British battleship HMS Vanguard (23) underway c1947

A reserve fleet is a collection of naval vessels of all types that are fully equipped for service but are not currently needed; they are partially or fully decommissioned. A reserve fleet is informally said to be "in mothballs" or "mothballed"; an equivalent expression in unofficial modern US naval usage is "ghost fleet". In earlier times, especially in British usage, the ships were said to be "laid up in ordinary".

Overview

Such ships are held in reserve against a time when it may be necessary to call them back into service. They are usually tied up in backwater areas near naval bases or shipyards in order to speed the reactivation process. They may be modified for storage during such a period, for instance by having rust-prone areas sealed off or wrapped in plastic or, in the case of sailing warships, the masts removed. While being held in the reserve fleet, ships typically have a minimal crew (known informally as a skeleton crew) to ensure that they stay in somewhat usable condition. For instance,

bilge pump A bilge pump is a water pump used to remove bilge water. Since fuel can be present in the bilge, electric bilge pumps are designed to not cause sparks. Electric bilge pumps are often fitted with float switches which turn on the pump when the bilge ...

s need to be run regularly to reduce

corrosion Corrosion is a natural process that converts a refined metal into a more chemically stable oxide. It is the gradual deterioration of materials (usually a metal) by chemical or electrochemical reaction with their environment. Corrosion engi ...

of their steel and to prevent the ships from foundering at their moorings. When a ship is placed into reserve status, the various parts and weapon systems that the ship uses are also placed in a storage facility, so that if the warship is reactivated, the proper spare parts and ammunition are available. Like the ships, however, the stored parts and equipment are prone to fall into disrepair, suffer metal corrosion, and become obsolete.

Principal reserve fleets

The British Reserve Fleet was a repository for British decommissioned warships from c. 1800 until 1960. The United States National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF), consisted of about fifty World War II ships that were moored in

Suisun Bay Suisun Bay ( ; Wintun for "where the west wind blows") is a shallow tidal estuary (a northeastern extension of the San Francisco Bay) in Northern California. It lies at the confluence of the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River, forming the ...

(Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet) near

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

since the 1950s or '60s. The fleet included military cargo ships, troopships and tankers. As of mid-2021 there are just two ships anchored in that area. Additional NDRF vessels are moored at the fleet sites at

Newport News, Virginia Newport News () is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 186,247. Located in the Hampton Roads region, it is the 5th most populous city in Virginia and 140th most populous city in the U ...

(James River Reserve Fleet);

Beaumont, Texas Beaumont is a coastal city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the seat of government of Jefferson County, within the Beaumont– Port Arthur metropolitan statistical area, located in Southeast Texas on the Neches River about east of Houston ( ...

(Beaumont Reserve Fleet); and at designated outported berths.

Alternatives

In practice most reserve ships rapidly become obsolete and are scrapped, used for experiments or target practice, sold to other nations (and occasionally to private companies for civilian conversion), or become

museum ship A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small numb ...

s or

artificial reef An artificial reef is a human-created underwater structure, typically built to promote marine life in areas with a generally featureless bottom, to control erosion, block ship passage, block the use of trawling nets, or improve surfing. Many ...

s. Alternatives to reserve fleets include exporting the vessels for

shipbreaking Ship-breaking (also known as ship recycling, ship demolition, ship dismantling, or ship cracking) is a type of ship disposal involving the breaking up of ships for either a source of parts, which can be sold for re-use, or for the extraction ...

, or dismantling.''US Toxic 'ghost fleet' not wanted in the UK'', Greenpeace International website (November 5, 2003) accessed a

June 20, 2006 More recently, the U.S. Navy has established a program to allow ships, such as USS Oriskany (CV-34), ''Oriskany'', to be sunk in selected locations to create artificial reefs. Recycling is another option, as in the case of the United States National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF), the ships of which are set to be stripped of their paint, cut into pieces, and then recycled. Steel from pre-nuclear age ships either mothballed or sunk and raised, called

low-background steel Low-background steel, also known as pre-war steel, is any steel produced prior to the detonation of the first nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Typically sourced from shipwrecks and other steel artifacts of this era, it is often used for modern ...

, is used in experimental physics when the experiment requires shielding material which is itself only extremely weakly radioactive, emitting less than present-day background radiation; materials which were manufactured after atmospheric nuclear explosions had taken place reflect the higher ambient level of radioactivity that

fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...

has caused.

Environmental concerns

The practice of exporting and dismantling ships has caused international protests as they contain toxic materials. In 2007, following studies that found that 20 tons of lead paint had flaked off the ships of the NDRF, environmentalist groups sued to have them removed. The U.S. Federal Maritime Administration agreed to remove more than 50 of the ships as a result, 25 of which have been removed by 2012 and the remainder removed at the end of 2017.

Overview

Principal reserve fleets

Alternatives

Environmental concerns

See also

References

Further reading