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She is formidable, even as merchant ships pass benignly in the background.

In war she was even more so, but the Battleship Texas faces a threat as potentially lethal as German guns.

“The flooding that could occur could run many frames forward from the aft trim area.”

In a room where 50 sailors once swung hammocks and slept, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Committee faces a hard fact: Water is seeping in.

A little over a month ago the federal government took back a promise of $16 million to help.

The Texas and the state of Texas are on their own.

“This is where the ammo storage would have been,” Battleground State Historical Society spokesman Kenneth Grubb said. “Your shells would have been stored on the outboard side.”

Deep within the last remaining dreadnought the future is eating its way into the past.

“From wood to doorframe, from doorframe to grate,” Grubb said.

Some lower decks are rotting and no longer safe to step on.

“It’s absolutely symptomatic of deterioration,” Grubb said.

Far below at the lowest point in the ship is one of the lowest points in her story.

In places no more than perhaps a one-sixteenth of an inch separates the Ship Channel from the inside of the ship.

“We’re about 25 feet under water right now, so it’s going to seek its own level,” Grubb said.

A breech would send water rushing through the ship. It would not be the first time.

A little more than 16 years ago the Texas triumphantly returned after more than a year in dry dock. She had $15 million worth of repairs but even that only replaced about 35 percent of her plating. 

“For about the cost of one dry docking cycle we can get her out of the water permanently and save her for future generations while simultaneously saving the state of Texas over the decades,” Barry Ward said.

Ward is the executive director of the Battleship Texas Foundation.

The latest plan would cost at least $20 million. A private foundation is trying to help.

A bill has now been filed in the Legislature that would remove the cap so that all money spent on sales tax on sporting goods would go to parks.

But the Texas is not alone. Nearby, the birthplace of Texas has its own battles.

“The bulkhead is giving way, so that’s a major repair for the park,” Jerry Bartel of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Service said.

The man in charge of regional maintenance lists repairs for the San Jacinto Battleground that also run into the millions.

In fact, he said every state park in Texas needs repair. 

By one estimate it adds up to more than $430 million.

“I would have to say we’re on a downward spiral,” Bartel said. “The maintenance, keeping up with the maintenance, repairs of our facilities has gotten worse over the years.”

But back aboard the aging warship where 300,000 visitors come each year, no one would consider a surrender.

“Her decks, her passageways are absolutely rife with history,” Ward said.

Twenty years ago when the Texas was also in desperate need of repair, a WWI sailor recalled a day in November 1918 when the world made peace after a terrible war.

“It was a grey chilly day, and they lined up on the rail and gave us three cheers you know and played Auld Lang Syne, and every time I hear that,” former crewman Miller Nicholson said.

Every voice from that war who served aboard the Texas is now silent.

But those who honor history find they can’t quite give up on believing their voices will be heard for the last ship of its kind and for the rest of Texas’ parklands.