This was a busy day.
Late this morning we met at the battleship USS North Carolina, now a memorial, for a self-guided tour. We went seemingly everywhere, following arrows and reading signs, encountering not an interpreter or safety person anywhere, and ship’s ladders present a lot of potential for trouble.
But we had our own interpreters. Marcia and I hung around with fellow Airstreamer Bill because he was a font of information and excitement, demonstrating some weapons he hadn’t seen since serving on a WWII carrier at age 17.
The North Carolina’s construction was underway when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and in July 1942 she became the first major replacement ship to enter Pearl. She served in just about all the major Pacific battles and was torpedoed once but was able to stay on station. Decommissioning came in 1947 and in 1961 she was floated up the Cape Fear River to her current resting spot in Wilmington. And I do mean resting spot. She grounded while being positioned, so rather than presenting an aggressive bow-out posture, she shows her stern to the city and any visitors.
(The North Carolina was the first so-called fast battleship. She was 729’ long and displaced 35,000 tons. The Iowa class Long Beach based USS New Jersey, commissioned in 1943, displaced 45,000 tons and was 887’ long.)
After our tour the group took a water taxi (top picture) across the Cape Fear River to downtown Wilmington, where we boarded the Henrietta III (no picture - not the Just Enuff lady) for lunch and a river tour. The lunch was huge (we skipped dinner that night) and the tour interesting, and it was a beautiful day. At one point the guide was speaking about Wilmington during the war, which I soon learned means the Civil War around here, not WWII.
After the cruise the group took a trolley tour of historic Wilmington, but the driver wasn’t very dynamic and I had had a lot to eat so, yes, I nodded off a few times. I still don’t think I missed anything; I was listening.
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