Shipbucket

Sad to see that the efforts to preserve Illustrious are falling by the wayside. I know it's crazy to preserve all the ex warships but there are no aircraft carrier museums in the Uk, which is sad as the uk was a pioneer in this field for so many years.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/defenc ... -1-7319855

If I had unlimited funding I would build an enormous glass shed to house the ship on land and fill it with shops, restaurants, apartments and most importantly a museum.

What would you do?

NZ just went through a crowd-funding project where a privately owned beach was purchased and returned to Public ownership. NZ had to raise $5 million from 4 million people to do that.

Maybe a similar thing could be done to keep Illustrious in Public hands. Using Illustrious for the purposes you have given would not be a bad thing. Keep the public involved and giving money to keep the ship in as good a state as could be.

This is what we did in Norway, with one of the former coastal steamer:





proposals that have come lately, for future improvment on the museum:

Wow, that 3rd image is exactly what i had in mind.

I suppose a country of 70 million could easily raise the money for preservation but there are a lot of other issues further up the priority list for most people.

I don't think it will be preserved in this age of austerity but it's nice to dream!

It's also worth noting that unlike beaches ships needs continuous upkeep. That's where most preservation plans tends to fall apart.

_________________
“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

Exactly. That's why I think in order to generate the revenue to maintain the ship, it would have to be commercialised to some degree. There were suggestions of it becoming a conference centre.

How much roughly do you think a ship like would cost to maintain as a museum?

Well areas that you expect people to walk around as museum ship, would need some maintenance, Engineering on a ship you except to never to move anymore, need maintenance on the surface and just grease/oil rest of it down. Closed down areas just need a limited maintenance to keep them in a safe condition.

The hull and superstructure, and all supporting construction of the ships need some maintenance.

Then there is the conference and hotel part of it... that need high maintenance.


But income from hotel/conference/museum/apartment parts of the ship should be enough to cower some if not a big part of the maintenance cost, rest has to come trough gifts, and governmental support.