US - Submarine Clamagore to remain closed until June at Patriots Point

The World War II-era submarine Clamagore at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant will remain closed to the public until June while it undergoes repairs, the head of the state-owned tourist attraction said Thursday.

The 322-foot-long vessel has been off limits to visitors since it was moved to the south end of the aircraft carrier Yorktown earlier this year. That has sparking speculation recently it would be closed for good and possibly scuttled.

Mac Burdette, Patriots Point’s executive director, said that’s not the case.

“There’s absolutely no truth that she will remain closed permanently,” he said Thursday.

He said the Patriots Point Development Authority will have to decide the future of the Clamagore, but that it will reopen this summer

“She needs a lot of work,” Burdette said.

The submarine originally was parked parallel to the Yorktown on the marsh side but was moved to make way for the destroyer Laffey, which returned to the state’s naval and maritime museum in January after undergoing $9.2 million in repairs to its hull.

The Laffey will reopen fully to the public April 13, when a homecoming celebration that weekend will mark its return after three years away at a North Charleston shipyard.

Unlike the Laffey and Yorktown, the Clamagore never saw combat. But Burdette said visitors enjoy going inside the submarine to imagine what the living conditions were like in the cramped quarters.

Commissioned in 1945 and named for a fish, the Clamagore called Charleston its home base after 1959 and came to Patriots Point in 1981 as a museum piece. It was decommissioned in 1975 and is the nation’s last surviving GUPPY type III diesel-powered submarine. GUPPY stands for Greater Underwater Propulsion Program.

“It’s a cool artifact,” Burdette said.

One of the main reasons the Clamagore remains closed is because it will require the installation of a new gangway. “Our focus has been on getting the Laffey ready to go again,” Burdette said. “As soon as they finish the Laffey, many of those people will start working on getting the Clamagore open again. We would like to have it open by the Fourth of July.”