Saving the Titanic
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™ 2005 CONSTRUCTIONCONSTRUCTION Reprint The Industry’s Newspaper www.constructionnews.net P.O. Box 791290 San Antonio TX 78279 E11931 Warfield San Antonio TX 78216 E (210) 308-5800 EJan 2005 E Vol. 8 No. 1 Saving the Titanic urmac Inc., based in San Marcos, is The 38,000-pound artifact, owned an unusual operation. “We are a real by RMS Titanic Inc. of Florida, has been Sinteresting company,” chuckles on exhibit all over the world. The curved owner Rick Watson. “We’re not your nor- metal hunk is a portion of the famous mal deal.” ship’s first-class section on the starboard On its face, Surmac is a specialty con- side and has three portholes, two of them tracting company that performs a variety still with their brass fittings and some of industrial, commercial and historic partial glass in them. building repairs and renovations all over “We are also experts in ultra-high the country. pressure water jetting for certain applica- In San Antonio, some of the compa- tions and removal of surfaces,” Watson ny’s projects include redoing the Pyra- said. “We did a plan and submitted a bid mid Building at Interstate 410 and San to Conservation Solutions. Pedro Avenue and the Tower-Life and Mi- “We won the contract and, with Sem- lam buildings downtown. brat, assisted in the restoration of the Ti- But then there’s those little extra tanic piece,” he said. jobs – like working on a Saturn 5 rocket, “We cleaned it with four different or a hunk of the Titanic. pressure variations, with Marvin Boat- “I got a call one day to meet Joe man of Boatman Industries supplying Sembrat of the Washington, D.C. com- the high-pressure pumps. We treated it pany, Conservation Solutions, out at Na- with three different corrosion treatments tional Aeronautics and Space Administra- to bring the salt out of it, and put a tannic tion,” Watson recalled. “He had a problem acid as the finish coat to help spring more they wanted us to look at. It turns out it Sunlight streams through the Titanic’s portholes as the cleaning process continues. salt, and then put a paraffin wax over the was a 425-foot Saturn rocket that was in top of it as the final preservative. extremely bad shape.” “We’ve had it in a dehumidification The rocket, now inoperable, has chamber for five months, sucking all the been on display for the past 30 years at excess moisture out of it. And before the the Johnson Space Center near Houston. end of the year, it will be crated. After After consulting with corrosion ex- that, we will store it for another year. pert Lydia Frenzel of San Marcos, and They are thinking about putting it on specialty materials supplier Skip Way- permanent display at the Maritime Mu- land of Seguin, Watson and Sembrat de- seum in Virginia.” veloped a plan for restoring the rocket. Surmac is a hard company to classify. “We are going to be rehabilitating Originally created as a water jetting and this rocket starting after the first of the coating firm, it quickly branched out. “It year. It will be chemically stripped of all really developed from there into concrete its coatings,” Watson explained. “After and specialty work, basically as a way to that, it will have multi-stage corrosion keep work coming in when things would treatments applied to it. We’ll then do a slow down. One thing led to another, two-coat process on the surface. It is and now we’re pretty well known in cer- mostly aluminum and titanium, but there tain circles.” is really a hodgepodge of all metals in it. Watson’s historic restorations include “It was designed to be shot into the old U.S. Mint in New Orleans, the Rose space, not laying on its side for 30 years in Window at San Antonio’s San Jose Mis- a static display. It has a tremendous sion, numerous old courthouses, includ- amount of corrosion on it and we’re go- ing Bexar County’s, the Steves Home- ing to have to fabricate new parts and stead and the Spanish Governor’s House repair some of the other parts that are The metal piece is from the Titanic’s starboard section. in San Antonio. too difficult or costly to fabricate. It The company does maintenance on doesn’t work, but it still has its rocket mo- thane and the foam on it has split.” ed to store in my warehouse,” Watson ships at sea, has coated tunnels and 30- tors, which are pretty impressive.” The Apollo capsule belongs to the said. Lease negotiations were completed below-zero blast freezers and, within the Surmac has a Houston warehouse Smithsonian Institute, Watson explained, and an agreement was signed. last few years, developed a roofing sys- where it does some of its operations, and experts there wanted it repaired – “They showed up with a tractor-trail- tem from foam and super, state-of-the- Watson said. And in that warehouse is but they wanted the original material er and there’s a piece of metal inside of it, art thermoplastic coating. A recent job the rest of the NASA project. and fabric left intact. about 30 or more feet long by 12 feet was covering the roof of the Waco hanger “That’s where I have the Apollo space “We found a way, with a special cloth high,” he recalled. “They uncrated it and, where Air Force One is stored when capsule and the escape rocket that fits on that we have, to repair the cracks in such low and behold, it is largest piece of the George W. Bush goes to his Crawford top of it,” he said. “All the electronics a way that you can’t see them, but yet all Titanic ever brought to the surface.“ ranch. were stripped out of it, all the computer the original material is there,” he said. The RMS Titanic, the largest ship in What’s next for the company? “We’re equipment they had, which was pretty “The Smithsonian has already looked at the world at the time and described as opening a San Antonio office and ware- antiquated anyway. those repairs and approved them. That “practically unsinkable,” struck an ice- house,” Watson said, “where our sales “We’re rehabilitating the capsule as was a big deal.” berg on April 15, 1912, and split in two. manager, Art Dresch, will be based. well. It was originally coated with a The NASA connection coincidently Some 1,523 people died, including the “We specialize in fast turnarounds in sprayed foam and urethane to insulate it, led to Surmac’s contract to work on a ship’s designer, the co-owner of Macy’s critical situations,” he explained. “And because I believe that was the part that piece of the Titanic. Department Store and millionaire John we’re always on the lookout for challeng- carried the lunar rover and lander. What “At the same time, Joe Sembrat said Jacob Astor IV. Some 705 were rescued. ing, interesting jobs.” has happened over the years is the ure- he had a piece of antiquity that he want-.