201cgranda popa,\u201d which means \u201cbig trouble in the stern.\u201d I have been trying to keep the oak plugs in the hollow propeller shafts in order. If those fail, Olympia goes to the bottom right here.\u201d<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u201cThat can\u2019t be allowed to happen,\u201d I said. \u201cThis is a national treasure.\u201d<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u201cThere are more than sixty points of failure in the hull we have identified, and in some places the hull is an eighth of an inch thick. We are in a crisis.\u201d<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u201cYeah. That time the voice told me to \u201cget out\u201d I was laughed at by two distinct voices, and then they called out to Thomas, who must be my personal spook.\u201d<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> I didn\u2019t know how to process it all, as we rose to the gate that normally seals off the main engineering spaces.<br \/> \u00a0<br \/> Damn, I thought. How do we save this ship? We can\u2019t give it up.<\/p>\n<p> Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra<br \/> www.vicsocotra.com <br \/> <em><a href=\"http:\/\/vicsocotra.com\/rss2.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Subscribe to the RSS feed!<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Five-inch naval rifle on the port side of ex-USS Olympia, facing BB-62 ex-USS New Jersey. Photo Socotra.) I was standing with Captain Harry Burkhadt in the starboard coal bunker of the Protected Cruiser ex-USS Olympia. I looked at my watch. The train back to Washington was going to leave at four; it was clear I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}