USS Silversides Enters Drydock After 50 Years for Repairs

A Historic Vessel Returns to Dry Dock

According to a report by The Maritime Executive, the WWII-era submarine USS Silversides has arrived at Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding for a long-overdue drydocking. The vessel last underwent yard work during the Cold War, and this new project is intended to preserve her for continued service as a museum ship. For the first time in five decades, the submarine will be lifted out of the water for steel renewal, sandblasting, and repainting.

From Pacific Combat to Preserved Museum Ship

Silversides is a Gato-class diesel-electric attack submarine that entered naval service on December 15, 1941, just over a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She was quickly sent into the Pacific theater, where she completed 14 war patrols. Over that campaign, the submarine sank 23 Japanese vessels and damaged numerous others, accounting for more than 90,000 tons of destroyed shipping. That record places her among the top five most successful U.S. Navy submarines of the Second World War. Her service earned her 12 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation, one of the highest honors the U.S. military can award.

After the war ended, Silversides was retired to Chicago, where she served as a stationary training vessel. In 1973, a volunteer preservation group took ownership and worked to restore the boat to a condition suitable for public access. She was later relocated to Muskegon, Michigan, becoming a centerpiece exhibit at the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum, where she has hosted visitors ever since.

The Journey to Sturgeon Bay

On July 13, Silversides departed under tow for a 20-hour transit to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, home of Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding. Though her propellers were removed long ago, her original Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines are reportedly still operational. The preservation project is valued at $3.5 million, with Valkor Energy Services leading the work. The National Park Service is contributing $750,000 toward the cost, while private donations make up the bulk of the funding. Organizers say the museum has met most of its fundraising targets but is still working to close a modest remaining gap.

What This Means for Vessel Preservation and Inspection Practice

While Silversides is a museum piece rather than a commercial or active naval asset, her situation offers a useful reminder of why periodic drydocking and hull inspection cannot be indefinitely deferred, even for vessels no longer performing operational duty. Fifty years without steel renewal or a full underwater survey is an extreme interval by any commercial shipping standard, and the scale of restoration now required — full sandblasting, steel renewal, and repainting — reflects the cumulative effect of corrosion and fatigue that regular condition surveys are designed to catch early. For ship owners and managers of active commercial tonnage, the case underscores a familiar operational lesson: deferred maintenance on hull structure tends to compound over time, and the eventual remediation cost and downtime scale accordingly. Routine condition surveys, drydock inspections, and steel thickness gauging exist precisely to prevent a vessel from ever approaching the kind of prolonged interval Silversides experienced, where a single yard period must address decades of accumulated wear at once. It also highlights the value of accurate historical survey records — knowing exactly when a vessel was last drydocked, and what work was done, is essential to planning realistic maintenance budgets and timelines, whether for a working cargo ship or a preserved piece of naval history.

Looking Ahead

The Silversides preservation project stands as a rare and notable undertaking in the world of historic ship conservation, blending naval heritage with the practical realities of steel maintenance that all vessel operators, commercial or otherwise, must eventually confront.

Reviewed by Ibrahim Halil Ceylan, Marine Surveyor at Apeks Marine.