The USS Ling submarine, mired in Hackensack muck, has a strange history — and murky future

HACKENSACK — When the USS Ling made the voyage from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to its current resting place along the bank of the Hackensack River 50 years ago this month, the Sunday Record heralded its arrival with a front-page headline: “Ling docks with flying colors.”

The story described the World War II submarine’s seven-hour, 20-mile journey across the New York and Newark bays and up the Hackensack River as jubilant, with “whistles blasting into the chill air and flags flapping in winds that whipped across the bay.”

To get to its destination behind the former River Street headquarters of The Record, the 312-foot, 2,500-ton submarine was nudged along by a tugboat, and a half-dozen railroad bridges opened to let the Ling through as it “slid past industrial development along the Hudson County waterfront and the grassy, garbage-strewn Hackensack Meadowlands" on a cold January morning in 1973.

Earlier that day, the Navy officially transferred the vessel to the Submarine Memorial Association, a nonprofit group that planned to moor the ship along the riverbank as a permanent memorial to U.S. Navy personnel who died in World War II.

In the decades after, it played host to countless class trips by local schoolchildren, Memorial Day services, Pearl Harbor Day commemorations and even occasional sleepovers by groups of Cub Scouts.

But the submarine, once the source of local pride, has in recent years become a neglected eyesore.

The Ling was once the centerpiece of the New Jersey Naval Museum, which occupied a trailer on The Record's former property.

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But in 2016 the museum’s lease was terminated by Stephen Borg, former publisher of The Record, whose grandfather negotiated the 1974 deal to lease the land for $1 a year. The Borg family sold the property to a developer, who is building a 653-unit riverfront apartment complex on the 20-acre site.

The museum and submarine have been closed to the public since 2012, when Superstorm Sandy washed away the gangplank that gave visitors access to the vessel.

Then, in 2018, the Ling was flooded with 10 feet of river water when a group of urban explorers allegedly broke into the vessel and pried opened its hatches.

One of the five suspects in the break-in was sentenced in September to 12 months in a pretrial intervention program and 10 hours of community service after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary charges.

The brackish floodwater damaged priceless artifacts, including 35 fully furnished bunks, uniforms, radio equipment, gyroscopes and navigation equipment.

Over the years, groups of veterans and military enthusiasts have suggested ways to save the boat. Most recently, a group from Louisville proposed restoring the Ling and bringing the vessel to Kentucky to serve as the showcase exhibit of a planned naval museum.

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But those plans largely fell away as the financial and logistical realities of moving or securing the vessel were understood.

Since it made the journey to Hackensack five decades ago, the river has gradually filled with silt, leaving the rusting sub mired in muck in a section of the river now too shallow for it to navigate.

Navigating the sub down the river is essentially impossible, given the ship’s condition and the state of the waterway, said H. Gelfand, the chairman of the Bergen County Historical Society Historic Preservation Committee, who has been closely following the situation for years.

“It’s not being floated downriver. It’s just not going to happen,” he said, citing the astronomical cost and engineering feats that would entail.

One solution would involve taking the ship out of the water, using a temporary structure known as a cofferdam, and then repairing, painting and securing it, Gelfand said. But experts the historian has spoken to believe the cost would likely still be in the tens of millions.

“The failure to come up with a long-term plan of what to do is condemning it to benign neglect,” he said. “This should be something Bergen County should be proud of, and instead it is falling apart and sinking in the mud.”

Meanwhile, construction continues on the massive luxury development just ashore of where the sub is moored. The first building began leasing in July, and the next phase of the project, which includes plans for 382 apartments and a public riverfront walkway, is underway.

A spokesperson for the developer, Russo Development, said the vessel is in the river off the property and is not part of the project.

In May, the Ling, which is listed on the federal and state registers of historic places and is one of five surviving Baleo-class submarines, landed on Preservation New Jersey’s list of the state’s 10 most endangered historic sites. The list is intended to raise awareness of threats to the state's cultural and architectural heritage.

The Ling never saw combat. When World War II ended in August 1945, the Ling was in the Panama Canal, on its way to the South Pacific. After the war, it was decommissioned and became part of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet until 1960, when it was reactivated as a training vessel for reservists at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Albert Dib, the city’s director of redevelopment, remembers visiting the Ling as a Hackensack Cub Scout in the 1980s.

“It’s not every town that gets a submarine,” he said. “It was a destination — when you made the trip you would probably get a bite to eat at the Heritage Diner, also gone now, and maybe go to Main Street or Bowler City after. It meant a lot to very many people. It’s just not something you see every day.”

Dib remembers climbing down the sub's ladder, walking through airtight doors and being hit with a distinctive smell — a mix of metal and body odor — before being allowed to turn the wheel to bolt the door shut.

The guides turned on red lights, explaining how they were easier on the eyes and better for seeing the instrumentation. They let the Scouts look through the periscope and told them of “hot racking” — a practice of sleeping in shifts that allowed several submariners to share one bunk.

“It left an impression,” Dib said. “It was terribly exciting to walk across the gangway and walk across the deck.”

But although the Ling has long been a Hackensack landmark, the city has little to do with its uncertain fate.

A resolution passed by the City Council before the ship docked congratulated the Submarine Memorial Association and said it welcomed the historical attraction “without obligation on the part of the city.”

The city doesn’t own the property or have rights in the river, Dib said.

“Going forward, it’s clearly not for us to say,” he said. “We would be open to a conversation about access and working with the developer to arrange the waterfront in a way that’s conducive to whatever presentation is ultimately sought.”

But, he added, that conversation needs to happen soon, before construction near the riverfront progresses much further.

For now, the Ling sits as a hulking relic facing a murky future, a far cry from 50 years ago when its arrival was met with excitement and hope.

“This is indeed a historic day for us,” Mayor Kazmier Wysocki said at a ceremony welcoming the ship to Hackensack’s shores in 1973. “It brings another landmark to our city and adds to our rich heritage. This submarine is only the beginning.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Ling submarine in Hackensack has strange history and murky future