Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday May 25, 2016: The Kaiser’s Pirate of Nauset Beach

Here we see one of the few images remaining of the Deutschland-class handels type unterseeboot SM U-156 of the Kaiserliche Marine. Built to schlep cargo, she was converted to a U-Kreuzer and went on to wreak havoc off the coast of New England.

In 1915, with the Great War dragging into its second horrific year, Imperial Germany was cut off from overseas trade by the might of the combined British, French, Italian, Russian, and Japanese fleets, who certainly had a warship in every harbor from Seattle to Montevideo. That’s when an idea was hatched to cough up a fleet of large commercial submarines for shipping vital cargo to and from locations otherwise verboten to German freighters.

These handels-U-boots (merchant submarines) were helmed by 28-man civilian crews employed by the Deutsche Ozean-Reederei company, unarmed except for five pistols or revolvers and a flare gun, sailed under a merchant flag, and could carry as much as 700-tons in their holds.

A staggering 213-feet overall and some 2,300-tons, while small by today’s standards, these were the largest operational submarines of World War I.

You get the idea…

The first of the class, Deutschland, was launched 28 March 1916 and in June voyaged across the Atlantic as a blockade runner carrying highly sought-after chemical dyes, carried medical drugs, gemstones, and mail to Baltimore where her crew were welcomed as celebrities before returning to Bremerhaven with 341 tons of nickel, 93 tons of tin, and 348 tons of crude rubber– worth seven times her 2.75 million Reichsmark cost. Her second trip to New London with gems and securities, returning to Germany in November was her last as a commercial venture.

You see Deutschland was taken up into the service of the German Navy in early 1917 and rechristened SM U-155, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Between 1916-17, a further six freighter u-boats were built to the same design as Deutschland in four yards, numbered in military service U-151 through U-157. These ships, however, were built to fight rather than make money (one other boat, Bremen, was completed for commercial work and she vanished in Sept. 1916 on her maiden voyage to New York–she was never part of the German Navy).

The subject of our particular tale is U-156, the only one of her class built at Atlas Werke, Bremen as Werke #382.

In war service these ships were completed with torpedo tubes and a torpedo and mine magazine rather than cargo holds and given a pair of large 150mm deck guns with a healthy supply of 1688 shells to feed them. Gone was the civilian crew, replaced by a 7 officer/69-man military crew that could spare up to 20 for prize crews.

Prize crews?

Yes, these huge subs would act as submersible cruisers (U-Kreuzer), hence the large battery and stock of shells.

Those are some serious popguns

U-156 was commissioned 22 Aug 1917 under the command of Kptlt. Konrad Gansser. Under Gansser’s command and that later of Kptlt. Richard Feldt, over the next 13 months the huge submarine successfully attacked 47 ships of which she sunk 45 (for a total of 64,151 tons) and damaged two.

A list of her kills over at U-boat.net shows that most of her “victories” were small craft, with only one merchant ship over 5,000 tons, the Italian flagged steamer Atlantide (5,431t) sunk off Madeira on 1 Feb 1918.

In fact, some 32 of her kills were against trawlers and small coasters under 950-tons, making her the scourge of the American and Canadian coasts.

Speaking of which, U-156‘s most important victory at sea came not from her guns or torpedoes, but from a mine.

The 13,680-ton USS San Diego (Armored Cruiser No. 6), formerly the USS California, hit a mine sown by U-156 southeast of Fire Island on 19 July and sank in just 28 minutes, taking six bluejackets with her to the bottom. She would be the only major warship lost by the U.S. in the Great War. Her skipper at the time, Capt. Harley H. Christy, was a Spanish–American War vet who went on to command the battlewagon Wyoming with the British Grand Fleet in 1918 and become a Vice Admiral on the retired list.

USS San Diego (Armored Cruiser No. 6) Painting by Francis Muller, 1920. It depicts the ship sinking off Fire Island, New York, after mined by the German submarine U-156, 19 July 1918. Courtesy of the Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 55012-KN

It was after this strike on the San Diego that the good Kptlt. Feldt sailed to the coast of Cape Cod and got into a little gunplay in shallow water and spread “schrecklichkeit” (fear) along the coast.

At about 10:30 a.m. on the morning of 21 July 1918, the Lehigh Valley RR. Company’s hearty little 120-foot/435-ton steel-hulled tugboat Perth Amboy was hauling a series of wooden barges some three miles off Orleans, Mass when she came under artillery fire from U-156‘s big guns. While the barges were sunk and the tug damaged, no casualties were suffered.

Via Attack on Orleans

This led to a frantic call to the newly-built Chatam Naval Air Station who dispatched two Curtiss HS-1L seaplanes (Bu.No 1695 and 1693, the latter of which suffered engine problems and couldn’t sortie) and two R-9s (Bu.No. 991 and another) that arrived on scene about a half hour later. The freshly minted naval pilots dropped a few small bombs, which did not damage the submarine, who dutifully submerged and motored off.

Curtiss HS-1L seaplane (Bu. no. 1735) of the type flown against U-156, here shown at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida Caption: On the ramp at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, circa 1918. Note insignia (patriotic, “Uncle Sam” hat), presumably of Training Squadron Five. Description: Catalog #: NH 44224

In all, the attack lasted about 90 minutes from the first shot to the last bomb, and caused little practical damage.

The submarine ticked off some 147 shells, some of which landed on shore and the subsequent impact zone became a tourist attraction into the 1930s.

However, it was the first attack on the U.S. mainland by a uniformed European enemy since 1815 and the first time enemy shells landed on her soil since the failed siege of Fort Texas near Brownsville by General Pedro de Ampudia’s light artillery in 1846.

Damage suffered by Perth Amboy– she would later go on to be sunk by a mine in WWII while in British service

U-156 then headed north to the Nova Scotia coast and captured the 265-ton trawler Triumph, which she used for three days in August as the first (and only) German surface raider to operate in Canadian waters. Using at times Canadian and at others a Danish flag, Triumph and U-156 worked in tandem, with the trawler creeping up on small craft, Germans taking said small boat over, rigging demo charges and allowing the Canuk mariners to row away in their dingy while the craft sank.

From an excellent article at WWI Canada:

One of Triumph’s first victim was the Gloucester schooner A. Piatt Andrew, which was fishing in Canadian waters. The schooner’s skipper told the U.S. Navy that when Triumph hailed him to heave to, he thought it was joke until “… four shots were fired across our bow from rifles. We brought our vessel up in the wind and the beam trawler came up alongside of us and I then saw that she was manned [by] German crew.’’

The Lunenburg schooner Uda A. Saunders was another score for Feldt. The vessel’s captain gave the U.S. Navy this description of the encounter: “The Huns hailed us and ordered a dory alongside. I sent two men out to her in a dory and three of the raider’s crew came aboard. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the one who appeared to be in command. ‘We are going to sink your vessel. I will give you 10 minutes to gather up food and water enough to last you until you get ashore.’”

However, U-156‘s days as a pirate were numbered.

On her way back to Germany, the U-Boat failed to report in that she had cleared the North Sea passage and it is surmised that around 25 Sep 1918 she struck an Allied mine and disappeared with all hands, leaving 77 dead.

With the exception of U-154, torpedoed in the Atlantic 11 May 1918 by HM Sub E35, U-156s sisters largely survived the war, but not by much.

SM U-151 was surrendered to France at Cherbourg and sunk as target ship at Cherbourg, 7 June 1921.

U-152 and U-153 went to Harwich, England, where they were surrendered to the British and sunk by the Royal Navy in July 1921 (image below).

Note how large the U-153 is compared to other common German submarines (IWM photo)

U-157 was interned at Trondheim, Norway at the end of the war but later taken over by the French and broken up at Brest.

Deutschland/U-155, was surrendered on 24 November 1918 with other submarines as part of the terms of the Armistice and exhibited in London and elsewhere before being sold for scrap in 1921.

A British Jack secures the the Control Room of U155 (The Deutschland) Moored in St Katherine’s Docks, London, December 1918 (iwm)

German U-Boat U-155 surrendered to the British, lying alongside the British Q-boat mystery ship HMS SUFFOLK COAST at St. Katherine’s Docks in London, 4 December 1918 (iwm)

German submarine U-155 on display in St. Katherine docks, London, England, December 1918

With that being said, U-156 is better remembered than most of her class, at least in New England.

