US ship that pays unique tribute to Twin Towers

James Reinl, United Nations Correspondent

• Last Updated: October 30. 2009 1:51AM UAE / October 29. 2009 9:51PM GMT

In this photo provided by the US Navy, the Navy assault ship USS New York maneuvers under the New Orleans Crescent City Connection bridge on the Mississippi River. AP

NEW YORK // For petty officer Cecilia Fosu, the several tonnes of steel salvaged from the World Trade Center that was forged into the bow of an assault ship on which she serves, gives her “the strength to move on” while performing daily duties.

The newly built USS New York is due to sail up the Hudson River and reach its namesake city on Tuesday, complete with the 7.5 tonnes of twisted metal recovered from Ground Zero embedded into her keel.

Ms Fosu, from nearby New Jersey, has become a human face of the vessel, blogging for the tabloid New York Post and explaining the importance of serving “onboard a ship that is dedicated to the victims of 9/11”.

“I do my job to the best of my ability so that the families and the victims of 9/11 know that their loved ones did not die in vain,” she wrote. “Every course that this ship takes throughout its time will be done in the remembrance of 9/11.”

Thousands of residents from New Orleans lined the banks of the Mississippi to watch the passing 209-metre vessel after it left Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding in Avondale, Louisiana, earlier this month.

Cheering crowds are expected when the US$1.3 billion (Dh4.8bn) ship passes beneath the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which links Brooklyn with Staten Island, next week for its Manhattan debut, a 21-gun salute near Ground Zero and a commissioning ceremony on November 7.

Bearing the motto “Strength forged through sacrifice. Never Forget”, the vessel will transport and deploy about 800 marines together with helicopters, tanks and artillery for operations against land-bound targets.

A picture of the erect Twin Towers decorates the ship’s crest, with blood drops representing the nearly 2,800 killed by the strike and a phoenix breastplate marking the policemen and firefighters who tried to rescue those inside the skyscrapers. It has captured the imagination of New Yorkers, with the city’s collective sense of victimhood at the devastation of 2001 being inverted, and steel from the towers now forged into a powerful example of American military muscle.

Preparing for the arrival, Lieutenant Commander Colette Murphy expects crowds to line the Hudson River, watching the waterborne memorial to 9/11 head north to the George Washington Bridge before turning back and berthing.

“It is very significant where the steel from the World Trade Center is in the ship: it’s in the bow, which is the foremost part and the strongest part of the ship,” she said. “So the steel will forever lead the ship through the water wherever it is going.”

The blogger aboard, Ms Fosu, continues to inform New Yorkers of life on the USS New York, while charting her personal journey through the Navy of a country that was changed forever on a chilly September morning eight years ago.

“Being out to sea gives me the opportunity to reflect about a lot of events that happened to put me where I am today and I have no regrets,” she wrote in her most recent entry. “I’ve realised how much I’ve grown not only as a sailor but as a person as well.”

jreinl@thenational.ae