By Josh Farley The Kitsap Sun

BREMERTON — The supply of retired, mammoth warships in Sinclair Inlet has continued its yearlong dwindle.

On Thursday, it was the USS Ranger’s turn to depart Puget Sound Naval Shipyard’s inactive ship maintenance facility.

The antiquated aircraft carrier lugged along by tugboat as onlookers bid her adieu a final time.

“It’s sad. It’s the end of an era,” said Walter Moller, a signalman aboard the Ranger in the late 1970s, who watched it leave from Bachmann Park in Manette.

“It’s time to say goodbye to the old ship.”

The Ranger follows the USS Constellation to International Shipbreaking of Brownsville, Texas, where the vessel will be dismantled in one of the largest recycling projects in history.

And the USS Independence likely will head to the scrap yard next, sometime this year, leaving only the USS Kitty Hawk among inactive carriers here.

It likely will feel a bit empty for a while.

The row of hulking gray ships, emblematic of Bremerton’s naval past and present, looms over every motorist who comes to town along Highway 304.

They serve as a kind of entrance marker to the city — and, for residents, a sign you’ve returned.

“Mothball fleet means home,” said Amanda Jean, who was born and raised in the city.

“Bremerton is known for our shipyard: You see those carriers, and you know you’re here. That’s what this town is all about.”

Jean recalls reading Richard LeMieux’s Breakfast at Sally’s, in which LeMieux describes them as a graveyard.

“They sat in the harbor side by side — gray ghosts from another time and place,” LeMieux wrote.

Sometimes, Jean imagines she can see the ghosts of sailors on them.

“I can’t help but picture that when I’m driving into town,” she said.

Mayor Patty Lent has been supportive of departures, saying the government can ill afford to spend money on vessels that are going nowhere.

It takes tens of thousands of dollars each year just to keep them afloat.

“There comes a time when we have to realize the old has to go,” Lent said.

That change stirs strong feelings in some.

Several former Ranger sailors and retired shipyard workers recalled when the Essex-class carriers left Bremerton (and don’t get them started about the USS Missouri’s plucking from town to be a memorial in Hawaii).

“Someday, you’ll see more of these here,” said Jim Degnan, who worked on the hangar deck of the Ranger in the late 1960s. “It’s just part of that turnover.”

Indeed, the USS Enterprise, the Navy’s first nuclear-powered carrier, will come to Bremerton as early as 2018 to man the mothballs. More likely will follow.

And in the meantime?

“It’ll be a better view,” said Don Simon, a lifelong Manette resident who watched the Ranger leave.

The Ranger slowly traversed Sinclair Inlet, towed along by a powerful tug.

She’ll make a steady 16,000-mile journey to Texas via the tip of Cape Horn, as the vessel’s too big to fit through the Panama Canal.

It took her predecessor, the Constellation, about six months to make the trek.

“Everyone bemoans the fact they’re getting scrapped,” said Dan Wierman, a retired Puget Sound Naval Shipyard engineering technician, as he waited for the vessel to pass Bachmann Park. “But they all have a finite life. It has served its purpose.”

Ranger joined the fleet in 1957. The carrier, at 1,050 feet long and 56,000 tons, spent its life in the Pacific.

It made 22 deployments, including to the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm. The vessel was decommissioned in 1993.

Though a foundation had been formed in an effort to preserve the carrier, the group was unable to raise enough money to move it to the Columbia River and create a museum.

Rolf Dengler brought his two young children from Brookings, Ore., to see the Ranger before the carrier left Bremerton.

Dengler’s father, Dieter, served on the ship until 1966, when his aircraft was shot down and he was made a prisoner of war. He later escaped and was rescued.

Dengler, who will go to Laos this year in an effort to retrace his father’s footsteps, felt he couldn’t tell his children later in life that they’d miss their chance to see their grandfather’s carrier.

“I didn’t want to let that slip away,” he said.

Donna Cosey, who used to work for the company that maintained the mothball fleet, felt it surreal watching it sail out of Bremerton.

She saw it during its empty, dark retirement and felt a paranormal presence on board at times.

“It was eerie,” she said. “I think it was haunted.”

Glade Holyoak, who served as the Ranger’s chief engineer in the late 1980s, too, had to see her off one last time.

“It’s a piece of your life,” he said. “You put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears.”