I’m all for documenting the daylights out of the gantry, then removing it. The original lines of the ship are too beautiful.

The docent was an older gentleman who was a crewmember on the ship in the 1960s – glasses, short hair. As I recall, he was only aboard a few months and was assigned to engineering. His knowledge of the machinery spaces was encyclopedic, and he took me into some spaces not normally on the tour, all of which he had stories about.

The effort the MARAD folks have put into making the ship ready to be a turnkey museum ship is incredible. Erhard Koehler did most of the presentation at the meeting in the lounge, and it’s obvious how much he cares about that ship. I’ve contacted the Association leadership offering any help I can give from here (and I’m working on an item now that I’m volunteering to the cause).