The battleship Iowa leaves San Francisco on May 26, en route to its new home in Los Angeles. (AP photo/Paul Chinn, San Francisco Chronicle)
Pulled by a beefy ocean-going tug appropriately called Warrior, the 45,000-ton battleship Iowa left its retirement berth with the mothball fleet in the San Francisco Bay area for a new life as a museum ship.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the 877-foot-long Iowa was south of the Channel Islands on course for San Pedro, home to the port of Los Angeles. That put the ship a bit ahead of schedule. “The Iowa came in way too fast,” Anthony Broude, whose own historic group, the merchant ship SS Lane Victory, planned a Wednesday escort for Iowa’s early-morning arrival at San Pedro, told the Contra Costa Times.
It’ll take a few days for the famous hull, the “Battleship of Presidents,” to get prepped and ready to receive visitors. Organizers expect Iowa will arrive at its new berth on June 9 as the centerpiece for the interactive Pacific Battleship Center. The group already is taking reservations for tickets available to the public starting July 7, and you can check here for information and prices. The Los Angeles Times has a nice series of photographs here showing Iowa passing under the Golden Gate Bridge.
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This is good. If the world is ever attacked by aliens, the Iowa can back up the Missouri.