Today a historical sign on a private Nauset Beach in Orleans, Massachusetts marks the occasion in which the Kaiser reached out and touched the sand there.

For more information on the Attack on Orleans, here is an hour-long lecture by Jake Klim done in 2015 for the Tales of Cape Cod historical society.

Klim runs the most excellent “Attack on Orleans” website and social media page from which I borrowed the map above and recommend his book of the same title.

For more on these blockade breaking U-boats overall, check out this site in German.

Specs:

Displacement:
1,512 tonnes (1,488 long tons) (surfaced)
1,875 tonnes (1,845 long tons) (submerged)
2,272 tonnes (2,236 long tons) (total)
Length:
65.00 m (213 ft 3 in) (o/a)
57.00 m (187 ft) (pressure hull)
Beam:
8.90 m (29 ft 2 in) (o/a)
5.80 m (19 ft) (pressure hull)
Height: 9.25 m (30 ft 4 in)
Draught: 5.30 m (17 ft 5 in)
Installed power:
800 PS (590 kW; 790 bhp) (surfaced)
800 PS (590 kW; 790 bhp) (submerged)
Propulsion:
2 × shafts
2 × 1.60 m (5 ft 3 in) propellers
Fuel oil supply merchant submarine: 200 t
Fuel oil supply cruiser submarine: 285 t
Surfaced speed as merchant submarine: about 12 kn
Underwater speed as merchant submarine: about 6.7 kn
Surfaced speed as U-Kreuzer: about 11 kn
Underwater speed as U-Kreuzer: ca 5,3 kn
Dive time: 50-80 seconds depending on crew training
Compression depth: 50m
Range:
25,000 nmi (46,000 km; 29,000 mi) at 5.5 knots (10.2 km/h; 6.3 mph) surfaced
65 nmi (120 km; 75 mi) at 3 knots (5.6 km/h; 3.5 mph) submerged
Test depth: 50 metres (160 ft)
Complement, commercial service: 28
Complement, military service: 6 / 50 Mannschaft
1 / 19 Prisenkommando
Armament:
2 50 cm (20 in) bow torpedo tubes
18 torpedoes
2 × 15 cm (5.9 in) deck guns with 1688 rounds

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Jack as a 15 year old Boy assigned to the training ship, the old armored cruiser H.M.S. Lancaster which was based at Chatam during WWI to train gunnery crews.

Born 8th January 1900 in Essex, John “Jack” Cornwell attended school for just eight years, dropping out in 1913 to work as a van boy for a baker. Still keeping up his commitment to the Boy Scouts, he won a special award for freeing a young girl from a drain.

He was that kind of kid.

At age 14 he tried to join the Royal Navy in the opening days of WWI, but was turned down. He kept trying and he was accepted as a Ship’s Boy just after his 15th birthday and shipped out aboard the freshly commissioned 5000-ton Town-class light cruiser HMS Chester as a gun layer, manning the sights and relaying firing orders through a headset and microphone at one of the ship’s 10 BL 5.5 inch Mark I (140 mm) /50 guns. The well-drilled RN crews on these exposed guns could fire 12 rounds per minute, lobbing a 82-pound shell out past 16,000m.

Chester and Jack found themselves up to their necks in German warships at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May.

Taking on four German cruisers of the High Seas Fleet’s  II Scouting Group in a night action, Chester was raked by no less than 18 hits. The Mark I guns of the cruiser had just a scant plate of armor on the front of the mount, with the backs and deck areas open to the environment. This meant that shrapnel from the German shells blasted down the decks and killed the exposed gunners at a staggering rate. Within minutes, 3 out of 10 mounts on Chester were out of action, their crews maimed.

At Jack’s mount,  the forward-most 5.5 inch gun on the forecastle, every single sailor had been killed or wounded outright, horribly maimed by the combat.

During the action, Jack was credited with volunteering to go to the top of the turret to wipe the glass so that the rangefinder could line the target, and another report says that he managed to ram home one last projectile, close the breech and press the firing button and that this projectile exploded on the German ship SMS Wiesbaden, causing damage which led to her sinking. (Later evidence found post-war concluded that the shell that sank Wiesbaden came from HMS Invincible, but it does not make the tale of Jack and HMS Chester any less heroic)

Jack was found after the cruiser had disengaged, standing alone at his gun, still ready to fight. His body was riddled with shellfire, including splinters in his chest. He was still alive but barely, and eager for orders.

Damage to the deck of HMS CHESTER sustained during the battle of Jutland. Several sailors can be seen on deck including one bending down to inspect the hole. Boy (1st Class) Jack Travers Cornwell was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for remaining at the forward gun on board the cruiser. The ship was badly shelled by four German cruisers and Cornwell’s position was hit four times, killing all the crew apart from Cornwell. The badly wounded boy sailor was taken back to Grimsby where he died on 2 June. (Surgeon Parkes photographic collection of ships portraits )

As British ships came alongside HMS Chester, survivors of other gun mounts sat on deck, limbless, smoking cigarette and cheering the passing fleet. Many would not see the next dawn.

Jack passed away after an agonizing two day ordeal in the ship’s infirmary, giving his last, full, measure.

His VC, awarded posthumously, states:

The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the grant of the Victoria Cross to Boy, First Class, John Travers Cornwell, O.N.J.42563 (died 2 June 1916), for the conspicuous act of bravery specified below. Mortally wounded early in the action, Boy, First Class, John Travers Cornwell remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders, until the end of the action, with the gun’s crew dead and wounded all round him. His age was under sixteen and a half years.

He is the youngest recipient of England’s highest military honor.

His great grandnephew, Alex Saridis, is keeping the family tradition alive and is currently an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy. He asks in the above video only that future generations remember Jack, and those that fell alongside him and share their story.

On Jack’s grave, the epitaph reads

“It is not wealth or ancestry
but honourable conduct and a noble disposition
that maketh men great.”

Photographs by Christoper Ison, http://www.christopherison.com via Royal Navy

“At mid-day precisely eight peels echoed around Victory Arena as Princess Anne rang the bell for the first time since May 24 1941 when Hood sailed to intercept Hitler’s flagship Bismarck and prevent it from breaking out into the Atlantic to maul British shipping,” reads the report from the Royal Navy.

The bell was recovered last year by a dive team from the battlecruiser’s resting place in the cold North Atlantic and spent the past nine months undergoing conservation work.

A 30-minute memorial service attended by members of the Hood Association, descendants of men who fought at Jutland – not least, three of the four senior admirals that day: Jellicoe, Beatty and Scheer – preceded the ringing, before the bell was escorted by a guard of honor through the historic dockyard to Boathouse No.5, home of the new exhibition 36 Hours: Jutland 1916, The Battle That Won The War.

Photographs by Christoper Ison, http://www.christopherison.com via Royal Navy

HRH is the Chief Commandant for Women in the Navy.

The British completed 53 T-class (Triton) submarines in the 1930s and 40s and these 276-foot vessels took the war to the enemies of the crown and we have covered at least one of these boats, HMS Tribune (aka HMS Tyrant) in a past Warship Wednesday.

These sea monsters, designed in 1935, had an impressive armament of 10 torpedo tubes (6 bow, 4 aft) which was considered devastating at the time, room for 16 torpedoes, and mounted a QF 4-incher on deck. A crew of 48 manned the 1,500-ton smoke boat and twin diesel/electric engines/motors could drive them at nearly 16 knots on the surface and 9 when submerged. They weren’t flashy compared to the German, U.S. and Japanese fleet boats of the day, but they could sail 8,000 nautical miles and could operate at a 300 foot depth with no problem.

Nearly one in three T-class boats did not survive the war, with 16 destroyed, largely by mines and in scraps with Italian and German subs in the Med.

Which brings us to His Majesty’s Submarine P.311

Commissioned 7 Aug 1942, she was the only unnamed T-class boat, the late series  Group Three boat would have been dubbed Tutenkhamen but lost just over four months later before she could be renamed.

Here is one of the few photographs in circulation of her:

The depot ship HMS FORTH transferring a practice torpedo to the submarine P311. HMS SIBYL (P217) is seen alongside. IWM (TR 532)

Fitted to carry 2 Chariot human torpedoes, she along with sisters Thunderbolt and Trooper and U-class sub HMS Unruffled (P 46) were part of Operation Principle, the Chariot attack on Italian cruisers at La Maddalena (Palermo).

