June 11, 2012 – Robert Mannino apologized as he lowered an ordinary wooden ladder instead of a gangplank for visitors to come aboard the 149-foot Nantucket Lightship/LV-112.
For 39 years, this lightship was ambassador and traffic cop, the first to greet trans-Atlantic travelers on the world's great ocean liners, and a warning for ships approaching the treacherous Nantucket Shoals.
Now, Mannino, president of the U.S. Lightship Museum Society, wants to renovate the ship and open it as a Boston Harbor maritime museum. It is currently berthed at the Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina but will be moved to a more accessible location nearby and open for tours as of July 14.
The LV-112 is the largest and best-known of the 179 lightships that marked hazards in U.S. waters between 1820 and 1982. Only 17 of those vessels survive, nearly half in private ownership. The LV-112 was recently designated a National Historic Landmark, as well as one of only 20 historically and/or architecturally significant buildings or sites selected as National Treasures by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Two years ago, the ship itself had to be rescued from Oyster Bay on Long Island, where it had been neglected for eight years after a failed effort to turn it into a museum. Mannino and his nonprofit group raised $230,000 to move it to Boston, clean the bottom of more than 4 tons of barnacles and marine growth, repaint it and make it seaworthy.
He estimates it will cost $870,000 more for structural repairs, plumbing, heating, electrical and mechanical systems, main engine and auxiliary engine servicing, fire suppression systems, and cosmetics.
Last week, the vessel was tied securely to the dock but the smell of fuel oil, combined with a rolling swell from a passing vessel was enough to induce queasiness. The officer's quarters, with the leather bench built into the arc of the stern, and its snug, white bunk rooms, suddenly went from cozy to claustrophobic.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times.