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Battleship Iowa launches ambitious deck replacement project in Port of LA

  • Original decaying wood deck boards onboard the Battleship Iowa are...

    Original decaying wood deck boards onboard the Battleship Iowa are being replaced with a new eco-friendly composite deck material. (Photo by Ken Hagihara, Battleship Iowa Museum)

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Original decaying wood deck boards onboard the Battleship Iowa are being replaced with a new eco-friendly composite deck material. (Photo by Ken Hagihara, Battleship Iowa Museum)

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Dozens of World War II ships now live on as floating museums — a reminder of the nation’s sacrifice and tenacity during a time of turmoil.

But salvaging and preserving the monuments for posterity is almost never-ending and doesn’t come cheap.

The Battleship Iowa, a tourist attraction in the Port of Los Angeles since 2012, is among the more recent additions to the nation’s floating museum fleet and this mont, it embarked on a standard renovation faced by all the ships — replacing the traditional teak wood decks.

“Originally, the Navy made decks out of pine,” said Ryan Szimanski, executive director of the Historic Naval Ships Association and curator for the USS New Jersey. “Pine was usually 4 inches thick, grown in America and cheap to harvest.”

The downside: It had to be replaced every 10 years.

After World War I, he said, teak began being used, including for ships during World War II.

It was 2 inches thick and would last 20 years. But it also had large crews of sailors taking constant care of the wood as long as the ships were active military vessels.

Later, in the 1980s. Douglas fir was used on ships.

As the ships aged in dock, more weather and water damage occurred, and, in the Iowa’s case, much of the deteriorating Douglas fir had to be patched over the steel underpinnings in an effort to stop or slow water leaking through the various decks.

Now, the Iowa’s deck needs to be addressed more seriously — by being completely replaced.

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The Douglas fir has rotted and leaks are only getting worse.

So the decks need to be replaced. While the Iowa’s original deck materal was teak, that wood is harder to come by now, said Jonathan Williams, president and CEO of the Battleship Iowa Museum, and the price has skyrocketed.

So the Iowa crew landed on a new sustainable product with a wood appearance: Herculan Eco Teak, a product made in the Netherlands that’s used on yachts and cruise ships because it creates a seamless finish for marine environments that keeps water out. While not cheap, it should last much longer.

And its look is close enought to teak, Williams said.

“It’s as close as you can get in an artificial product,” Williams said.

And, he added, it could last as long as 30 to 50 years.

Thanks to $750,000 in funding from the state of Iowa, the work has begun on a level above the main deck, where water has been leaking through the old patchwork of materials, which includes plywood.

Williams, joined by San Pedro Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Elise Swanson, announced the first portion of the project at a recent on board the battleship, which also has been designated as the National Museum of the Surface Navy. The battleship, 250 S. Harbor Blvd., is docked just south of the Vincent Thomas Bridge and is center stage for Los Angeles Fleet Week every Memorial Day weekend. Plans are also in the works for a land-side park area in the near future.

About 4% of the new deck installation job on the “01” level above the main deck is done, Williams said. It spans about 5,000 square feet and should be finished within a few months.

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Then workers will go up to the next higher level, which is plagued with leaks, and then down to the final project site — the main deck with the gun turrets.

Altogether, Williams said, the ship deck project involves about 45,000 square feet and is anticipated to cost $8.5 million to $10 million. Williams estimates it will take five to six years to complete.

Private donations are being taken and an ongoing fundraising effort will continue, Williams said.

“This is the first phase,” he said.

The first finished area is on a deck that is open for public tours.

Decks made of wood, Szimanski said, acted as insulation to the ship’s steel, keeping temperatures more moderate for large crews — as well as for museum visitors nowadays.

The composite material, Szimanski said, has been used on the USS Little Rock in Buffalo, but is a somewhat new approach. The USS New Jersey recently replaced its deck with teak, he said, which cost about $5 million and involved 43,000 square feet of deck space, or about 1 acre.

But, Szimanski said, the lifespan for teak is 20 years is much shorter than that of the composite material.

“That’s something (the Iowa) is kind of pioneering,” he said. “They’re using more modern materials and it will be interesting to see how that holds up.”

Saving the ships, Szimanski said, is well worth the effort and that ongoing costs.

“World War II was the last nuclear war and we really hope it will be the only nuclear war,” he said. “The survivors of that era are almost gone. But these ships will continue to be witnesses to that struggle.”

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