The USS Orleck, a destroyer built in Orange at the end of World War II, is being repaired in Port Arthur before being towed to Jacksonville, Florida, to become a museum.
The move is coming 11 years after the ship was towed from Orange to Lake Charles.
The announcement came in a YouTube video from the non-profit USS New Jersey, a group that preserved that battleship, which is docked in Camden, New Jersey, as a museum. The video says more donations may be needed if the Orleck has hull problems discovered when it is in drydock.
A group in Orange in the late 1990s raised money to tow the ship from Turkey to Orange to preservce it as a museum. The city government at the time agreed to let the Orleck berth on the river in the area where the current Boat Ramp is off Simmons Drive. The agreement was for the non-profit group to raise money to build a permanent dock.
The ship was allowed to berth off Ochitree-Inman Park temporarily. However, the six-month agreement for the ship at the park along Front Street extended for some five years until Hurricane Rita blew it away into the river. A shipyard company then allowed the Orleck to be berthed there for a few more years.
By 2010, the shipyard asked for the ship to be moved. A preservation group in Lake Charles rescued the ship and had it towed there. Again, a non-profit group was not able to sustain the Orleck as a museum.
The Orleck was launched at Orange’s Consolidated Steel Navy shipyard in 1945 soon after the World War II ended. It saw action for the U.S. in the Korean and Vietnam wars before being sold to the Turkish Navy. The Turkish Navy was ready to scrap the ship, but the group from Orange saved it and had it towed.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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