USS Orleck Naval Museum in Jacksonville, Florida

The USS Orleck Naval Museum is a Gearing-class destroyer tied up on the Northbank of the St. Johns River in Downtown Jacksonville, at 610 East Bay Street on the old Shipyards property. The Florida Historic Naval Ship Association describes the USS Orleck (DD-886) as a Gearing-class destroyer that served in the United States Navy from 1945 to 1982, and lists its location as the old shipyard Pier 1, with free parking and tickets sold at the gate. The association, a nonprofit known by its initials FHNSA, owns the Jacksonville Naval Museum, and the Orleck is its centerpiece.

The ship is a neighbor of the stadium district on the east end of downtown. FHNSA notes that the Orleck is closed on the day of all Jaguars home games, and Jacksonville Today reported in 2023 that the neighboring Shipyards land serves as Jaguars and concert event parking. As of October 2026 the published hours are Wednesday through Friday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday, with adult admission at $20, veterans and seniors at $15 and active duty in uniform admitted free.

Jacksonville's museum ship is a Texas-built destroyer that spent most of its career in the Pacific. The museum's ship statistics record that it was laid down on November 28, 1944 by Consolidated Steel at Orange, Texas, launched on May 12, 1945 and commissioned on September 15, 1945, the last destroyer commissioned at the end of World War II. It is 390 feet, 6 inches long and 40 feet, 10 inches wide, displaces 2,250 tons, and cost $6,313,000 in 1945.

Its record is the main reason Jacksonville wanted it. The FHNSA ship history recounts that on July 15, 1952, off Korea, the Orleck became a charter member of the Train Busters Club after catching a North Korean supply train between two tunnels, and the museum credits it with two such trains that year. The statistics page lists 18 battle stars, 4 in the Korean Conflict and 14 during the Vietnam War, and the nickname Gray Ghost of the Vietnam Coast. Jacksonville Today added in 2023 that the ship later served as a training ship and appeared in the TV miniseries Winds of War.

The name on the hull at the Shipyards honors a Navy officer from the enlisted ranks. FHNSA's namesake page says Joseph Orleck was born in Columbus, Ohio, on June 22, 1906, enlisted in 1924 and rose to command USS Nauset, and WorkBoat notes that he lost his life in a naval battle off Salerno, Italy. The museum describes him as a posthumous recipient of the Navy Cross.

The destroyer had three careers before it reached the St. Johns River. According to the museum's statistics, it was decommissioned and transferred to NATO-allied Turkey on October 1, 1982, and served 16 years in the Turkish Navy as TCG Yucetepe D-345, until a second decommissioning on April 1, 1998. In 2000 it came back to the United States to the Southeast Texas War Memorial and Heritage Foundation in Orange, the town where it was built, and served as a museum ship there from 2000 to 2005.

Gulf Coast weather followed it all the way to the eve of the Jacksonville deal. FHNSA records that the ship was damaged by Hurricane Rita in September 2005, sat in a storage dock until 2010, arrived in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on May 20, 2010, and opened there as the USS Orleck Naval Museum on April 10, 2011. WorkBoat reported in January 2022 that Hurricane Laura struck in late summer 2020, after the Jacksonville City Council had agreed to buy the ship, and that the Orleck broke loose from its moorings and drifted about a mile down the Calcasieu River.

Jacksonville's museum ship began as a plan for a different destroyer. FHNSA's own history explains that the association was first established to create the USS Charles F. Adams Naval Ship Museum, and that the Navy in 2019 decided not to donate the Adams. When that news broke, the USS Orleck Naval Museum in Lake Charles contacted the Jacksonville group. The Jax Daily Record adds that the Orleck was then a financially struggling floating museum whose supporters wanted a new home, and that the Jacksonville association had put more than 10 years of work into the project.

Money came from several directions. The Jax Daily Record reports that City Council approved moving the Orleck to Jacksonville in consideration of the association's investment and a $1 million state grant, and that about $2.3 million went to refurbishing the ship and towing it. WorkBoat put the whole project at a rough $2.8 million from private donations, bank loans and state grants. The Navy argument was simple: WorkBoat quotes association president Daniel Bean calling Jacksonville the 3rd largest Navy city in the country, home to bases such as Naval Air Station Jacksonville, which Navy Region Southeast describes as the largest installation in the region, on more than 3,800 acres of the St. Johns riverfront, with NS Mayport and Outlying Field Whitehouse in the same command.

The last leg ran through a Texas shipyard. The Orange Leader reported on March 12, 2022 that the Orleck had about $2 million of restoration at Gulf Copper in Port Arthur, including a blasted and repainted hull and deck repairs, before the tow east. The Jax Daily Record describes its arrival in Downtown Jacksonville on March 26, 2022, escorted by a fireboat and watched by a crowd along the river.

The first berth was temporary. The Jax Daily Record says the ship tied up along the Northbank Riverwalk near the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront while its permanent berth at the Shipyards property was finished. Jacksonville Today reported in May 2023 that pier work ran late, that the Hyatt's general manager complained to a City Council committee in November 2022 about the ship's effect on the hotel, and that the Mayor's Office filed an emergency bill so the museum could install eight mooring bollards and pilings at the old Jacksonville Shipyard basin's concrete pier.

The move came early on April 3, 2023, when a quartet of tugboats pushed the 2,250-ton warship into the basin, its keel sliding into silt, according to Jacksonville Today. The berth was renamed The Navy Pier, formerly Pier One, just east of the Berkman Plaza marina, and tours resumed on May 26, 2023, Memorial Day weekend. A day earlier the museum held a ceremony for the anniversary of the ship's May 12, 1945 launch.

The pier sits inside a changing stretch of East Bay Street. Jacksonville Today noted that the Jacksonville Fire Museum moved in March 2022 to 620 E. Bay St., right behind the Orleck, into the old Fire Station 3, and that Shipyards West Park was planned just east, across from the Maxwell House plant, on land used for Jaguars parking near TIAA Bank Field. The Downtown Investment Authority lists Shipyards West Park in 2026 among more than $230 million of planned downtown public space work, alongside Metropolitan Park and James Weldon Johnson Park.

The Shipyards tours cover most of the ship above the engine spaces. In 2023 museum executive director Jim Webb described to Jacksonville Today a main-deck route with no ladders and a fuller tour through the bridge, the combat information center, the galley and a mess deck with a mechanical Sperry computer designed in 1937. FHNSA now lists a Korean War Trainbusters video on the bridge, a Russian Submarine Encounter holographic exhibit in the combat information center, and a Mount 52 Experience built around a Vietnam War mission of October 28, 1968.

The association's plans reach beyond one ship. FHNSA says its future goals for the Jacksonville museum include an Adams Memorial, the sail of the deactivated submarine USS Jacksonville and naval aircraft, to tell a larger part of the city's and Florida's Navy history from the Shipyards pier.