HMS P 311 departed from Malta on 28 December 1942, sending her last signal three days later from 38º10’N, 11º30’E.

After this signal she was not heard from again and she is presumed sunk by Italian mines in the approaches to Maddalena on after she was reported overdue and failed to return to base, her 71 crewmen on eternal patrol.

A submarine down, Principal didn’t really go off as planned, but did claim an Italian cruiser and some small craft for the loss of ten highly trained frogmen:

Submarines TROOPER (with Chariots 16, 19, and 23) and THUNDERBOLT (with 15 and 22) launched all five Chariots against Palermo. They then withdrew, leaving submarine P.46 to pick up the crews. The fates of the Chariots follow:

Chariot 16 (Sub Lt R G Dove RNVR and Leading Seaman J Freel) mined liner VIMINALE (8500grt) which was badly damaged.

Chariot 19 (Ty/Lt H F Cook RNVR and Able Seaman Worthy). Lt Cook was drowned when his suit was torn getting through the boom defense nets, but AB Worthy drove the Chariot ashore and blew it up prior to being captured.

Chariot 23 (Sub Lt H L H Stevens RNVR and Leading Seaman Carter) had to abandon the attack due to mechanical failure and her crew was picked up by P.46.

Chariot 15 (Ty/Petty Officer J M Miln and Able Seaman W Simpson) was lost with due to unknown causes prior to entering harbour. AB Simpson was lost, but PO Miln survived.

Chariot 22 (Lt R T G Greenland RNVR and Leading Signalman A Ferrier), was able to mine new light cruiser ULPIO TRAIANO, which was sunk. Mines were also fixed to destroyer GRECALE and corvettes CICLONE and GAMMA, but were removed before exploding.

The crews of Chariot 16 and 22 were also captured.

As for her two mission sisters, Thunderbolt was sunk by the Italian corvette Cicogna off Messina Strait on 14 March 1942 and Trooper was lost, probably to German mines, on 14 October 1943.

Now apparently P.311 has been found

A team led by Genoa-based wreck-hunter, Massimo Domenico Bondone, located the final resting place of the British T-class submarine, the HMS P 311, on 22 May 2016.

The vessel was found at a depth of 100 metres, not far from the island of Tavolara, off the northeast coast of Sardinia.

Paola Pegoraro of the Orso Diving Club, who helped prepare the dive, told the Associated Press the sub was identified by the two Chariot “human torpedoes” still affixed to the outside.

Vale, P.311, rocked in the cradle of the deep.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period (though our ship today is a pure sailing vessel from that era) and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday June 1, 2016: One well-traveled sloop

Photo #: NH 51494 USS Vincennes in Disappointment Bay.  Line engraving by C.A. Jewett, after a sketch by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

Here we see the Boston-class second rate sloop-of-war USS Vincennes in Disappointment Bay, Antarctica, circa January–February 1840.

The fledgling U.S. Navy in the 1820s was a mix of the remaining six original frigates and a few vessels commissioned and taken up during the War of 1812. This led Congress to authorize 10 new sloops of war for economical overseas service, intended to wave the new country’s flag far and wide.

These wooden-hulled, three-masted sloops (Boston, Fairfield, Falmouth, Warren, Natchez, St. Louis, Lexington, Concord, Vandalia, and Vincennes) were commonly about 700-tons in displacement with a 127-foot overall length. Able to float in 16-feet of water, with their 18-sail plan, they could keep 11-knots over ground as long as the wind was up. They were manned by crews that could vary between 125-200 bluejackets, Marines and officers depending on tasking.

They could carry between 16-20 smoothbore guns and this could vary as needed. These were primarily  “new” Model of 1816 24-pound long guns, basically an updated Revolutionary War design made by Cecil Iron Works. These could fire round, grape, chain, case or canister shot out to an impressive 1,200 yards– which was much better than the typical 300 yards capable of the same type of guns used a generation prior. Each 24-pounder could be fired once every three minutes by a trained crew of 13 men and powder monkeys but a full 18-gun battery would need 234 blue jackets to be fully crewed, which often led to shifting gun crews on the sparsely manned sloops, alternating broadside gunnades port and starboard as needed.

In addition to the 24 pounders, some of the class often substituted a number of short-barreled Columbia Iron Works 32-pounder carronades, which were murderous at short range (400 yards) in broadside, but less useful at extended artillery duels.

It should also be noted that Fairfield and Vandalia were built with an additional quartet of 68-pounder (8″) shell-firing Paixhans guns in place of a similar number of 24 or 32s.

All 10 sloops built at six naval yards along the East Coast from 1825-28 and officially rated at “18-guns” on the Naval List despite their varying armaments.

Photo #: NH 86690-KN (color) 18-gun sloop of war USS Boston (1826-1846) with 9 gun ports on her port side. Painting by Rod Claudius, Rome, Italy, 1962. It was made for display on board USS Boston (CAG-1). Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C

The subject of our tale, Vincennes, was the first U.S. Navy ship named for the Siege of Fort Sackville, a three-day battle in 1779 in what is now Vincennes, Indiana by about 120 militia under George Rogers Clark (brother of Meriwether Clark of Lewis and Clark fame), that took about 300 redcoats/Native allies and the stockade they relied on with very few casualties.

Built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, USS Vincennes was commissioned 27 August 1826 at New York City and, like the rest of her class, was soon sailing the high seas.

Within a few months, she was in Hawaii, then China…then kept going. From 3 September 1826 to 8 June 1830, when she made it back to New York, she became the first U.S. Navy ship to circumnavigate the globe, though it took 45 months.

USS Vincennes (1826-1867) Colored lithograph published by N. Currier, 2 Spruce Street, New York City, 1845. Note 9 very clear gun ports on her starboard side which are contrary to the four shown in the plan detail below, which is likely incorrect. Courtesy of the Naval Art Collection, Washington, D.C. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 66524-KN

The next few years she patrolled the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific once again, then in 1838 was chosen to carry the flag of one rather peculiar and very Captain Bligh-like Lieutenant Charles Wilkes who had entered the Navy as a mid in 1818 and was a close acquaintance of President Jackson through the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences.

Wilkes would lead the six-ship United States Exploring Expedition, commonly just known as the “Wilkes Expedition,” that included a wealth of scientists, taxidermists, engravers and artists with Vincennes as flag, the old 22-gun sloop USS Peacock, brig USS Porpoise (230 tons), store-ship USS Relief, and schooners USS Sea Gull (110 tons) and USS Flying Fish (96 tons) in the train.

One peculiar weapon picked up for the expedition was the .54 caliber Elgin-patent percussion cutlass pistol produced by C.B. Allen of Springfield, Massachusetts. Note these are different from the similar guns made by Morill, Mosman and Blair (notable for their round barrel) of nearby Amherst.

It is a boxlock type frame with a 5-inch octagonal barrel and a 11” Bowie type blade underneath for stabby purposes.

Photo: Chris Eger

Less than 150 (all octagonal-barreled Allen guns) were purchased by the Navy for the expedition and several went missing with the loss of the USS Peacock in 1854– making this example that I came across in Louisville last week (above) rare indeed. It was very modern in the respect that these Elgin Cutlass pistols were the first percussion firearms adopted by the U.S. military– all prior being flintlocks.

The crews of the expedition would put their Elgins to good use.

Departing from Hampton Roads on August 18, 1838, the expedition sailed for South America, Australia, Hawaii and along the Antarctic Coast.

Sketch of the sloop-of-war USS Vincennes running before a gale amid the Antarctic ice. From The Narrative, courtesy Smithsonian Institution Libraries as found in “Sea Of Glory: The Epic South Seas Expedition 1838-42” by Nathaniel Philbrick. Robert Hurst/Navsource

“View of the Antarctic Continent”. Line engraving by Jorban & Halpin, after a sketch by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, USN, depicting men and dogs of the U.S. Exploring Expedition “ashore” on the ice, with the Antarctic mountains in the distance, circa January-February 1840. USS Vincennes is amid the ice flows at right. The print is copied from “U.S. Exploring Expedition”, Volume II. US Naval History and Heritage Command photo # NH 51495.

Then in Fiji, Wilkes got in a scrap with locals over food bartering that left his nephew, a midshipman, dead as well as 40 Fijians.

