Only rarely a manicured lawn with a home and an outbuilding or two makes the briefest break in the vast expanse of pine forests and swamp, tiny oases of private property amongst the federally owned lands.
We were driving along slowly, looking for rare orchids, birds, maybe a fox or a bear, when suddenly the tree line broke and revealed …
revealed …
well, this!
What on Earth were these things?
Closer examination revealed a collection of strange vehicles, most of which seemed to belong in the sea, all huge.
No fence, no ferocious dogs barking when I got out of the car, no one emerging to tell me to move on, so I started taking pictures. Later I tried to identify what I could, hoping to solve the mystery of what these oddities were doing in the middle of a huge National Forest.
There were a bunch of these, twelve I think: life boats from the USNS Leroy Grumman.
The Leroy Grumman is a replenishment oiler that refuels Navy ships in the water. They carry large amounts of fuel and dry stores in support of naval operations far from port. They are equipped with medical and dental facilities and can resupply and refuel several ships at a time.
This ship’s name may ring a bell as it was in the news in May, 2020 when one of its crew became first mariner to die from Covid on a military sealift command ship, just before the ship left port with new lifeboats on board.
Apparently, the old lifeboats landed here in the Francis Marion National Forest!
A couple of these rested beside among the Grummans — lifeboats from another replenishment ship, the USNS Kanawha.
The Kanawha was launched in 1991 and is capable of pumping 900,000 gallons of diesel or 540,000 gallons of jet fuel per hour. It has helicopter decks and hangars for the resupply of ships by helicopter.
Replenishment ships are “only lightly armed”.
The last lifeboat is off the Noble Amos Runner oil rig, retired from Mobile, Alabama in 2018.
At one time the Noble Amos Runner held the record as the deepest “conventionally moored rig” at 7,650 feet under water. From what I could find out, when it was demolished, the pieces were recycled and remilled into new steel.
So, the mystery: did someone believe there was a market for big old junked lifeboats? Maybe they, too, can be recycled?
There was a variety of other odd vehicles parked in this clearing, mostly emergency vehicles of some kind. This might be a tracking device for communication between life boats in the water.
Perhaps an inventor works here deep in the woods, with plans for repurposing all these odd things, most of which belong in the sea, maybe someone with great foresight, preparing for the sea rise here along the Atlantic Coast that is already under way.
By the way, we didn’t find any orchids, few birds, no bears, not even squirrels on this morning. Still an adventure though!
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