Icebreaker Glacier prepares for final voyage

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It’s nearly the end of the road for the old Coast Guard Icebreaker GLACIER, WAGB-4.  The ship has left the Suisun Reserve Fleet, entered the Mare Island Drydock for hull cleaning, and is now under tow to Brownsville for scrapping.  The ship had been moored in the mothball fleet since 1991 following decommissioning in 1987.

The ship is storied in history, much of it from voyages made to the Antarctic from 1955 – 1987.  The ship also had the largest capacity single armature DC motors ever installed on a ship when constructed.

Several initiatives  have attempted to save the ship from the scrapyard torches, and a few are still ongoing as the ship is headed to Brownsville.

A tugboat guides the ice breaker USS/USCG Glacier toward Mare Island, a former Navy shipyard for cleanup in Vallejo, Calif., Tuesday, April 17, 2012. The ice breaker that helped found McMurdo Station on Antarctica, was once the flagship of Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd and performed a record-breaking 39 Arctic and Antarctic deployments may become scrap despite more than a decade of repairs and studies aimed at making the ship a museum or medical and scientific ship. Both of Alaska's U.S. senators have moved to get the U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration to save this piece of floating history. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

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