Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Glory Days Revisited



Look closely at this shot and notice a few things: 1) BB-59 is not tied up at Battleship Cove, 2) She is also not covered in mothball gear to indicate that she's in storage, or on the way to/from storage, 3) This is a color photo, not a colorized reprint of a black and white.

What you're seeing is a pretty rare photo opportunity captured by photographer John Varnerin back in 1998 when BB-59 was towed up to Quincy for some hull repairs. I was trawling the web looking for more shots of the ship at various times in its existence, and I happened upon John's website (http://johnvphoto.com/). Here's a shortcut to the page on his site that has some of these shots: http://johnvphoto.com/gallery/misc.html. You'll need to scroll about half-way down to find them.

I like these shots a lot because they make the ship feel alive to me. I've always wanted to see BB-59 steaming under her own power again, and these photos make her look as though she is.


John took this shot too. It looks like an aerial recon photo to me, but it's in the water somewhere off of Chatham, MA rather than in the South Pacific.


When I contacted John about getting some of these photos, he related an interesting story to me about how he was able to get these shots. He and a friend, who happens to be a pilot, had to stalk the ship on the open sea to get these pictures. All they knew was a departure time and place, and a destination. The route and speed were unknown, so they had quite an area to search. When they finally did find the ship, it appeared gradually out of the overcast horizon, much like a ghost coming to life again. He has several more photos from this adventure that I would highly recommend. They're great prints and made a pretty cool early Christmas present for yours truly. His contact information is here: http://johnvphoto.com/contact/index.html

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