There's an interesting chapter in the very dry sounding book
A Companion to Cultural Resource Management edited by Thomas F. King, discussing the difficulties of ship preservation.
Some here:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=4OU ... na&f=falseWell worth a read, and it picks up some points being well made here; I'd only add at this stage, that while there's plenty of theory of 'ideal' compromises of ship preservation, it is an endeavour that is often overwhelming in due course. However I would say that many ships survive today and have a good chance of future survival because people undertook an unrealistic short-term effort which meant the thing survived long enough to become valuable enough to get funds for longer term preservation.
Museums like us to 'buy' the idea they have a plan for perpetuity, let alone 30 years - we are all well aware that is a very long time to be trying to plan for with real expectations.
A personal observation is that the approach to large ship preservation seems to be something remarkably well done in the UK - I was disappointed in the lack of evident equivalent support to equivalent ships on my visits to the US, though there is a far richer array of ships currently preserved. We have recently lost the last British carrier of W.W.II era design, which is tragic, given the lead and innovation Britain achieved in the concept and design.
It's a tough problem, and I'm not aware of any straightforward solutions for large ships, and nor is the author above. But we should have one or two carriers preserved for the following generations.
Given that limited sample,
very simplistically, it would be good if some British practice could be applied to American survivors for all our benefit. As marine air put earlier, though the amounts of ongoing cash required is eyewatering (even in warbird terms) it's quantities that's thrown at other causes regularly.
Regards,
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