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Our apologies to anyone looking for paranormal activity… you (probably) won’t find any here because by ghost ship we mean vessels no longer in service. In the U.S. most ghost ships are owned by the government. Know collectively as the Ghost Fleet, the official name for this collection of decommissioned ships is the Reserve Fleet. What is the purpose of keeping these ships around? Presumably by “mothballing” them the Navy has the chance to reactivate the vessels in the event of another world war. More commonly they are used as spare part depots, coral reefs, museum ships, or are eventually scrapped. Some, however, have uncertain futures as in the case of the SS Independence.

Telstar Logistics tells us;

During the last year or so a prominent new landmark has appeared on the San Francisco waterfront — and no, this time we’re not talking about that wretched skyscraper at One Rincon Hill. This point of interest is located a little farther south, in a Pier 70 berth at the historic Union Iron Works shipyard (now operated by BAE Systems). It’s a 1950s-vintage cruise ship, actually, and it’s unlikely that anyone passing through the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood in recent months would have missed the sight of the vessel’s distinctive smokestacks, which are painted in festive tropical colors.

The ship is the former SS Independence, and she’s now in retirement. Jonathan Haeber (aka Tunnelbug on Flickr) recently managed to get aboard the Independence, and he brought back an entire gallery’s worth of images for the rest of us to oogle.

Jonathan has the photos on his Flickr page but they can best be seen on THIS PHOTO SLIDESHOW (preview below).

For more details on this ship visit Telstar Logistic’s post titled, “Exploring the Ghost Ship SS Independence“.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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