Intrepid Voyage Wasn’t Its First Time in Mud

Officials of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum spent yesterday trying to figure out how to extract an aircraft carrier from the mud at the bottom of the Hudson River. Their predicament reminded some former crew members of another embarrassing grounding of the ship nearly four decades ago, also as a large crowd looked on.

In September 1969, when the U.S.S. Intrepid was still an active ship in the United States Navy, it sailed from Philadelphia, where it had been based, to its new home at the Quonset Point Naval Air Station in Rhode Island. As it cruised up a foggy Narragansett Bay, escorted by a flotilla of yachts from nearby Newport, it ran aground, recalled two men who said they were aboard that day.

Ron Rancilio, who was an aviation electrician second class on the Intrepid, remembered the ship getting stuck in the mud for several hours, ruining a welcoming celebration complete with bands and banners. Some Navy tugboats came to the rescue, he said.

"They had to wait until high tide, which was several hours later, to get us out of the mud," said Mr. Rancilio, who lives in St. Peters, Mo. "The bands went home. Everybody that was waiting on the pier for us went home."

Another former crewman, who handled public relations for the ship, said, "It was very embarrassing." He recalled an angry admiral hopping onto the gangplank while it was still moving. "He was wearing a white uniform and a red face," he said.

In some ways, it was the reverse of what happened to the Intrepid on Monday, when hundreds of well-wishers, military officials and politicians turned out to see the ship off on its planned move to Bayonne, N.J., for an overhaul. A team of six tugboats managed to drag the Intrepid only about 15 feet from the western edge of Midtown Manhattan before its propellers dug into the mud and halted all progress.

A team of divers got a close look at the ship's hull on Monday afternoon, said Bill White, president of the museum. He said the ship would still go to Bayonne, once engineers "find a solution to the issue of how to move this wonderful ship."