A Veteran of the Pacific, Mired in the Hudson

Bill White of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum calls the work around the USS Intrepid "a major military-style dredging operation." The aircraft carrier was supposed to be moved for repairs, but it is mired in silt off Manhattan. (By Kathy Willens -- Associated Press)

NEW YORK, Nov. 21 -- On a recent cloudy day, Bill White, an upright man with a buzz cut, stared from a pier on Manhattan's West Side into the Hudson River. A crane and bucket dropped into the murky water and out again in rhythm: Collect mud, swing across, open clamshell, release. And again.

White is the director of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, overseeing efforts to free from the mud the famed aircraft carrier that houses his museum.

For the past week, workers under Navy supervision have dredged 24-7, gathering silt from the river's depths and swinging it over to a barge. The muck will be purified and taken to cover a landfill on Staten Island.

"We are deep in the throes of a major military-style dredging operation," said White, whose days have been filled with situation reports, conference calls and BlackBerry messages.

It all began as a military adventure that seemed, for a change, to bode well.

The Intrepid was to make a five-mile trip across the Hudson to New Jersey for needed repairs. A crowd of 500, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former mayors David N. Dinkins and Edward I. Koch, gathered on Nov. 6 to send it off.

"To our platoon of ex-mayor line handlers, I say, Mr. Mayors, cast off!" ordered retired Rear Adm. James Lloyd "Doc" Abbot Jr., 88, who commanded the ship in the Mediterranean in the early 1960s. Smoke spewed, water churned, and the tugboats pulled, eventually to reach a force of 30,000 horsepower.

But after settling for 24 years into the silt at Pier 86, the 27,000-ton, 900-foot-long ship was stuck.

"Four propellers acted as screws, and the Intrepid screwed itself into the goo," White said. With the ship resting on a bump of mud, the stern was left to sit about two feet higher than the bow, he said, placing stress on the ship that could cause damage.

Time for a tactical reevaluation. Before the attempted move, the museum had spent $1.2 million to dredge more than 15,000 cubic yards of silt from under and behind the ship to create a channel to deeper water. Hundreds of tons of water had been pumped out of ballast tanks to raise the ship two feet. And the move was scheduled during the highest tide of the year, to lift the ship several more feet above a typical high tide.

White asked for help from the Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy for an emergency salvage operation including a combination of reconnaissance by divers and dredging by bucket and suction.

Divers in reinforced helmets shot into the dark Hudson to survey the amount and composition of the thick, hard mud stuck to four massive propellers. But visibility is only a couple of inches, maybe a foot, said Peter H. Shugert, the chief of public affairs for the Army Corps of Engineers. And the divers had to feel their way through water that is 55 to 60 degrees.