USS Slater Begins Journey Down Hudson

Destroyer escort heads downstate a month late for repairs due to ice

April 6, 2014


An image of the USS Slater leaving its dock in Albany Sunday April 6, 2014 for Staten Island for scheduled repairs.

After a long, frigid winter anchored in the Port of Albany because of ice on the Hudson River, the USS Slater has finally started its trek toward Staten Island for scheduled repairs.

Sunday morning, the hulking destroyer escort — the last of its kind afloat in the U.S. — started inching down the river, more than a month later than the ship's crew had hoped.

"It's official, the Slater is heading to the shipyard!" was posted on the Slater's Facebook page Sunday, along with a photo of the mighty ship finally moving south down the Hudson.

The Slater, now a maritime museum here in Albany during the spring and summer, needs to be dry-docked at a port in Staten Island for repairs. The work — cleaning the hull, priming and painting it, and placing a reinforced band of steel around the ship's waterline — only needs to be done once every 25 years. The Slater's crew had the misfortune of scheduling the ship's lone quarter-century trip down river during one of the coldest winters on record.

After two mild winters, the Slater's crew thought they would be able to get the ship moving toward Staten Island by the middle of February. Instead, ice persisted well into March, most problematically in narrow spots along the Hudson near West Point.

But now that the ice has thawed, the Slater is moving. The World War II destroyer escort doesn't run on its own, so it's being tugged down to Staten Island.

Unfortunately, the delay means the Slater will have to celebrate the 70th anniversary on dry dock. The ship was commissioned in the first week of May 1944.

The Slater's crew hoped the ship would be in Albany for the anniversary, but will hold a belated celebration upon the Slater's return, which should be in the first week of June.

You can follow the Slater's travels through this link: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ and by searching for the tugboat Margot, which is pulling the vessel.