I just thought this was cool. I manage shipping and logistics for a racing organization, and today am shipping a bunch of equipment and stuff to an event in Kentucky. I grabbed from my stack of wooden pallets, and as I started to load this one, I noticed that it was stamped USS BERKELEY. I sent a picture of it to a retired Navy friend, and he says this ship was sold to the Greek Navy in '91, and scrapped in '94. I thought this thing looked a little old. Neat to think it's still being used. Oh, the stories it could tell, if it wasn't just a pile of wood.
If I remember correctly, the USS Berkeley (DDG-15) was a Charles F. Adams-class guided missile destroyer in the United States Navy. I think she was named for Major General Randolph C. Berkeley, USMC, a Medal of Honor recipient for actions during the U.S. occupation of Veracruz.
I believe she was laid down by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation at Camden in New Jersey on 1 June 1960, and launched on 29 July 1961 sponsored by Mrs. James B. Berkeley, Major General Berkeley’s daughter-in-law; and commissioned on 15 December 1962 at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Commander Wyatt E. Harper in command.
Searching my memory, I think the Berkeley was decommissioned on 30 September 1992 at a ceremony in San Diego, California, and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. She was turned over to the Hellenic Navy on 1 October, and recommissioned as the Greek destroyer Themistoklis. The ship remained in Greek service until her decommissioning on 18 February 2002 and was sold for scrap in 2004.
If I have that right. I should check Wikipedia to see if I'm right.
(ok, I stole all that from wikipedia, could you tell?)
Ya know what, BonnieBlack, your description sounds exactly like my grizzled old Navy friend.. me thinks he just got his info off of Wikipedia. My wife is from Greece, so she dug that aspect of the story.
In any case, it has a cooler story than most of the pallets I steal, which would go something like "I was made with scrap wood in a cabinet factory, then I shipped some kitchen cabinets to a warehouse in California. Then, I was left outside in a pile until someone came along at night and threw me into a van."
So, following up on this... I got to my event at a race track in Kentucky, and the pallet made it with cargo intact. I unloaded it, and after a while, the track cleanup guys came around. They picked up the pallet along with the other four I had shipped, and tossed it in a trash truck. Somehow, it seemed like a sad way for it to end. I needed to ship some stuff back to my office, so I grabbed it before the truck crunched it up, and it's on the way back to me with more stuff strapped to it.
I dunno, maybe I'll cut off the piece that's stenciled with USS BERKELEY and hang it up in my warehouse.
A lot of older USN ships get sold to other countries. For quite a few years, I worked for a company that made a lot of components for USN ships, including ship control consoles.
We once got an order for a complete ship control console for an old USN ship from Indonesia, the current owner of the ship. When that console was first built in the 60's, smoking was much more common, allowed on the bridge of Navy ships, and so the console was equipped with two ashtrays.
Our stock room had one of the ashtrays included on the console. It was very old, had been on a shelf forever. But since one ashtray was on hand, we dug up the old drawing and a second ashtray was ordered to complete the kit for the order.
When the new ashtray came in, the new black-oxide finish was not any kind of a match for the aged black-oxide finish of the stockroom part. QC would not let the console ship with mismatched ashtrays.
The 100's of thousand dollar order was held up for about two weeks while we procured a second new $300 ashtray.
I don't miss military contracting at all, but it did prove to be good training for the medical device industry I work in now.
That story is awesome! One of my good friends, who told me the history of the Berkeley, is a retired submarine captain. So, by education, he's a nuclear engineer, and now works in a factory that makes components for reactors for Navy subs and ships. He loves to give tours of his shop, showing off all of the exotic materials they use, and in particular, listing how much things like valves, pipes, etc cost the government. I guess the stuff that keeps the nuclear goo from getting loose should be expensive...
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Triumph Rat Motorcycle Forums
3.9M posts
167.7K members
Since 2002
A forum community dedicated to Triumph Motorcycle owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about performance, racing, cafe racers, bobbers, riding, modifications, troubleshooting, maintenance, and more!