The American punitive expedition against Malolo, Fiji in 1840 by Alfred Agate. Some 60 bluejackets from the expedition carried out the raid

Vendovi, a Fijian chief held prisoner on board the Vincennes. (October 1840)

In all the fleet would fight Pacific islanders on no less than three occasions: at the above-mentioned Battle of Malolo (where a naval party burned two villages to the ground in reprisal of the younger Wilkes’ death), Drummon’s Island (against 700 Gilbertese warriors) and Upolu in the Samoan chain.

Science can be messy sometimes.

Wilkes made sure his ashore bases were carefully defended. The above sketch of the Wilkes Campsite at Mauna Loa, Hawaii is by Alfred Thomas Agate, 1840, who shipped aboard Vincennes.

After trekking up the Pacific Northwest, Wilkes expedition went back down to New Zealand and across the Indian Ocean back to the Atlantic, becoming the last all-sail naval mission to circumnavigate the globe (and Vincennes second evolution!) when they arrived in New York on 10 June 1842.

The trip took just under four years but produced the first map of the Oregon Territory, a wealth of exhibits and papers still maintained by the Smithsonian and something like 26 volumes of scientific reports.

However, at least 30 sailors were killed and two vessels lost: Sea Gull (at sea, April 1839 with all hands) and the Flying Fish (sold at Singapore as unfit to travel forward).

Vincennes after the expedition was reassigned to the Home Squadron but it was just a tease as she was soon again off to the Far East, accompanying the much larger ship-of-the-line USS Columbus (74-guns) for Commodore Biddle’s first American contact with the Empire of Japan. They arrived, anchored off Uraga for nine days in June 1846, and sailed off after the Japanese refused to talk.

First U.S. Navy visit to Japan, July 1846 Description: Copy made by Mr. Renjo Shimo Oka from an original Japanese painting, depicting USS Columbus and USS Vincennes anchored in Yeddo (Tokyo) Bay, Japan, circa 20-29 July 1846. They were under the command of Commodore James Biddle, USN. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 63523

Photo #: NH 54485 Departure of the ship of the line U.S.S. Columbus and sloop of war Vincennes from Jeddo Bay, July the 29th 1846 Contemporary lithograph published by Wagner & McGuigan, based on sketches by John Eastly. It depicts USS Columbus (right), flagship of Commodore James Biddle, and USS Vincennes (left) being towed out of Jeddo Bay, Japan, by a fleet of Japanese small craft on 29 July 1846. The nine days these ships spent in Jeddo (Tokyo) Bay was the first visit made by the U.S. Navy to Japanese waters. Courtesy of Mrs. Macomb, Washington, D.C., circa 1920. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

When Vincennes came back to New York the next year, it was her third circumnavigation.

For the next decade, Vincennes remained a darling of long range oceanography explorations, hosting CDR Cadwalader Ringgold’s survey of the China Sea, the North Pacific, and the Bering Strait and a subsequent investigation of the Bonin, Kurile and Ryuku chains by Lt. John Rodgers (where she got in her fourth circumnavigation) before spending three years with the African Squadron on the slavery patrols.

During this time, with the Navy severely underfunded and staffed, her crew rarely broke 80 able-bodied sailors and Marines of all ranks. In such scenarios, only 4-5 guns could be fully manned should the sloop be engaged in naval combat.

Although long in the teeth by the time of the Civil War (most of her sisters were already stricken), and officially in ordinary, Vincennes was dusted off and assumed station between Santa Rosa Island, Florida and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, chiefly in the Mississippi Sound and off Fort Massachusetts and Fort Pickens. There she spent the entire war on patrol and reconnaissance duty.

She captured no less than four Confederate vessels and the blockade running British bark Empress. However, this service was just delaying the inevitable. She was laid up in ordinary at the Boston Navy Yard on 28 August 1865, just four months after Appomattox, and sold to the breakers two years later.

She traveled much further than most of her class, and outlasted many:

• Natchez was scrapped at the New York Navy Yard in 1840 after just 13 years’ service.
• Concord ran aground and was abandoned in 1842.
• Fairfield was decommissioned 3 February 1845 and broken up by 1852.
• Boston was wrecked on Eleuthera Island, Bahamas, during a squall on 15 November 1846.
• Lexington was decommissioned on 26 February 1855 and sold before the Civil War.
• Warren and Falmouth were both decommissioned 24 May 1859 and sold in Panama.
• Vandalia was decommissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 4 February 1863 and used as a receiving ship until 1872.
• St. Louis outlasted them all, decommissioned on 12 May 1865 and used as a receiving ship until 1907.

Vincennes’s name went on to be used by three cruisers in the 20th Century: the New Orleans-class heavy cruiser (CA-44) commissioned in 1937 and lost in the Battle of Savo Island in 1942; the Cleveland-class light cruiser (CL-64) commissioned in 1944 and sunk as target in 1969; and the Tico-class (CG-49) commissioned in 1985 and scrapped in 2011.

There is a four-sided monument to all of the USS Vincennes in Vincennes, Indiana’s Patrick Henry Square (though it calls our sloop a 24-gun vessel, which she never was)

Photo via Wiki

Specs:

Via Windjammer arts This image, while showing a correct sail plan, is far short on the number of gun ports

Displacement: 700 long tons (710 t)
Length:     127 ft. (39 m)
Beam:     33 ft. 9 in (10.29 m)
Draft:     16 ft. (4.9 m)
Speed:     11 kn (13 mph; 20 km/h)
Complement: 80-200
Armament:     18 × 24 pdr (11 kg) smoothbore guns, fancy smallarms

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. –– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday June 8, 2016: Indonesia’s biggest stick with a James Bond twist

Here we see the Soviet Navy’s Sverdlov-class light cruiser Ordzhonikidze with her crew manning the rails in June 1954 on a peaceful port visit to Helsinki, a capital that was being bombed by Soviet aircraft just nine years prior. Obsolete before she was completed, she sowed enduring mystery in her brief career with the Motherland and went on to become Sukarno’s wooden sword.

At the end of World War II, Stalin was only beginning his arms race with the West, which included several of the world’s largest navies. The Red Banner Fleet had armadas of submarines and small craft, but was lacking in capital ships. The Sovs had no carriers and, even though battleships and gun-armed cruisers were fast approaching block obsolescence as a whole in the Atomic age, Stalin was desperately short of these as well with only a few lingering Gangut-class battlewagons and Maxim Gorky/Chapayev class cruisers on the list as “prestige ships.”

This led to an order for a staggering 30 brand new 16,000-ton Sverdlov (Project 68bis) class cruisers.

They had good lines and were a good design– for 1938.

Capable of a 9,000-mile range, equipped with a half-dozen air, surface and navigation radars, and capable of breaking 32 knots, they had long legs, big eyes and high speed, all things you want in a cruiser to both screen a naval task force and perform as a surface action group on their own accord. The thing is their armament was hopelessly dated.

These all-gun love boats had a dozen powerful 152 mm (6 in)/57 cal B-38 guns in four triple Mk5-bis turrets which were outstanding guns for the time (though they had been designed in 1938). They could sling a 121-pound AP pill out to 34,080 yards (30,215 m) every nine seconds or so, which means the 12-gun battery could pepper a 78-round broadside in the time it takes to watch an extended commercial. A dozen 100 mm/56 (3.9″) B-34 Pattern 1940 guns in twin mounts, 32x37mm AAA guns and (likely for the last time in a major warship design) surface-launched anti-ship torpedoes rounded out the Sverdlovs.

They compared well against the U.S. Navy’s Cleveland-class light cruisers (14,500-tons, 4 × triple 6″/47cal guns), which the Americans had commissioned 27 of by the end of 1945 (see where the figure of Stalin wanting 30 Sverdlovs came from?), but the catch was that Washington laid up virtually all of their low-mileage Cleveland’s by 1950 and those that remained in service did so as hybrid guided missile cruisers with a limited big-gun armament.

The beautiful Cleveland-class cruiser USS Miami (CL-89) plowing through a wave during her shakedown cruise, 17 February 1944. She was everything the Sverdlovs were and more, but only saw 46 months of active duty before she was decommissioned on 30 June 1947– before the first Svedlov was even commissioned– and only left red lead row in 1961 to be scrapped.

