Sacred steel girds Navy's newest ship

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Dotty England, the ship's sponsor and wife of Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, christens the New York with a champagne bottle. (AP)

Other Ships Named New York

Four previous Navy ships have been named New York, and there almost was a fifth, but it never came into service, according to the Naval Historical Center.

- A gondola, built by Gen. Benedict Arnold’s American troops on Lake Champlain at Skenesborough, N.Y., in the summer of 1776, served in the Revolutionary War.

- A 36-gun frigate served from 1800 to 1814 and sailed to the Mediterranean in 1802 as the U.S. flagship in the war against the Barbary Pirates.

- An armored cruiser served from 1893 to 1938 and was the flagship in the Battle of Santiago, where the American squadron destroyed the Spanish fleet in 1898.

- A battleship that served from 1914 to 1946. In a quirk of history, the battleship New York’s keel was laid Sept. 11, 1911.

Another warship built and named New York never came into naval service. That 74-gun ship was one of nine authorized by Congress after the War of 1812. It was built at the Norfolk Navy Yard and was ready for launch by 1825, but never left the stocks.

Additionally, there was a Los Angeles-class submarine named for New York City. It was launched in 1977 and remained in service 20 years. It was stricken from naval registers in 1997 and will be disposed of in the ship-submarine recycling program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

By Steve Stone
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 2, 2008

The steel that once was the World Trade Center's backbone will soon serve in the nation's defense.

The Navy's newest San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship, the New York, was christened Saturday at the Northrop Grumman Ship Systems' shipyard along the banks of the Mississippi River in Avondale, La., near New Orleans.

"May God bless this ship and all who sail on her," ship sponsor Dotty England said before smashing a bottle of champagne against it. Her husband, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, spoke to the crowd about ship names serving as a source of inspiration and strength.

Its name serves as a tribute to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The ship's hull contains 7-1/2 tons of steel salvaged from the wreckage of the Twin Towers.

That steel was melted and given new life in fashioning the ship's "stem bar" - a part of the bow.

"After the keel, the stem is the most important structural part of a ship," Drew Demboski, assistant design manager for the Navy's San Antonio Class program, told MarineLink.com.

About 24 tons of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center was sent to Amite Foundry and Machine in Amite, La., to be melted down.

Engineers from the Naval Sea Systems Command's Materials Engineering Directorate determined that, despite the fires and the stresses of the collapse of the Trade Center, the steel was up to the task with the addition of small amounts of steel alloy.

When it was poured into the molds on Sept. 9, 2003, "steelworkers treated it with total reverence," Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing said at the time. "It was a spiritual moment for everybody there."

By tradition, state names were reserved to battleships. But with the end of the era of the "battlewagons" as the aircraft carrier became the Navy's principal surface warship, state names came to be typically used in the naming of submarines.

After the 2001 attacks, New York Gov. George Pataki asked that a Navy surface ship be named in honor of the victims. Approval for the name came in August 2002.

The ship's motto is "Never Forget."

The New York is the fifth amphibious transport dock ship in the San Antonio class. It will support amphibious, special operations and expeditionary warfare missions.

The ship will be used to transport and land Marines, their equipment and supplies, using air cushion or conventional landing craft and amphibious assault vehicles, augmented by helicopters or vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

Cmdr. F. Curtis Jones of Binghamton, N.Y., is the ship's first commanding officer and will lead a crew of 360 officers and enlisted personnel. Additionally, the ship is able to carry a landing force of up to 800 Marines.

The ship is 684 feet long, has an overall beam of 105 feet and a draft of 23 feet. It displaces about 24,900 tons and has a top sustained speed of 22 knots - about 24 mph.

The New York's keel was laid Sept. 10, 2004. Hurricane Katrina briefly disrupted construction when the storm pounded the Gulf Coast, but the ship escaped serious damage.

It was launched Dec. 19 and is to be commissioned in New York City next year. After that, it will be based in Norfolk as a part of the Atlantic Fleet.

The four ships of the San Antonio class launched ahead of the New York were the San Antonio, the New Orleans, the Mesa Verde and the Green Bay. Yet to come are the San Diego, which had its keel laying in May; the Anchorage, which had its keel laying in September; the Arlington and the Somerset.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Steve Stone, (757) 446-2309, steve.stone@pilotonline.com

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