The Steamtug Blog

Is that a corvette I see? Did you know the Corvette stingray was actually named after a small navy ship. But this one is a full sized destroyer, USS Orleck. She was built in 1945 and just missed out on service in the second world war, but made up for it in the Korean and Vietnam wars. I was desperate to be in the engineroom of a steamship, and luckily these chaps didn’t mind me snooping around down below. Orleck was retired from the US navy in the late 1980’s and sold on for use in the Turkish navy. When they finished with her, she was steamed back to the port where she was built in Orange Texas, just across the border from where I am here in Louisiana. She was laid up as a museum ship to honor the consolidated steel ship building company until hurricane Katrina damaged her badly and ripped her from her moorings. With no future or place to call home, she was sent East and up the Calciseau River to Lake Charles. She is located in a back water on the edge of town, away from everything, but there is a plan afoot to put her into drydock later this year, then move her out the front of the casino in downtown Lake Charles. It will be exciting to have her in the limelight down there in the central duck plucking arena, and I can’t wait for that to happen. I have been snooping around the engine and boiler rooms and discovered lots to know about her.

Most of the volunteers there are only interested in how many people they could kill with her guns, but me being a passivist have told them I will steam the ship within range and the rest is up to them. She has 2 boiler rooms…. they call them firerooms and 2 enginerooms providing propulsion for each propeller shaft and inter-connecting pipework to allow for recovery from battle situations if needed. The boilers are Babcock and Wilcox “Express” twin furnace boilers with separate furnace for the superheater.

The turbines are geared, HP and LP casings typical of marine steam propulsion from that era. In fact all the LNG ships I have been on have the same system, only this time its duplicated down each side of the ship for each propeller shaft. I looked at the drawing for the turbines and told them that they looked the same as Parsons reaction turbines. Then we found a manual which had on the front “Westinghouse-Parsons” marine steam turbines. They were impressed and I have them bluffed into thinking I know what I am talking about.

It’s unfortunate, but she will never steam again. They were once desperate for money and sold the only valuable thing onboard… the propellers!

Click here to see how her boilers work… .USS Orleck boilers