The first Sverdlov was laid down 15 October 1949 and before Stalin passed into that great Georgian gangster paradise in the ground in 1953, construction on another 20 was started. Then came Nikita Khrushchev who canceled most of the class outright. In all, out of Uncle Joe’s planned 30 cruisers, just 14 were finished and commissioned into service. Nikita himself was said to comment that the ships were good only for state visits and as a missile target.

This leads us to the hero of our tale.

Georgian-born Grigol Ordzhonikidze was a buddy of Uncle Joe and led a Red Army into that break away republic of their mutual birth in 1921 to bring them back into the fold of Moscow’s bosom. This didn’t stop the fantastically mustachioed revolutionary from passing in 1937 during the Great Purge, officially of a heart attack at just age 50.

This guy, who looks kinda like Gabe Kaplan from Welcome Back Carter and John Turturro had a baby…

Never officially out of standing, Stalin originally named a Chapayev-class cruiser after his buddy which was never completed during World War II, and replaced on the list by a nicer Sverdlov-class vessel laid down at Plant #194 (Admiralty Shipyard, Leningrad) as serial #600 on 19 October 1949.

Ordzhonikidze was completed and joined the Baltic Fleet 31 August 1952, just months before Stalin’s own demise.

Ordzhonikidze on parade in Leningrad, 1954. Note the pennants and giant illuminated red star in her rigging. Also note the extensive radar suite used by these ships. The Soviets benefited from Lend-Lease British and American naval radars in 1944-45 and learned valuable lessons from both, meaning that by the 1950s they were roughly comparable.

A beautiful new ship in the Baltic, she was tapped to perform a number of state visits with Soviet political figures– to include Khrushchev aboard– stopping in Helsinki for four days in 1954 as well as a later visit to Copenhagen.

Her next international stop was the UKs Portsmouth Harbor– the first time Soviet leaders visited Britain– where she arrived 18 April 1956 with two destroyers as escorts.

It seems, however, that a wetsuit-clad group of Soviet Naval Spetsnaz, who mounted an undersea patrol around the vessel, also accompanied the cruiser. It was during the visit that British MI6 frogman and WWII diving legend Lionel “Buster” Crabb disappeared 19 April while allegedly investigating the props on Ordzhonikidze.

Commander Crabb. He was something of a true-life James Bond figure.

In the meantime, the Soviets reported to the British they had seen a diver swimming at the surface at 7.30 a.m. that morning between their ships, which sparked something of an international incident that queered the week that the Soviet Premier spent kissing babies in England.

Photo via UK National Archives

Then, some 14 months later what was left of a body in a green Royal Navy type frogman suit, sans head and hands, was found floating in Chichester Harbor.

In 2007, a former Soviet Naval Spetsnaz combat diver by the name of Eduard Koltsov gave an interview to the BBC in which he stated that he had slit Crabb’s throat in undersea combat and proudly displayed both the knife he claims he used and the Order of the Red Star he was awarded for his actions. Several documents, heavily redacted, were released by the UKs National Archives that kinda sorta but not really verified what happened.

Now back to the story of the Ordzhonikidze herself.

Орджоники́дзе 1960

Ordzhonikidze on parade in Baltiysk (Pillau), 1960 on the anniversary of VE-Day. Note the salute .Kinda classy in a town that was German just 15 years before.

Transferring to the Black Sea Fleet, she arrived in Sevastopol in February 1961, though her time in the ancient sea would be brief.

On the other side of the globe, Indonesian strongman Sukarno was getting stronger, having dissolved Parliament in 1960 as well as several Islamic-based political parties while leaning on support from the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) — which brought the new nation firmly into Moscow’s arms as he sought out a policy of Confrontation (Konfrontasi) against the Dutch over West Papua New Guinea (Irian).

In February 1960, Khrushchev paid a visit to Sukarno and soon after the floodgates of Communist fellowship opened.

This turned into a massive outlay of military gear transferred from the CCCP to Jakarta as Indonesia for a time became second only to Red China in Soviet arms deliveries. This included making the TNI-AL (Indonesian Navy) the most powerful submarine force in the Asia-Pacific region with a full Whiskey-class submarines, two torpedo retrievers, and one submarine tender, all purchased for a song. By comparison, no other Southeast Asian nation possessed a submarine force of any size, with closest runner up being the Royal Australian Navy having only six British-made Oberon’s.

Therefore, it made sense that the only major surface ship exported by the Cold War-era Soviet military was to be sent to Indonesia. Sure hundreds of patrol craft, missile boats, destroyers, and frigates were given away, but cruisers, battleships, and carriers before 1989? Nyet!

On 5 April 5 1962, with a handful of Indonesian military personnel aboard, Ordzhonikidze departed from Sevastopol after spending 14 months undergoing modifications for operations in the tropics (more ventilators and generators) and leisurely sailed to the Far East, arriving 5 August in Surabaya.

Ordzhonikidze in the Indian Ocean on the way to Indonesia

Btw, if the shifting hull numbers on our cruiser have you confused, don’t be as they are more of a temporary tactical marking than anything else. The Soviet Navy’s pennant numbers were related to the fleet in which the ship was serving, so if you changed fleets you changed numbers. Further, there is evidence to support that Moscow changed the whole shebang at least once or twice just to add to the ship-watching confusion in the West, making the fact that our cruiser sports the hull numbers 057, 435, 310 and 21 inside of a eight year period petty common.

Once in the Far East, her crew proceeded to work side-by-side with 1,200 handpicked Indonesian sailors for six months, training men who had never conned a ship larger than a frigate to control a 14,000-ton cruiser that had everything written in Cyrillic.

Note the Indonesian crew side by side with the Soviets. There are few images of her afloat in TNI-AL service

In the meantime, the Indonesians embarked on Operation Trikora, pitting their 16 newly acquired Soviet-built destroyers and frigates and dozen submarines against the Royal Netherlands Navy’s four destroyers and three subs in the area, pushing them out while infiltrating small landing teams and paratroopers through the area. Although the Dutch have a proud naval tradition of combat at sea that stretches back to the 16th century and would no doubt have given a good account of themselves if the balloon went up, quantity is a quality of its own.

By 5 August 1962, the Netherlands finally recognized the Indonesia’s claim to Western New Guinea in the New York Agreement — without the big Russian cruiser having to fire a shot or even sail through the disputed waters. In October, a UN peacekeeping force arrived to effect the transfer.

To make it official, on 24 January 1963, Ordzhonikidze was decommissioned by the Soviets and five days later handed over to the Indonesian Navy who promptly commissioned her as the Kapal Republik Indonesia (Republic of Indonesia Ship) Irian (C201), becoming the fleet’s instant flagship.

On May 1, Indonesia officially annexed Western New Guinea as Irian Jaya, the nation’s 26th province, while the ship of the same name sat at anchor offshore as cement to the deal, bringing His Excellency President Dr. Ir. H. Sukarno to the islands for the occasion.

However, KRI Irian‘s continued service was limited at best, especially with the crisis abated.

Soon after her transfer, she suffered a collision with a submarine and then an escorting destroyer within weeks. In November 1963, six of her boilers were destroyed after being used improperly while underway, effectively crippling her as a warship less than a year after her transfer.

Irian slowly made for Vladivostok as soon as that port was clear of ice in the Spring of 1964 and spent the summer there being overhauled by the Soviets, who were reportedly shocked at how bad she had deteriorated in her short time with the Indonesians.

On a lighter note, they were surprised to see the officer’s wardroom had been converted to a chapel, something that had been banned on Soviet ships since 1922.

Escorted back to Surabaya by a Red Navy destroyer and fleet tug, Irian resumed operations in August 1964, which primarily consisted of leaving port every few months for a couple of days then heading back to the dock.

The next year, with Sukarno not needing outside muscle against the Dutch anymore, death squads liquidated Indonesian communists with the help of lists gathered by the CIA and Soviet support for their weapons vanished.

By 1967, Irian was in poor shape again and a new leader, Gen. Suharto, an Army man with a dim view on naval affairs and an even dimmer one on human rights turned the deteriorating former Soviet cruiser into a floating prison ship for his opponents.

This went on for a few years, and with the possibly of the Irian sinking at her moorings, she was beached on a sandbar in 1970. Sometime after this Soviet “tourists” came aboard and removed/destroyed sensitive equipment. Two years later she was sold for scrap to a Taiwan concern, where no doubt any secrets the ship had that the U.S. didn’t know about already were revealed.

