ALEXANDRIA, VA- MAY 7: The former USS Barry, once a Navy destroyer, is towed down the Potomac River on its way to a ship graveyard at the former Navy base in Philadelphia. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)
After some 30 years of service as a museum ship, the only one directly maintained by the Navy, the Forrest Sherman-class destroyer USS Barry (DD-933) is “on her way to her husband.”
Commissioning on 7 September 1956, Barry held the line in the Cold War including service in the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam (earning two battlestars in the latter) and has been a fixture at the Washington Navy Yard since 1983 when she was decommissioned.
Slated to be scrapped due to the advent of a new bridge that would lock her in to her current berth forever, she was closed to the public for the last time in a ceremony on 17 Oct 2015.
She was pulled away from Pier 2 on 7 May and is traveling south on the Potomac River to Chesapeake Bay. Then Barry will tack north, the length of the Chesapeake, to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. After exiting the C&D, the tow will proceed up the Delaware River to Philadelphia, where she will be broken.
U.S. Navy’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving oversaw the dismantling of her masts and affixing the tow, the Navy’s last investment in the old girl, now just shy of her 60th year of service in one form or another to the nation.
“With the arrival this week of the 400-ton crane, the team rigged the primary and emergency tow bridles on the bow of the ship and we removed masts to reduce the ship’s air draft as part of final preparations,” said Jim Ruth, SUPSALV towing subject-matter expert, in a statement from Naval Sea Systems Command.
