Ben Koether News

Clay Maitland, managing partner of International Registries LLC (which administers the Marshall Islands ship registry), Founding Chairman of  the North American Marine Environment Protection Association (NAMEPA), member of the United States Coast Guard Foundation board and former Chairman of the National Maritime Historical Society has been named to the board of The Glacier Society, the non-profit foundation fighting to save the historic icebreaker U.S.S./USCGC Glacier from demolition.

The USS/USCG Glacier made Antarctic history in February 1960 by becoming the first ship to penetrate the Bellinghausen Sea and make landfall on Thurston Island. Four decades later, the Glacier is moored in Suisun Bay, Calif. at the Maritime Administration’s Defense Reserve Fleet Facility. However, the Glacier Society, a Stratford, Conn. based group, hopes to change its fate. The society hopes to restore the Glacier to a museum and operational oceanographic ship to serve the needs of educators, historians and the oceanographic research community in port and at sea. Glacier was built in the early 1950s by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss. When commissioned in 1955, it was the world’s largest and most powerful icebreaker, capable of breaking ice up to 20 ft. thick. It is 310 ft.