In all, she lived just over 10 years and to this day was the largest warship the Indonesian navy operated, sticking with small (under 3,000-ton) frigates and corvettes since then.

I can find no remnants of the big cruiser on public display.

Of Irian’s 13 completed sisters, most remained in Soviet service until the end of the Cold War though their usefulness in naval battle in the age of anti-ship missiles and combat jets was questionable, even though several were equipped as missile slinging hybrids. Stricken when the Wall came down, they were quickly (or in the case of sistership Murmansk, not so quickly) scrapped.

Just one remains– Mikhail Kutuzov, preserved as a museum ship in Novorossiysk, part of the last Russian presence on the Black Sea, where she sits as an important reminder to the Ukrainians of Tsar Putin’s reach.

Mikhail Kutuzov museum ship

As for the frogman Crabb, he is remembered by a monument at Milton Cemetery, Milton Road, Portsmouth, though it is still not clear how he disappeared.

Finally, in Papua/Irian, a local insurgency against the Indonesian authorities that began in 1963 continues to this day.

Specs:

In Indonesian service, via Shipbucket

Displacement: 13,600 tons standard, 16,640 tons full load
Length: 210 m (689 ft. 0 in) overall, 205 m (672 ft. 7 in) waterline
Beam: 22 m (72 ft. 2 in)
Draught: 6.9 m (22 ft. 8 in)
Installed power: 6 boilers, 118,100 shp (88,100 kW)
Propulsion: 2 shaft geared steam turbines
Speed: 32.5 knots (60.2 km/h; 37.4 mph)
Range: 9,000 nautical miles (17,000 km; 10,000 mi) at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Complement: 1,250
Armament:
12 × 152 mm (6 in)/57 cal B-38 guns in four triple Mk5-bis turrets
12 × 100 mm (3.9 in)/56 cal Model 1934 guns in 6 twin SM-5-1 mounts
32 × 37 mm (1.5 in) anti-aircraft guns
10 × 533 mm (21 in) torpedo tubes
Armour:
Belt: 100 mm (3.9 in)
Conning tower: 150 mm (5.9 in)
Deck: 50 mm (2.0 in)
Turrets: 175 mm (6.9 in)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday June 15, 2016: It’s you, you’re the rocket mail

Source: NARA San Francisco, Mare Island Naval Shipyard Ship Files. USN photo # NY9-27726-1-56

Here we see a port-quarter view the Balao-class diesel electric submarine USS Barbero (SS/SSA/SSG-317) at Mare Island on 18 January 1956. Though she served a hair over 20 years in the fleet, not a very long time at all, her appearance and mission morphed numerous times.

A member of the 128-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato-class. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, were ‘fleet’ boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their 4-inch/50 caliber and 40mm/20mm AAA’s. The also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

We have covered a number of this class before, such as carrier-sinking USS Archerfish the long serving USS Catfish and the frogman cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Laid down 25 March 1943 at General Dynamics Electric Boat, Groton, Connecticut, the hero of our tale, Barbero, was commissioned 13 months later on 29 April 1944, T/Cdr. Irvin Swander Hartman, USN, in command.

I can’t find a good wartime profile of Barbero, but here is her most excellent sistership USS Baya SS-318 in 1944, who was built the same week she was, for reference

Transiting the Panama Canal, Barbero arrived at Pearl and departed on her first war patrol 9 Aug 1944, headed for the Philippine Sea.

The only Japanese warship she spotted, an armed trawler in San Bernardino Strait, escaped harm but Hartman surfaced his boat and plastered the occupied Batag Island lighthouse over two nights 23/24 September, firing 58 rounds of 4-inch and some 40mm from a range of just 4,500 yards, peppering the keeper’s structures and extinguishing the light.

The Batang Island light today

Barbero departed on her second war patrol 26 Oct 1944 from Freemantle, Australia and made for the South China Sea where on 2 November she attacked a transport and two escorts with seven torpedoes in a six-hour long running battle, in the end sinking the Japanese army cargo ship Kuramasan Maru (1995 GRT, built 1927) in Makassar Strait in position 04°30’S, 118°20’E.

She followed this up a week later by splashing the merchant tanker Shimotsu Maru (2854 GRT, built 1944) in the South China Sea about 250 nautical miles west of Manila in position 14°32’N, 116°53’E.

Barbero closed out her patrol on the holidays with a sinking on Christmas Eve– the submarine chaser Ch-30 (built 1942) in the South China Sea in position 02°45’N, 110°53’E– and on Christmas itself of the transport Junpo Maru (4277 GRT, built 1911) about 30 nautical miles west-south-west of Kuching, Borneo in position 01°10’N, 108°20’E.

While returning to Freemantle, Barbero was attacked on the surface by aircraft and damaged, put out of action for the rest of the war, arriving at Portsmouth Navy Yard in May 1945 for repairs and refit. She won two battle stars for her brief wartime service.

With the end of the conflict, the need for a scratch and dent sub, though with low miles on her, was little, so she was placed in commission in reserve, 25 April 1946 at Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California.

There, Barbero was converted to an experimental cargo submarine (redesignated SSA-317) complete with forward and aft cargo booms.

The Navy had used submarines extensively to resupply Corregidor in early 1942 and the idea was that such a conversion could prove useful in the future– especially in resupplying isolated outposts and islands. For this conversion she landed most of her deck guns and achieved a more streamlined topside.

USS BARBERO (SSA-317) Caption: Off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California, September 1948, following conversion to a cargo carrier. Catalog #: NH 90818

Using sling and cargo boom to lower cargo into LVT from Barbero (SSA-317) on 10 March 1949. USN photo # 80-G-422914 by PFC William R. Keating, from NARA, College Park, Maryland, courtesy of Sean Hert via Navsource

So converted, she was one of the first submarine force units to operate in the Arctic when in 1950 sistership USS Perch (APSS 313), and Barbero, conducted a joint reconnaissance patrol and simulated amphibious raid in Bering Sea.

Perch, photographed from Barbero.

Returning from the Arctic, her conversion proved unsuccessful and she was decommissioned, 30 June 1950 then laid up.

Barbero (SS-317), pre 1950, place unknown note modifications

In 1955, Barbero was the second of her class to be picked for conversion to a floating missile slinger (redesignated SSG-317), firing the immense 42-foot long SSM-N-8A Regulus submarine-launched, nuclear-armed turbojet-powered cruise missile.

Capable of carrying a Mark 5 nuclear bomb (120kt yield) or a ton and a half of high explosives, this updated buzz bomb could fly 600 miles and was reasonably accurate for the era.

An enormous hangar was built on her stern that held two of the big missiles and a trolley ramp to accommodate their undercarriage. Likewise, her aft tubes were removed to help trim weight.

Barbero (SSG-317) with a Regulus missile exiting from launcher.

Recommissioned 28 October 1955, she embarked on life anew.

Barbero spent the next three years in the Atlantic performing deterrence patrols. Before moving to the Pac in 1959, she was designated an official U.S. Post Office for a brief experiment in Missile Mail.

You read that right.

On 8 June 1959, off the northern Florida coast Barbero fired a red-painted training Regulus towards an impact zone at Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Mayport, Florida loaded with some 3,000 canceled pieces of mail. Just 22 minutes later, the inert missile landed on a cleared runway 100 miles away and its warhead compartment, containing officially marked Postal Service containers, was removed intact.

“Missile Mail” Regulus 1 fired from Barbero

Regulus I missile landing at Mayport, Florida

Reporters and photographers patiently wait the removal of the first Missile Mail from Regulus. The missile was fired from USS Barbero (SS 317) and landed Mayport, Florida

U.S. Postmaster Gen. Summerfield removes mail from Regulus I after flight

Letter carrier Noble Upperman places first guided missile letters in mailbag as other postal officials look on. Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield is to the right of Upperman holding the bag. The Regulus Missile fired from USS Barbero (SS 317) landed at Mayport, Florida. NHHC Photograph Collection, L-File, Weapons.

President Eisenhower (left) receives Regulus I mail from DC letter carrier Noble Upperman the day after the flight while PMG Summerfield (middle) looks on

Barbero‘s footnote in postal history complete, she chopped the Pacific where she conducted regular deterrent patrols until Regulus was retired in 1964 in favor of the new Polaris SSBNs.

With her reason for being gone and the Rickover Navy full steam ahead for atomic boats, the thrice-commissioned Barbero passed once again into mothballs on 30 June 1964 and was stricken the next day.

