Russian Sub Rises from Providence River
At 6:02 p.m. on July 25, 2008 the Russian missile submarine Juliett 484 rose from under the water, its bow breaking through the surface of Providence River.
The sub rose suddenly, 6 full hours after salvage teams had started pumping water out of it.
At noon, military dive and salvage teams began pumping out some of the 575,000 gallons of water inside the submarine, as their final push to raise it. Water, some of it murky and black, plumed out of pumps at the bow and stern of the museum ship, which sank at its mooring at Collier Point Park in April 2007 during a Nor'easter. The hatches were left open.
The military financed the submarine salvage as a training operation for its dive and salvage teams. Last fall, divers arrived to attach cables to the submarine and secure it for the winter, leaving it resting on its side in 40 feet of water in Providence Harbor.
Over the last month, Army and Navy dive and salvage teams pumped water out of the sub and then tunneled underneath to place pontoons called "belly bands" below it. When inflated, these helped give the submarine the buoyancy it needed to rise out of the water. Juliett 484 was commissioned by the Soviet Union in 1965 and served in the Soviet Baltic and Northern fleets as a ballistic missile submarine until its decommissioning in 1994.
It was then converted into a restaurant in the North Sea. When that venture failed, it was sold to a group in St. Petersburg, Fla. In 2001, the submarine was used in the filming of the Cold War thriller K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford. It opened as a museum in 2002. The submarine came to Providence as a museum ship in 2002.
It has since become something of an international curiosity. Russian and American television have done segments on the stricken submarine, and former crew members have sent e-mails and letters from all over the former Soviet Union.
For more information: http://www.saratogamuseum.org/juliett/index.html
