Weatherbeaten and rotting in places, the Battleship NJ’s teak deck — a nearly one-acre expanse of original and newer planks — is being replaced. The $4 million project started in 2020.
Plank by plank, the deteriorating deck of the Battleship New Jersey on the Camden waterfront is being entirely removed and replaced from stern to bow. Scattered portions of the 42,000-square-foot surface were repaired in 2005 and 2012, but much of the deck was still original, and the steel underneath was rusting away,” said Phil Rowan, CEO of the Homeport Alliance for the USS NJ, the ship’s nonprofit owner.
The alliance so far has raised $1.6 million of its $2 million share of the $4 million project; the other half is being paid for with federal, state, and county funds. Work began in 2020 and has continued through the worst of the pandemic, the extremes of the weather, and the daily challenge of getting a complicated, often noisy job done while the ship is open to visitors.