Fire Station 112 has exhibits on the history of L.A. fireboats, and Fireboat #2 in particular, explaining the construction and varied uses of this unusual vessel. Admission to Fire Station 112 is FREE! The award-winning building of Fire Station #112 was designed to shelter the Ralph J. Scott, a national historic landmark, while allowing for viewing by visitors.

Commissioned in 1925, the classic fireboat is 99 feet long with a 19 foot beam; its six four-stage pumps produce 10,200 gallons of water per minute. The Ralph J. Scott was retired in 2003 and now sits up in a cradle behind Fire Station 112 in San Pedro. The Port of Los Angeles is planning to develop a new facility to house the restored vessel.

The new 105-foot Fireboat #2, Warner Lawrence, was dedicated on April 12, 2003. It is the world’s most powerful fireboat. The new Fireboat #2 was designed by Robert Allan Ltd. in Vancouver, B.C., and built by Nichols Brothers Boat Builders of Freeland, Washington. Fireboat #2 features the most modern marine firefighting technology, a medical treatment area, powerful engines, a strong spray that shoots water directly over the 385-foot high Vincent Thomas Bridge, and the fortitude to stand up to 24-hour use.

Fire Station 112 is located at
Berth 86, 444 South Harbor Boulevard in San Pedro, California. Please do not use this image in any media without my permission. © All rights reserved.

Tags:   LAFD San Pedro Michael Locke Michael Locke, Photographer

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The Adventure, a replica of a 17th-century trading ketch, is exhibited at Charles Town Landing, the site of the first English settlement in South Carolina. Settlers established a colony here in 1670 at Albermarle Point but soon renamed it in honor of the English King, Charles II.

Tags:   Charleston, South Carolina South Carolina

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RMS Mauretania was the second ocean liner named Mauretania. She was the first ship built for the newly formed Cunard White Star company following the merger in April 1934 of the Cunard and White Star lines. She was the largest ship built in England at the time and was the largest vessel ever to navigate the River Thames. Mauretania sailed on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York on 17 June 1939. Mauretania was to experience only the briefest period of commercial operation before the outbreak of hostilities that brought Great Britain into the Second World War. On 11 August 1939 she left on her final prewar voyage to New York. On her return she was requisitioned by the government and armed with two 6-inch (150 mm) guns and some smaller weapons, painted in battle grey, and then despatched to America at the end of December 1939.

For three months the ship lay idle in New York, docked alongside the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, and the French Line's Normandie, until it was decided to use her as a troopship. On 20 March 1940 she sailed from New York to Sydney, via Panama, to be converted for her new role. She had an exciting voyage out to Australia via Bilbao, San Francisco and Honolulu, tracked for much of the way by the enemy and having to evade concentrations of U-boats that were known to be lying in wait for her. This conversion work was carried out in April and in May she left Sydney as part of one of the greatest convoys ever mustered for the transport of troops. With her were Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and Aquitania, with 2,000 troops, bound for the River Clyde via South Africa.

On 2 September 1946 she returned to Liverpool, was released from Government service and immediately went into Gladstone Dock to be reconditioned by Cammell Laird & Co. for return to Cunard White Star service. After a complete overhaul and refurbishment of the interior, Mauretania made her first post-war Atlantic crossing to New York, departing on 26 April 1947. After using Liverpool as her home port for the first two voyages she was thereafter based at Southampton. By 1962, however, she was facing competition from much more modern ships and was beginning to lose money for Cunard Line; by 1964 she was mainly employed cruising from New York to the West Indies. Her final voyage was a Mediterranean cruise which left New York on 15 September 1965.


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Tags:   RMS Mauretania All types transport

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USS Alabama (BB-60) was the fourth and final member of the South Dakota class of fast battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1930s. The first American battleships designed after the Washington treaty system began to break down in the mid-1930s, they took advantage of an escalator clause that allowed increasing the main battery to 16-inch (406 mm) guns, but Congressional refusal to authorize larger battleships kept their displacement close to the Washington limit of 35,000 long tons (36,000 t). A requirement to be armored against the same caliber of guns as they carried, combined with the displacement restriction, resulted in cramped ships. Overcrowding was exacerbated by wartime modifications that considerably strengthened their anti-aircraft batteries and significantly increased their crews.

After entering service, Alabama was briefly deployed to strengthen the British Home Fleet, tasked with protecting convoys to the Soviet Union. In 1943, she was transferred to the Pacific for operations against Japan; the first of these was the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign that began in November that year. While operating in the Pacific, she served primarily as an escort for the fast carrier task force to protect the aircraft carriers from surface and air attacks. She also frequently bombarded Japanese positions in support of amphibious assaults. She took part in the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign in June–September and the Philippines campaign in October–December. After a refit in early 1945, she returned to the fleet for operations during the Battle of Okinawa and the series of attacks on the Japanese mainland in July and August, including several bombardments of coastal industrial targets.

Alabama assisted in Operation Magic Carpet after the war, carrying some 700 men home from the former war zone. She was decommissioned in 1947 and assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet, where she remained until 1962 when she was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. A campaign to save the ship from the breakers' yard succeeded in raising the necessary funds, and Alabama was preserved as a museum ship in Mobile Bay, Alabama.

Tags:   Mobile, Alabama U.S.S. Alabama

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USS Bonhomme Richard is the third ship of the fleet, built by Ingalls Shipbuilding Company in Pascagoula, Mississippi commissioned in 1998. Named in honor of John Paul Jones' famous frigate, she is an amphibious assault ship whose primary mission is to embark, deploy and land assault operations by helicopter, landing craft and amphibious vehicles.

Currently in active service and the flagship for Expeditionary Strike Group Three. Please do not use this image in any media without my permission. © All rights reserved.

Tags:   USS Bonhomme Richard Ingalls Shipbuilding

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