USS Corry (DD-334)

California

A US Navy destroyer that once escorted a president still lies half-scrapped in the mud of the Napa River.

militaryhistoricalengineering

About a mile from Mare Island, in the Napa River, sits most of the hull of a warship. She was the USS Corry, launched in San Francisco in 1921. Four smokestacks, a flush deck, built to hunt submarines. She never went to war. Germany collapsed in 1918, before she existed, so the Navy found other work for her. Then in 1930 the Secretary of the Navy told Congress that sixty of these old flush-deckers were simply wearing out, and there was no money to refit them. Forty-six ships were decommissioned and sold off for scrap to raise cash after the crash of 1929. Corry was one of them. Crews stripped her guns, hauled her to Mare Island, and pulled off most of her superstructure and forward hull. Then they stopped. What was left got towed a short distance upriver and abandoned as a breakwater near the mouth of American Canyon Creek. She is still there.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
The remains of the ship were then towed to be abandoned as a break wall in the Napa River (near the mouth of American Canyon Creek just north of Slaughterhouse Point) where she remains as of 2023.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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