She was disposed of by the submarine USS Greenfish (SS-351)—a sistership– off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 October 1964.

Barbero remains the only ship in the fleet every named for the humble surgeonfish.

Few artifacts remain from her, though a special exhibit at the Smithsonian remembers her Missile Mail experience. It was the only time U.S. Mail has been delivered by missile.

Philatelic Cover from USS Barbero (SS 317) commemorating the first Missile Mail, complete with canceled postmark made aboard the sub. The missile was fired from USS Barbero (SS 317) and landed at Mayport, Florida. Courtesy of the National Postal Museum, Smithsonian.

Although she is no longer afloat, eight Balao-class submarines are preserved (for now) as museum ships across the country.

Please visit one of these fine ships and keep the legacy alive:

-USS Batfish (SS-310) at War Memorial Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
–USS Becuna (SS-319) at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
–USS Bowfin (SS-287) at USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park in Honolulu, Hawaii.
–USS Clamagore (SS-343) at Patriot’s Point in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. (Which may not be there much longer)
–USS Ling (SS-297) at New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack, New Jersey. (Which is also on borrowed time)
–USS Lionfish (SS-298) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
-USS Pampanito (SS-383) at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California, (which played the part of the fictional USS Stingray in the movie Down Periscope).
–USS Razorback (SS-394) at Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Specs:

Displacement, Surfaced: 1,526 t., Submerged: 2,424 t.
Length 311′ 10″
Beam 27′ 3″
Draft 15′ 3″
Speed, Surfaced 20.25 kts, Submerged 8.75 kts
Cruising Range, 11,000 miles surfaced at 10kts; Submerged Endurance, 48 hours at 2kts
Operating Depth Limit, 400 ft
Complement 6 Officers 60 Enlisted
Armament, (as built) ten 21″ torpedo tubes, six forward, four aft, 24 torpedoes, one 4″/50 caliber deck gun, one 40mm gun, two .50 cal. machine guns
(Regulus conversion)
1 × Regulus missile hangar and launcher
2 × Regulus I missiles
6 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes (forward)
14 torpedoes
Patrol Endurance 75 days
Propulsion: diesels-electric reduction gear with four Fairbanks-Morse main generator engines., 5,400 hp, four Elliot Motor Co., main motors with 2,740 hp, two 126-cell main storage batteries, two propellers.
Fuel Capacity: 94,400 gal.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Geoffrey Stephen Allfree

Born 11 Feb 1889 in Kent, England, to the Rev Francis Allfree– the vicar of the Parish of St Nicholas-at-Wade and Sarre, young Geoffrey Stephen Allfree embarked on a career as a merchant mariner until 1911 when he took up painting.

He volunteered to take the King’s Schilling at the outbreak of war in 1914 as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Reserve and served several years in motor launches. By 1918, he was named a war artist and covered a number of maritime subjects of the Great War.

The Wake of a P-boat. A view from the stern of a patrol boat of the waves and spray created by the boat as it moves across the surface of the water. Another vessel is visible in the patrol boat’s wake..IWM ART 563

A Monitor’s Turret. A detailed side-on view of the two-gun turret of a Monitor, with part of the ship’s superstructure visible behind the turrent to the left. A portion of the deck is visible, with a sailor standing on it in the right foreground. The silhouettes of buildings are visible in the background, showing that the Monitor is moored in a dock. IWM 564

Submarines In Dry Dock. a view of two Royal Navy submarines being refitted in a dry dock. The foremost submarine is shown from the bow, whilst the second, to the left, is shown from the stern. Both are supported by scaffolding and struts. Men work on the deck and hull of the foremost submarine, with a few men also standing on the floor of the dry dock. IWM 777

HMS Revenge in Dry Dock, Portsmouth, 1918. A view of the looming bow of the Royal Navy battleship HMS Revenge whilst undergoing maintenance in dry dock at Portsmouth. The huge ship is tethered to the dockside and supported against the side of the dock with large struts. The lower half of the hull, usually below the water level, is a rusty orange color. Only the tallest part of the ship’s superstructure is visible at the top of the composition. The lead ship of her class of 5 30,000-ton modern battleships, Revenge was commissioned in 1916, just before the Battle of Jutland and survived both World Wars, going to the breakers in 1948. IWM 765

HMS Revenge In Dry Dock At Night, Portsmouth The Work was Continued through the Night by the Aid of Huge Flares. IWM 761

A Monitor. A front-on view of a large Monitor at sea, with its two-gun turret facing towards the bow. Parts of the ship’s superstructure are painted in a chequered pattern. A number of sailors are visible standing on deck and there is a stationary gun platform visible in the background to the left. IWM 568

Dazzled Tramp In Portsmouth Harbour. a view of the starboard side of a dazzle camouflaged Merchant Navy transport ship, which is moored in Portsmouth harbour. IWM 793

A Torpedoed Tramp Steamer off the Longships, Cornwall, 1918. A tramp-steamer in dazzle camouflage keeled over to port and grounded on a cliff-lined Cornish beach. A heavy sea flecked with foam washes over the wreck, while a stormy sky passes overhead. Shafts of sunlight illuminate the sea and cliffs with an unearthly glow. The remains of an earlier wreck can be seen stranded on the point in the upper left. IWM 2237.

HMS Iron Duke. The ship is starboard side on, steaming from left to right with a smaller ship in front of the battleship’s bow. The lead ship of her 29,000-ton class, Iron Duke was commissioned into the Home Fleet in March 1914 as the fleet flagship, fought at Jutland, and made it through WWII to be broken in 1946. IWM149.

A Dazzled Oiler, With Escort. A large dazzle-painted oiler at sea being escorted by a smaller vessel, with the white chalk cliffs of the coastline visible in the background. IWM 567.

Motor Launches Engaging a Submarine. A motor launch at full steam, moving from right to left, with her bow lifting out of the water. Two figures on the deck are manning a light gun. Another motor launch is visible just behind. Both are moving quickly towards a German submarine that has surfaced, in the background to the left. The artist served in motor launched throughout the war, even while in work as a war artist, so this image was real life for him. IWM 148

His work included very popular if stark memorial art to the loss of the cruiser HMS Hampshire

Speaking of loss, the artist was killed at age 29 during the war when on 29 Sept 1918– just six weeks before the Armistice– his craft, HM Motor Launch No. 247, was lost at sea.

From the IWM:

A four boat flotilla of Motor Launches had entered St Ives Bay for shelter during a strong southerly gale, which rapidly escalated to hurricane force winds. In the eye of the storm,the Motor Launches started engines and tried desperately to work their way into deeper water. Allfree’s launch developed engine trouble, one mile off Clodgy Point and started to drift helplessly towards Oar Rock. The St. Ives’ lifeboat raced to reach the stricken ship, but arrived minutes too late by which time the launch had blown up on impact with the rock, presumably as its depth charges detonated. There was only one survivor.

He is commemorated on a brass tablet in St Nicholas’ church as well as on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

A number of his pieces are in the National Collection in the UK and displayed at various public locations while the Imperial War Museum has some 53 on file and keeps a detail of his own biography as part of their Lives of the First World War series.

Thank you for your work, sir.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday June 22, 2016: A hard luck mini battlewagon

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 46708. Colorized by irootoko_jr.

Here we see the proud Mississippi-class battleship Lemnos, sometimes spelled Limnos (Greek: Θ/Κ Λήμνος) of the Royal Hellenic Navy at Constantinople, Turkey, probably in 1919. The Greek torpedo boat Dafni (completed 1913) is alongside.  At the time this image was taken she had but 15 years on her oldest keel plate and another 22 years of service ahead of her.

First, let us talk about her background.

Authorized under the Naval Budget of 1903, the two-ship Mississippi-class battlewagons were the last predreadnought battleships to be designed for the U.S. Navy and were a compromise design aimed at saving money while still being able to compete with the British, French, Germans and, increasingly, Japanese on a global scale.

Smaller than the 16,000-ton Connecticut-class that preceded them, the Misssip‘s were squatty 13,000-ton ships with roughly the same armament (4x 12″/45 caliber Mark 5 guns in a pair of twin turrets) but could carry more rounds per tube (71 vs the Connecticuts‘ 60) and could be built for about 70 percent of the price. However, they were slower (just 17 knots compared to 18.85), and even if coal was wedged in every nook and cranny (which could lead to fire and explosions) they could only steam 5,800 nautical miles at 10 knots whereas some of the Connys could go 7,590nm.

