Annoying as it is to admit, I’m finally arriving at that point in life that we all either have or will do, and am beginning to wonder about past projects that have long lain unfinished. I’ve had this old US Navy bell for some time now and had always intended to strip the hideous silver paint off of it and polish up the presumably fine brass bell beneath it, but have never yet gotten around to it and probably never will. It weighs just a little bit less than my Buick and is well over my finger’s width in wall thickness.

I got this piece from a grandson of a vet who had gotten it in 1946 when the submarine R-10 was formally decommissioned and scrapped out in Philadelphia. The R-10 was launched in 1919 from Boston Massachusetts and served in both the Pacific and the Atlantic but never saw actual combat. It was one of, I believe, 27 early US R-Class submarines and the 1st type to have torpedo tubes on it(2). It was a horrifying (by today’s behemoth standards)168 feet long by 18 feet beam but still had a crew of 34! There are tons of photos and information about it all over the internet but particularly on "pigboats.com". (They were called that for a number of reasons, the 2 main ones being that they were so cramped inside and for the filthy living conditions of the crammed in crew) I could, of course, go on and on about it-it’s a historic piece and an actual unique one of a kind, but you get the picture.

Is there a point to this "long-winded" as one member would undoubtedly call it, narrative? Well…as I said, I doubt very much that I will ever get around to refinishing it and hate to let it sit gathering dust and getting in the way in my cavernous basement, so wanted to ask-is this worth working on, do you think? I have never been able to find another similar to it-aside from the preserved bell from it’s sister ship the R-14 and have therefore, absolutely no clue as to it’s value, desirability or much of anything else about it. What do you guys think? Does this thing make you look at it like I first did when I saw it and think "Ooh! Now there is a piece of US Naval history!" or does it make you look and snort and say "What the heck are you doing with That old hunk of scrap?" Obviously, US stuff isn’t my forte, so to speak, so I thought that I’d run it past you all and see what you think. Take a look and let me know. I Believe that the clapper has been replaced, but the guy insisted that it was that way when his grandfather got it in Philly and from the looks of it, it’s been in there for ages.

Click to enlarge the picture