Esso Gettysburg HAER No. CA-354 Page 8 ship sailed to Bethlehem Steel’s Key Highway Shipyard in Baltimore for permanent repairs. 22 The ship, renamed Exxon Gettysburg in 1973, remained in commercial service until 1986. It was then traded in to the Maritime Administration, which placed it in the National Defense Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay, California, on October 8, 1986. Formal title was conveyed to the Maritime Administration on June 11, 1987, and “Exxon” was re-moved from the ship’s name later that year. The ship remained in the reserve fleet until May 21, 2010, when it was towed to BAE Systems’ San Francisco repair yard for hull cleaning before being towed via the Panama Canal to Brownsville, Texas, where it was scrapped at ESCO Marine, Inc. 23 PART II. STRUCTURAL / DESIGN INFORMATION A. General Description: 1. Overall: The Esso Gettysburg was a single-hull, welded-steel petroleum tanker with forecastle, bridge deckhouse, and poop deckhouse. A technical description of the ship’s structure from a 1957 issue of The Ships’ Bulletin reads: The vessel’s hull is longitudinally framed, with transverse framing at the ends and at the sides of the poop and mid-ship house[s]. Plate seams are flush and butt welded except for the bilge plating lower seam, two seams of bottom shell plating, two seams of upper deck plating and the sheer strake deck stringer plating connections to the gunwale angle, which are lapped and riveted. All bulkheads below the upper deck are welded. In addition to the support supplied by the longitudinal bulkheads, the transverse bulkheads are strengthened by vertical deep web stiffeners and horizontal stiffeners. Bulkheads are flush plated throughout. The continuous longitudinal bulkheads, each located 22 ft. 6 in. from the centerline, terminate in deep brackets under the upper deck in the dry cargo spaces forward and under the poop deck aft, in line with the passageway bulkhead in the crew’s quarters. These bulkheads also are strengthened by vertical deep web stiffeners and horizontal flanged sections. 24 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Photographs taken at the Key Highway Shipyard, found aboard the ship in lay-up at Suisan Bay and now depo-sited with the field notes for this report, show the extent and location of the hull damage done during the grounding. 23 Maritime Administration custody card for Gettysburg, https://pmars.marad.dot.gov/detail.asp?Ship=1960; Donna Beth Weilenman, “Eighth ship leaves bay,” Benicia Herald, May 21, 2010, http://beniciaherald.wordpress .com/ 2010/05/21/eighth-ship-leaves-bay/. 24 “Esso Gettysburg,” 5 - 6.

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