The USS Slater is one of only two Destroyer Escorts (DE) known to have survived from WW2. The tour guide said the other is in the Houston, TX area but in very poor shape. Some time after WW2 this ship was sold to Greece. Before it was retired it was used as an Officer training ship. When the Greek Government decommissioned it, it was going to be scrapped. It was saved either by the DE or DD association, bought for 1 dollar from the Greek Government and towed to the United Stated (for much more than $1.00).
After paying a very reasonable admission fee, you watch a 10 minute or so video that gives you a very quick but informative history of the DE Class ship. I was surprised how well done the video was, a real credit to the museum which I assume they put it together as I have never seem it anywhere before. Then you are given a tour by one of the several volunteers there. Ours was named Chuck and he served on a DE when he first got in the Navy. The tour was first rate, very informative and even kept my attention through out the tour. The ship is in great shape and the volunteers are doing an incredible job restoring it back to WW2 configuration. I was then able to grab one of the tour guides to jump back on board to grab a few shots I missed. His name was Dave and he was studding at RPI as an Aeronautical Engineer. He is also in the ROTC, which I did not hold against him mostly because he hopes to be a Naval Aviator. I drop a reference to the WIX board after the aviation topic came up.
This ship is a real time capsule, they are trying to keep it as real as possible and is one of the best ships I have toured. Well worth the trip to make a visit. The also, as most museums are need of money, this ship will need to be dry docked in the next few years or it could be lost. They also hope to be able to get the ship fully operational in the future.
This past week part of the Bridge system in Albany had a failure, so I included a few shots of that. Then I drove over to the city of Rensselaer to get some profile shots of the Slater, which you can't get next to the ship. Docked there was the Clearwater, the Hudson River Hippies, which works very hard to clean up the Hudson River and has done a great job at getting it from the sewer it once was. But they sail up and down the river in a pretty nice sailing ship. So I took a few shots of that.
I also was unable to get bow shots because the sidewalk under the broken bridge was closed off.
Tour shots
http://community.webshots.com/album/408533376KZWUDX
Just in case I messed up some of the information
http://www.ussslater.org/
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