I remember going down through this rusted, floating washing machine thinking who in their right mind could spend much time in here. It was like crawling through a drain pipe in those Draino commercials. I'm thinking this must have been around 1968 but I really can't pin down the year. The city cut out the handrails & built a set of enter/exit steps that creaked & shifted with the waves. Back then it was right up there with being the "Wonderful Neighbor On The Gulf" for a day, the town was really BIG TIME now! Doug Hendry did the Timex commercial with John Cameron Swayze, we didn't need no stinkin' moonwalk, didn't care if John Lennon thought the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, we had a sub at the end of the pier! Shiver Me Timbers Matey! ARGHHH!
Reference Bored update: There were 2 subs at the pier at different times. One was the USS Marlin & the other was the USS Mackerel. Here's the Wiki link to the Mackerel which I believe is the one in the photo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mackerel_%28SST-1%29
Thanks Golf Course Homeboy
I always thought submarine racing at the pier was a myth. What a picture. Amazing find. Reminds me of that great comedy Local Hero, where the Russian sub is a regular visitor to the eccentric Scottish town. Do you think the submariners visited The Porn Room at Book Nook so they would have something to read while they were tracking commies in the Gulf? You bet they did.
ReplyDeleteWow! I remember this, but was too freaked out to go inside the thing!
ReplyDeleteIf I hadn't been there myself, I might never have believed it.
ReplyDeleteNever replicated, never duplicated.
Priceless!
10:04p.m. PST
I remember walking through this sub. I am a 5ft.1 female and I felt claustrophobic!
ReplyDeleteMO
Well now, I believe 67 or 68 to be correct. My sisters were busy at the beach dragging around their kid brother while trying to look cool which was not an easy thing to do lugging an 8 or 9 yr. old everywhere. They didn't care to wait but I thought it was the coolest thing going. Turned out it wasn't as big as the one on Journey to the Bottom of the Sea. Still cool though. Maybe next time I'll tell you how I got a large comic book collection by blackmailing my sisters so I didn't tell Mom and Dad what we did when they had to watch me.
ReplyDeleteWhit.
I don’t know how I can call myself a Neapolitan and have missed this one! Where the heck was I when this Sea Monster surfaced? I don’t remember even hearing about it! Maybe I was busy starting fires in the church parking lot or something but this one never hit the Saad household.
ReplyDeleteSo where did it come from and how did it get here and I guess the most important question, why?
Lakeparkhomegirl
Have to add my 2cents - if this happened in 1968 - why wasn't there something in the Naples paper which I read everyday. Also our pier sorta took a hit from Donna and that doesn't look like the one built after Donna. Now I hear we had two submaarines visiting Naples - we were lukcy to have the train for a short while but we still have a nice train station so all is well.
ReplyDeleteLate 60s or early 70s, I can't be sure of the year, but because I climbed through it personally, I can verify at least one of the submarines mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI'm leaning toward “Mackerel” because she was only 131 ft. and the picture on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mackerel_(SST-1) looks just like the one tied up in this picture; and yes, that's a picture of "our" pier, but perhaps taken from an unfamiliar angle.
My version of this story recalls that this sub (Mackerel) had to make a premature departure because of rising seas that threatened to tear off the end of the pier if she remained moored there.
Mackerel was decommissioned 31 January 1973 at Key West.
As for a second sub I have no recollection; but Amberjack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Amberjack_ (SS-522), named above, was 311 ft. 8 in. long,(that's longer than a football field folks), and that makes me curious about tying up something that is 180 feet longer than the 131 footer that almost tore off the end of the pier.
Amberjack was decommissioned 17 October 1973 at Key West.
Seagate Homeboy
NHS Class of ‘67
12:42 a.m. PST
I remeber going in the sub, it was so small, it was before 1964 because I got married that year and I toured the "Sub" before that. Really small, would look funny up next to on today.
ReplyDeleteLeeper
Class of 65
I toured the sub at the end of the pier and it was very cramped inside. Entering the underwater tunnel convinced me that submarining was not my calling. I never heard of the second sub but the one I was aboard was prior 1964.
ReplyDeleteD.Fussell
Class of 1969