Reserve fleet

A reserve fleet is a collection of naval vessels of all types that

are fully equipped for service but are not currently needed, and
thus partially or fully decommissioned. A reserve fleet is
informally said to be "in mothballs" or "mothballed"; an
equivalent expression in unofficial modern U.S. naval usage is
"ghost fleet". In earlier times, and especially in British usage,
these ships were said to belaid up in ordinary.

Contents
Overview
Principal reserve fleets HMS Vanguard in about 1947, when part of the British
Alternatives Reserve Fleet
Environmental concerns
See also
References
Further reading

Overview
Such ships are held in reserve against a time when it may be
necessary to call them back into service, and they are usually
tied up in backwater areas near naval bases or shipyards to speed
the reactivation process. They may be modified, for instance by
having rust-prone areas sealed off or wrapped in plastic or, in
the case of sailing warships, the masts removed. While being
held in the reserve fleet, ships typically have a minimal crew
(known informally as askeleton crew) to ensure that they stay in
somewhat usable condition. If for nothing else, their bilge
pumps need to be run regularly to reduce corrosion of their steel
and to prevent the ships fromfoundering at their moorings. Ships of the U.S. Navy's Reserve Fleet in the Reserve
Basin at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, 1956
When a ship is placed into reserve status, the various parts and
weapon systems that the ship uses are also placed in a storage
facility, so that if the warship is reactivated, the proper spare parts and ammunition are available, but like the ships themselves, the
stored parts and equipment are prone to fall into disrepair
, suffer metal corrosion, and become obsolete.

Principal reserve fleets

The British Reserve Fleet was a repository for British decommissioned warships from c. 1800 until c. 1970.[1]

The United States National Defense Reserve Fleet(NDRF), consists of about fiftyWorld War II ships that have been
moored in Suisun Bay near San Francisco since the 1950s or '60s.[2] The fleet includes militarytroopships and
tankers.[2]
Alternatives
In practice most reserve ships rapidly become obsolete and are scrapped, or used for experiments or target practice, or are sold to
other nations (and occasionally to private companies for civilian conversion), or become
museum ships or artificial reefs.

Exporting the vessels for shipbreaking or dismantling are alternatives to reserve fleets.[3] More recently, the U.S. Navy has
established a program to allow ships, such asOriskany, to be sunk in selected locations to create artificial reefs.

Recycling is another option, as in the case of the United States National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF), the ships of which are set to
[2]
be stripped of their paint, cut into pieces, and then recycled.

Steel from pre-nuclear age ships either mothballed or sunk and raised, called low-background steel, is used in experimental physics
when the experiment requires shielding material which is itself only extremely weakly radioactive, emitting less than present-day
background radiation; materials which were manufactured after atmospheric nuclear explosions had taken place reflect the higher
ambient level of radioactivity thatfallout has caused.[4]

Environmental concerns
The practice of exporting and dismantling ships has caused international protests as they contain toxic materials.[3] In 2007,
following studies that found that 20 tons of lead paint had flaked off the ships of the NDRF, environmentalist groups sued to have
them removed. The U.S. Federal Maritime Administration agreed to remove more than 50 of the ships as a result, 25 of which has
[2]
been removed by 2012 and the remainder will be by 2017.

See also
Aircraft boneyard
National Defense Reserve Fleet
Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet
United States Navy reserve fleets

References
1. "Reserve Fleet 1950" (http://www.britishpathe.com/video/reserve-fleet).
British Pathe. Retrieved 23 September 2012.
2. Wollan, Malia (March 31, 2010)."California: Good-Bye to Ghost Fleet" HMS Unicorn in ordinary
(https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01brfs-GOODBYETOGHO_BR
F.html?ref=us). The New York Times. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
3. US Toxic 'ghost fleet' not wanted in the UK, Greenpeace International
website (November 5, 2003) accessed at[1] (http://www.greenpeace.or
g/international/news/toxic-ghost-fleet)June 20, 2006
4. Timothy P. Lynch (August 2007). "A Historically Significant Shield for In
Vivo Measurements". Health Physics. 93 (2): S119–23.
doi:10.1097/01.HP.0000259867.85459.b2(https://doi.org/10.1097%2F0
1.HP.0000259867.85459.b2). PMID 17630635 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.ni
h.gov/pubmed/17630635).

Further reading
Daniel Madsen. Forgotten Fleet. The Mothball Navy. U.S. Naval Institute Press. 1999.
To Sail No More. Seven volumes. Maritime Books. United Kingdom.
P.W. Singer and August Cole.Ghost Fleet. Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015.

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