Galveston, Departing

On September 15th, the last skipper of the USS Galveston CLG3, James W Montgomery, was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery during a ceremony befitting his national service.  Our association president, Stan Shock attended the ceremony and shared the material presented below. 

Just two years ago, Rear Admiral Montgomery (Ret) was the honored speaker at the dedication ceremony for the USS Galveston Plaque at the US Navy Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. A video recording of his speech is available on this website in the History/Video section or from the following link http://ussgalveston.org/video/videopage1.htm

In addition to being the last Galveston CO (1969-70), Admiral Montgomery was last surviving Galveston CO.

To Captain Montgomery and all those that preceded him, the crews of the Galveston salute you,

GALVESTONS, DEPARTED



 

Navy Terminology List Added

Our shipmate, Dave Love, sent us a link to a interesting web page built by the USN having a long list of navy terms and their origin. I enjoyed reviewing the list and learned some things to boot *.

Rather than just copying the link here, I decided to copy the whole list to our website in the "Ship's History" area accessible from the home page. I figured the Navy owes us something. I also added a submission form where anyone can send additional words with origins to grow the list.

Check it out. Go to the Galveston Home Page, click on menu item Ship's History, then click anchor next to Naval Terminology.

* To boot -- term has nothing to do with footwear. The 'boot' is thought to be a derivative of the earlier old English 'bat' meaning 'good or useful'.

Finally, this picture is not my buddy Dave Love and really has nothing to do with anything. Any objections?

Bob Rank
BM3 1966-68

Calling All USS Galveston History Buffs

We recently received the very last official Navy document that mentions the Gal. It's the SEALED BID FOR SCRAPPING you see above.

The bid document has been scanned and posted on our web site for those of you that may want to know the details. Well, at least the relevant pages have. The bid also covers the USS Los Angeles, CA-135. After we finished with the document it was sent on to the LA shipmates association. They have posted it on their web site as well, and forwarded the original to the Maritime Museum of Los Angeles.

The bid document may be of more interest to our engineering guys as it covers mostly big chunks of things like pumps and turbines. But there are a few other tidbits. For example, the bid specifies that the Navy will retain certain items such as the anchors, a bunch of the armor plating, and 200 feet of that beautiful teak wood from the main deck.

Anybody want to volunteer to find one of the anchors and bring it to a reunion like we did the ship's bell?

Seriously, it would be nice to find the wood and get some of it for souvenirs.

I don't know about the anchor, but here's how you can find the bid... from the main page click on Ships History... then Timeline... then scroll down to 1975 where you click on the "Info" link next to the the bid entry. Now, be advised, it takes about 30 to 45 seconds to download (on broadband - sorry Ted) the whole thing. You will see an introduction page telling you about the good man who sent it to us and then you can page through - note the zoom magnification buttons on top - and read to your heart's content.