After three decades missing, nine historical artifacts have been returned to the U.S.S. Massachusetts in Fall River.

 

FBI Boston coordinated with the Fall River Police Department to make this reunion possible.

 

Some of the items returned to the World War II battleship include documents from the 1940s and manuals to help the crew keep the vessel afloat and combat-ready.

 

“Anything that was original to the ship is precious to us,” said Christopher Nardi, the chief operating officer of Battleship Cove.

 

Last year, the FBI Boston and Fall River police initiated an investigation after they were alerted that missing items from the ship had appeared in a social media post.

 

“They asked some questions and contacted the holder at the time,” Nardi explained. “They had people in Texas that recovered the items, and they were sent back here.”

 

The items had been in the possession of a family from Texas, who found them in a storage unit among their late father’s belongings.

 

The father had actually worked on refurbishing the ship in the ’90s, FBI Boston explained in a press release, adding that the family chose to voluntarily relinquish the artifacts.

 

“One of the books that came back was a damage control book,” Nardi said, explaining that this document is “like a Bible for where the ship is laid out and all the systems.”

 

“To have that copy of the damage control book back was quite meaningful to us,” he said.