BATON ROUGE - After 41 years of sitting in her cradle in downtown Baton Rouge, the USS Kidd is headed to Houma for some much needed repairs.

“She was never designed to go up and down on a cradle like she's been sitting in for 41 years, and the plates where they join and that has to be strengthened form the inside," former Louisiana Congressman Henson Moore said.

The Kidd was the 61st destroyer built by the U.S. Navy and launched in 1943, serving in both WWII and the Korean War. She was brought here in 1982, with the help of Moore.

"It was my idea to bring her down here, I found her, got the Navy convinced to send her down and worked with a number of people to bring her down here," Moore said.

When the U.S.S Kidd got to Baton Rouge, thousands lined the levee to watch as she rolled into her new home port downtown. WBRZ was there to welcome her and hear Moore's big plans for the ship.

With the level of the river rising and falling so frequently and rapidly, the cradle holding the Kidd has been damaged.  Once the Kidd arrives in Houma, crews will repair the hull. That will give the team in Baton Rouge enough time to make other repairs to ensure the Kidd's longevity.

"We're also going to redesign the cradle while she's away to take advantage of lessons learned over the past 40 years," Parks Stephenson, the executive director at the U.S.S Kidd Veterans Museum said.

The Pirate of the Pacific will be gone for about a year, but when she returns to Baton Rouge in spring of 2025, she'll look a little bit different.