BUFFALO, N.Y. — It has been one year since we nearly lost the USS The Sullivans. Now, she basks in the sunlight of a warm spring day. Plans for her future have The Sullivans voyaging ahead for generations to come. 

What You Need To Know

  • USS the Sullivans will be dry docked, those plans are not finalized yet 

  • Repairs on the inside are on hold until she returns with a new hull 

  • Hope is to have her fully restored and open to the public in a few years 

“You can imagine all of this here filled with water, all the way up here, to about this center line,” said Shane Stephenson, director of museum collections at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, as he pointed to where the water was.

Stephenson says it took six weeks of practice pumping and analyzing data to get it just right.

“If that pumping plan wasn’t in place, or thorough, and all of that data analyzed, it could have broken her back or her keel,” Stephenson said.

Thankfully, in a matter of hours, she was floating again. Work to preserve the 80-year-old ship and her story is still well underway.

“We still have a lot of work to do down here,” Stephenson said. “There’s abatement and they used lead paint. There are areas where you see the brown staining on the bulkheads, the overheads, and that would be leftover oil.”

After the water was removed, an environmental company came in to remove that leftover oil. 

“These are all individual electronic pieces, so they had to get in here and clean the oil out of each of these areas and all these components,” Stephenson said as he pointed to machines in a gun operating room. 

It was a tedious task. Staff was at the historic Fletcher-class destroyer's side for 22 days straight, roughly 11 hours each day. For Stephenson, it’s been a labor of love. Over on the USS Little Rock, he set up a triage center, with the help of a local art conservator from Undun Art Services for the damaged artifacts.

"We had four different stations,” Stephenson recalled. “You know vacuuming, cleaning,” he went on to say.

Workbooks, foul weather jackets, photographs and even documents given to sailors of where they were docking were saved. It’s been an arduous year of cleaning and cataloging. Stephenson says many are still dealing with the trauma of seeing the ship nearly capsize.

"We still feel very stressed, traumatic,” he said. “Some of us had a lot of nightmares.”

But Stephenson says they had to show their mettle. No doubt they have, and they continue to do so.

“She will be able to last past my time here,” laughed Paul Marzello, president and CEO of the Buffalo and Erie County Naval Park.

After a Naval surveyor’s visit in December, it became clear dry docking is what’s best. Marzello says plans won’t be finalized until May or June, however. There’s a shortlist of options for shipyards though: Toledo, Ohio, Erie, Pennsylvania or Hamilton, Ontario.

So what does the process of getting Sullivans out entail?  

If you haven’t been to the Naval Park, she's double parked. There’s no turning these historic vessels on, either. So, the Little Rock will be tugged to the south and the USS Croaker submarine will be tugged to the north. No date has been set for that, but when it is, we will let you know. Marzello says everyone will be invited because it will be a historic event you won't want to miss.

“She needs to have steel replaced, not just patched,” Marzello said.

Marzello says repairs will be roughly seven months. Once she’s tugged back, repairs on the inside will take place.

Until then, Stephenson will continue to catalog the artifacts he saved. He’ll most likely find a place for them on land, so this part of her history can be told, too.

“We’ve got the right tools and the crew for the next 80 years to keep her floating,” Stephenson said.