The city of Charleston not only boasts some wonderful old buildings and thought-prevoking memorials but the harbour itself is a picture postcard of sights.

Somewhat dominating the Charleston harbour area is the now permanently moored USS Yorktown.

The aircraft carrier was commissioned in 1937 and decommissioned shortly after the end of WW 11 but was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s as an attack carrier (CVA), and then eventually became an antisubmarine carrier (CVS).

She was recommissioned too late to participate in the Korean War but served for many years in the Pacific, including duty in the Vietnam War.

Late in her career the USS Yorktown served as a recovery ship for the  Apollo 8 space mission, was used in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! which recreated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and in the film The Philadelphia Experiment.

The carrier was decommissioned in 1970 and in 1975 became a museum ship at Patriot’s Point.

But as the photographs below show, the USS Yorktown is not the only sight to see on the water in Charleston.

* Click photographs to enlarge.