Display Ship Barry to be Scrapped

Ex-USS Barry, July 2010 (Author's Photo)

I’m always saddened when a former warship is sent to the scrapyard. I fully understand and accept that this is the most practical way for most of them to meet their ends after decommissioning, but when you have spent a formative portion of your life crewing warships you become sentimental. Worse still is a case in which the former warship up for disposal is a museum ship. Unfortunately, this will be the exact fate of the ex-USS Barry (DD-933), which for the past three decades greeted visitors to (but was not operated by) the National Museum of the U.S. Navy at the Washington Navy Yard.

While the final straw for the Barry was the forthcoming construction of a fixed-span replacement for the Frederick Douglass bridge over the Anacostia River, truth be told the destroyer’s material condition was rough. I visited her several times over the past decade, and she was hurting pretty badly in several places topside. Considering she's gone 30 years without a drydocking, I can only imagine the issues she might have below the waterline. Thankfully, Barry isn’t the last of the Forrest-Shermans still afloat as museums; the Edson (DD-946) and Turner Joy (DD-951) will continue to represent the class.

The Navy primarily used the Barry for hosting official ceremonies for Navy Yard-based commands. Her role as a museum was secondary by default. Although she contained a small exhibit about the surface Navy, there really wasn’t much effort made to interpret her compartments or systems beyond a few succinct placards. Nor was much effort made to interpret the daily lives and routines of her crewmembers, let alone the Cold War era in which they served. There was no effort at all to interpret her operational history beyond a brochure handed out on the quarterdeck (sometimes).

All this was most unfortunate. A former warship-turned-museum is more than a tourist site. It is an ambassador for its nation's navy. It is a tool for recruitment, whether into the uniformed ranks or into the technical or policy worlds that support the service. It provides an opportunity to connect with citizens who want to learn more about their nation’s navy—and who might be inclined to support it via the political process. It doesn’t practically matter that the overwhelming majority of museum ships in the U.S. are maintained by private organizations and not the Navy; the inherent roles and potential opportunities I’ve just listed apply to them as well.

For me, then, the tragedy of the Barry is less that her physical location became untenable and her continued maintenance unaffordable. Rather, it’s that she represents a lost opportunity for the Navy to converse with the legions of Americans who visit our nation’s capital each year. Why was that opportunity important? Well, navalists such as myself decry the sea-blindedness of our fellow citizens, with a case in point being the Navy’s ranking as the least prestigious and least important of the four services in a 2014 Gallup poll. Neither the Navy nor those of us who support it appear to be making much headway addressing that. Quoting statistics about how much global commerce moves by sea, or how much our economy depends on that commerce, isn’t moving the needle. Neither are unserious movies and TV shows out of Hollywood, as CDR Mark Seip observed this week in his excellent Defense News opinion piece. Navy portcalls along our coasts and accessible rivers can help greatly, but in the present budgetary environment it seems that they are growing less frequent—and there are only so many people who will have the time and opportunity to visit over handfuls of days. The post-9/11 security environment hasn’t made that any easier.

Therefore, it seems to me that the millions of Americans who visit museum warships each year are an eager and untapped audience for the Navy. They're making the effort to come to us in order to get to know us better, and the least we can do is meet them halfway. We need all the advocates we can get.

I’ve been thinking about these roles for museum ships for some time now, but I regret that it took the loss of the Barry to prompt me to commit them to words. Needless to say, I'll be writing more on these themes in the coming months.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.