...By no stretch of the imagination does the weather-worn ship look like a laboratory.
...Its gray paint is faded and it looks like it’s been through the wringer. Small wonder. It’s a
battle-scarred World War II veteran that was one of the first U.S. ships to enter Tokyo Bay.
More recently it was pounded by Hurricane Katrina and tossed ashore.
...But the ex-USS Shadwell at Little Sand Island in upper Mobile Bay is a unique laboratory with
a replacement value of at least $100 million. The 457-foot ship may be old, but it’s helping the U.
S. Navy develop the most effective ways to fight shipboard fires and save the lives of sailors and
Marines.
...The Full Scale Fire Test Facility, established in 1987, is arguably one of the most unique test
labs in the world. While it’s hardly a secret, it’s likely the general public of Mobile is unfamiliar
with the national asset in their own back yard.
...The ship sits in the water on the eastern edge of an island accessible only by boat. It’s such a
low key operation, a guard at the U.S. Coast Guard station at Brookley Industrial Complex was
puzzled when a reporter came to visit the ship. The guard wasn’t familiar with the ship, and
suggested the reporter might be at the wrong place.
...“We’ve only been here 19 years,” joked chemist Dr. Fred Williams, director of the Navy
Technology Center for Safety and Survivability, after a staffer from the Office of Naval
Research lab retrieved the reporter at the gate.
...Low profile though it is, the Shadwell is a key test facilities in a joint research agreement
between the Coast Guard and the Navy. The Fire and Safety Test Detachment is operated by
the Coast Guard Research and Development Center in Groton, Conn., but the Coast Guard and
Navy share resources to reduce costs.
...The F&STD is the only facility in the world using ocean-going vessels for full-scale fire testing.
The Navy uses the Shadwell and the Coast Guard the nearby ship, State of Maine. These test
ships provide realism for simulating all types of shipboard fires, including machinery spaces,
cargo holds, and on deck.
...According to the Navy, the Shadwell is a full-scale damage control research, development, test
and evaluation facility for studies on active and passive fire protection, flooding and chemical
defense. It measures personnel, materials, equipment, sensors, systems, doctrines, tactics and
command and control under time-critical situations. It has features of 688 submarines, DDG 51
and LPD 17 ship classes.
...The ship’s original mission was transport of craft, amphibious vehicles and troops. It’s the first
ship in the Navy to bear the name of the birthplace and early home of Thomas Jefferson. The
keel of LSD-15 was laid in Newport News, Va., in February 1944. On June 24, 1944, Shadwell
was commissioned in the U.S. Navy at ceremonies in the Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Va.
...The ship, designed by the British, was originally contracted for delivery to the United
Kingdom. But in August 1944 Shadwell sailed for the West Coast and joined the amphibious
forces of the South Pacific. In January 1945 Shadwell was hit by an air-dropped torpedo just
forward amidship, leaving a sixty-foot hole. The ship was repaired at Bremerton, Washington. In
August 1945 Shadwell was one of the first units to enter Tokyo Bay.
...The Shadwell, which has a 72-foot beam, is today a major facility in an extensive program at
the Naval Research Laboratory. The program includes NRL’s Chesapeake Bay Detachment in
Chesapeake Beach, Md.
...Shadwell serves as the ultimate test platform in the development of fire models and other
predictive tools, agents, systems and technology stemming from basic and theoretical concepts
developed through research and development.
The way Williams explains it, the theoretical part of the process occurs in the Washington-area
lab, and then tested at Chesapeake Bay. But the real world testing is done here in Mobile.
...Shadwell can do fires in an enclosed space, confined space and open space.
...It also serves as a realistic shipboard test platform for endeavors other than damage control
that evolve from research and development in other disciplines, such as coatings, insulations,
working fluids, cleaners and communications.
...It’s the seclusion of the ships in a bustling metro area that makes it intriguing. Three small
workboats provide for the transportation of personnel, while two landing crafts ferry major
equipment items to the vessel.
...On their way to the lab the workboats pass McDuffey Island along with sandbars where
pelicans loiter in the sun. The Mobile skyline and interstate bridge can be seen in the distance.
...Fifty-acre Little Sand Island itself, the result of dumped dredged material, is not used by the
researchers. But they have ventured on the island on occasions to pick blackberries. They keep
an eye out for one island inhabitant – an alligator named Wally.
...During the reporter’s visit in early February, the team was conducting tests for a nozzle system
designed to deliver a water mist to put out a 3 megawatt fire. It was this lab that showed water
mist a better alternative to a chemical for fighting a shipboard fire in an enclosed space. The high
pressure water mist system for LPD 17 machinery spaces – which allows personnel to remain in
a space to fight a fire – was developed on the Shadwell.
...This day’s test was for a company that thinks it’s come up with a better mist nozzle.
...Getting into the belly of the ship to watch a test is just a bit unnerving. From the well-lit control
room the workers go down several decks through dark passageways, being careful to lift your
feet as you step through bulkheads.
...The control room’s monitors give a range of readings critical for the test, from the duration of
the fire to the temperature and more. The tests today were for a variety of megawatts. Oddly
enough, the bigger the fire, the more effective the mist.
...But it’s in the underbelly of the ship, in a secure room right next to the test room, where the
danger of the fire is most apparent. When the fire begins, the intense heat can be felt immediately
through the thick Plexiglas.
...If there is any single thing aboard the ship that provides the “why” for the Shadwell’s mission,
it’s a project Williams once assigned to a student. He had him paint a bold red line along the
interior of the ship that spans a number of compartments. At intervals, a plaque gives a year and
shows how many sailors died in fires that year.
...“It’s a reminder,” said Williams. – Tcp
April 2007
Shipbuilding
Battle-scarred veteran a one-of-a-kind Navy lab