USS Texas closer to coming home; Pelican Island in trouble?
Published: 22 July 2025
via the laststandonzombieisland website
USS TEXAS 1918
WWI Battleship Texas with the Grand Fleet, accepting the surrender of the High Seas Fleet on November 21st, 1918.
The Battleship Texas Foundation announced this week that it has finalized an agreement with the Galveston Wharves Board securing Pier 15 as the two-world-wars champ’s future new home.
They still have lots of steps to accomplish in the next several months to move the ship from the yard and make her ready to open to the public in 2026:
- Final engineering of the mooring system
- Permitting by the US Army Corps of Engineers and other regulatory bodies
- Dredging the Pier 15 berth
- Finalize plans for shoreside facilities
- Construction of the moorings and other infrastructure
Even then, the (re)birth of the new Texas naval museum site may be the death of another.
The battlewagon’s old home, in the mud pond of the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site, was a good 45 minutes away from Galveston– an hour in Houston traffic.
The new site will be just 7 short miles from Pelican Island, the home since 1971 of the Galveston Naval Museum, a small and unsung facility that hosts one of the last remaining Edsall class destroyer escorts, USS Stewart (DE-238), and the “Lucky Lady,” USS Cavalla (SS-244)— the Gato class fleet boat best known for sinking the Japanese aircraft carrier Shokaku, one of the last Pearl Harbor attackers run to ground. She carries a streamlined SSK conversion superstructure from her Cold War service.
They also have the sail of the Sturgeon-class hunter-killer USS Tautog (SSN-639) and the still very WWII-esque Fleet Snorkel-converted conning tower of the Balao-class fleet boat USS Carp (SS-338), making the museum one of the few places where one can see the difference between three different submarine classes spanning from 1941 to 2005.
→ Read the entire article on the laststandonzombieisland website here:
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