I have been on two great ships in my life. One was a military light cruiser, when I was about 5 and don’t recall anything but lots of warm, gray steel and huge guns as seen from about knee high. The next was a passenger liner to the Bahamas, with a crew that had problems speaking English and with my parents. I never got below decks.
Does anyone know of a website where I could take a ‘tour’ through a big ship, preferably military, from keel to mast?
I’ve already taken a virtual tour through two abandoned missile silos, and that was fun, and spooky. I’ve been close to big ships, but never aboard them, free to wander around. The last one was a retired military ship being prepared to be used as an artificial reef but the owners would not allow anyone aboard for insurance reasons.
Well, this may not be exactly what you’re looking for, but there is a large number of images at http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/. I haven’t found any “virtual tours” but you may find enough pics to satisfy your curiosity.
I was thinking you could just drive over to Wilmington and tour the USS North Carolina, yourself, but then I looked over their Tour Map and saw that they limit the tours to just a few areas of the ship.
The web site does have a number of photos and quite a bit of information, however.
If you have a little more time, you could drive to Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia. I think they normally open one ship each weekend for tours. The page I accessed today: at this link seems to be out of date but you can call the Naval Tour & Information Center at (757) 444-7637. (It is also possible that normal operations have been disrupted due to security concerns engendered by the bombming in Aden.)
I haven’t visited a ship in Norfolk but I took one of the regular Sunday tours of an aircraft carrier docked at North Island (San Diego). It was worth it.
[note: I shortened the link. -manhattan]