And of course, when HMS Dreadnought was commissioned 2 December 1906, every battleship in every navy around the world was obsolete.

When meant that when the Greek battlewagon of our tale, which started off as USS Idaho (Battleship #24), Mississippi‘s sistership, was commissioned after construction at William Cramp and Sons on 1 April 1908, she was already second-class at best.

At best.

Still, Idaho was beautiful and new and the Navy had fun showing her off to the citizens of the country in the days of the Great White Fleet.

Idaho in 1909 just after commissioning. NH 60214 Naval History and Heritage Command. Both ships of this class initially carried a pole mast above the conning tower as shown in the plans above this photo, though shortly after commissioning, both ships had lattice masts added aft, and in 1910, the forward masts were replaced with lattice masts. Also note the elegant white and buff scheme, similar to that of the Great White Fleet that she was built too late for, that she carried for just a few months.

Figurehead, USS IDAHO Caption: Photographed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 June 1909. Description: Presented by information section, O.N.I., 1927. This was soon removed in the effort to make the fleet more battle-ready, but I cannot find what happened to it. Most of these ornate crests were donated to state legislatures or kept by the Navy and used to adorn bases. Catalog #: NH 115210

Idaho (Battleship # 24) Photographed summer 1909 by Brown & Shaffer. Note how she is now wearing haze gray and her figurehead shown above is removed. Collection of Chief Quartermaster John Harold. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 101497

Idaho joined the giant international naval review that was Hudson-Fulton in New York City from 25 Sept- 9 October 1909 upon the Hudson River just after greeting the Great White Fleet at Hampton Roads upon their return to U.S. waters.

Idaho (Battleship # 24) In the Hudson River off Fort Lee, New York, 1909. Photographed by William H. Rau. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

Then the 1911 Naval Review

USS IDAHO (BB-24) Off New York City, 3 October 1911, during the naval review with Grant’s Tomb visible just over her port side. Note she now has two lattice masts rather than the single aft one shown above. Catalog #: 19-N-13812 National Archives

And the 1912 Naval Review

USS Idaho (Battleship # 24) Dressed with flags during the Naval Review off New York City, October 1912. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. The number 30 is her place in the review.

In fact, in the 6.3 years of semi-active service she gave her nation, Idaho‘s only tense times were a trip right after she was commissioned to Panama where she observed the elections there and then in the summer of 1913 when she was in Mexican waters for the near constant series of crisis during that country’s revolution and civil wars.

Idaho did embark mids and naval militia on training cruises, wave the flag in Europe, and even sail as far up the Mississippi River as Vicksburg– possibly the last battleship to do so.

Still, in a move to make way for newer, larger dreadnought-style vessels, Asst. Scty of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to put enough pressure on to get rid of the low-mileage Idaho and her sister Mississippi by selling them to Greece amid the growing crisis in Europe that would bloom into World War I– making them the largest warships the Hellenic Navy ever operated.

The Greek battleline at the time consisted of the Italian-made Pisa-class armored cruiser Georgios Averof (10,200-tons/4×9.2-inch guns) and their elderly French-built ironclads: Hydra, Spetsai, and Psara– which were exceptionally small at just 5,300-tons, lightly armed (3x 10-inch guns) and slow (16 knots).

In a capital move, Greece paid $12,535,275 for the two American battleships– their full building cost.

So in effect, the U.S. got a  refund on the vessels when they transferred on 30 July 1914. Further, the funds were used to construct the New Mexico-class super-dreadnought, Idaho (BB-42), which at the time was unfunded by Congress.

Class leader Mississippi was renamed Kilkis after the crucial battle of the Second Balkan War, while Idaho became Limnos in honor of a victorious naval battle over the Turkish Navy during the First Balkan War.

Can you tell who Greece’s main rival was at the time?

Cruiser Averoff outboard with Kilkis (ex-Mississippi) who has a very dark new scheme and Lemnos (ex-Idaho)

Greece’s World War I record was spotty and the French disarmed the two battleships in 1916 just to be on the safe side, reducing their crews and impounding their shells, breechblocks, rangefinders and torpedoes. However, after a change of government, the Greeks were allowed to rearm and nominally served in the Aegean in the last months of 1918– keeping an eye on the Turks.

Greek predreadnought battleship Kilkis (former USS Mississippi), Grand Harbour, Malta 1917.

After the end of the war, Lemnos penetrated the Straits with the Allies and remained in and out of the Black and Marma Seas supporting Allied Intervention Forces in South Russia and the general occupation effort in rapidly imploding Turkey.

Speaking of which, both ships became very active once Greece and Turkey went to war in May 1919 and remained that way for the next three years.

Lemnos (Greek battleship) Firing a salute to U.S. Navy Admiral Mark L. Bristol, at Smyrna, Turkey, 15 September 1919. Lemnos is flying the U.S. and Greek flags at the foremast peak and the Italian flag at the mainmast peak. A British D-class light cruiser is in the right distance, also with the Italian flag at the mainmast peak. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

Lemnos Dressed with flags at Smyrna, Turkey, in 1919, possibly on 15 September. She is flying the Greek flag at the foremast peak and the Italian flag at the mainmast peak. Photographed by Wayne. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.Catalog #: NH 46707

The two battleships helped in the occupation and then evacuation of Smyrna in the disaster following the Greek collapse and their skippers cast their lot with the uprising by the Greek army and navy against the government in Athens in Sept 1922 that effected regime change by forcing the unpopular King Constantine I to abdicate and leave the country, with a military junta ruling the country until early 1924, shortly before the Greek monarchy was abolished and the Second Hellenic Republic established.

After 1932, Lemnos landed most of her guns, turrets and even a good bit of her armor plate, which were utilized as coastal defense batteries around island straits and choke points in Greek waters for another couple of decades (more on this below). She remained afloat with her likewise mothballed but sill armed sistership, being utilized for barracks, receiving and depot duties until World War II.

When the Germans busted through Greece in April 1941, both ships were found at anchor in shallow water at Salamis near Athens by Luftwaffe Ju-87 Stukas and were plastered.

German footage of Lemnos foreground and Kilkis background under attack 23 April

Photo #: NH 77440 Greek battleships Kilkis and Lemnos sunk in the basin of the Greek naval base at Salamis after they were hit by German air attacks on 23 April 1941. Seen from the harbor pier following the arrival of the German army. Kilkis, the former USS Mississippi (Battleship # 23), is in the foreground. Lemnos, ex-USS Idaho (Battleship # 24), is in the distance, with her guns removed. Franz Selinger, via the U.S. Naval Institute, provided photograph and some caption information. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

Battleship Kilkis sunk, German aerial photo. Note she still has her guns. Those on Idaho/Lemnos were removed before the war for use ashore.

Both ships remained on the bottom and they were broken up after the war.

But what of the guns we mentioned above?

The twin 12 inch (305mm) turrets from the Lemnos were installed in the 1930s at Cape Tourlos (37.767069, 23.554406) on the island of Aegina where they helped to defend the approaches to the port of Athens.

Captured by the Germans in 1941, they were manned by Marineartillerieabteilung 603 (MKB Ägina-Nord) until October 1944 and– along with the 19 152mm guns manned by the Italians on the island of Leros– helped proved the basis for the fictional “Guns of Navarone” by the Scottish writer Alistair MacLean, though in the book they were described as 280mm railway guns.

The emplacements (less guns) appear to be still visible on Google Earth. Idaho‘s 8″ and 7″ guns were likewise scattered and, knowing the Germans, may have been relocated anywhere in Festung Europa.

While it’s possible some of Idaho‘s guns and armor are somewhere in a forgotten coastal defense battery long since left to ruin, items left in the States from these briefly-used ships are slim.

The silver service and ship’s figurehead shield from the Mississippi are in downtown Jackson at the Magnolia State’s Capitol.

Idaho‘s Tiffany & Co. presentation silver service, seen below in a 1912 photo, went on to serve on the Greek-funded USS Idaho BB-42 and was turned over to her namesake state in 1942 to prevent it from being lost during WWII. It had been paid for by a $7,500 allocation by the legislature in Boise and presented by Gov. Hawley to BB-24 some four years after she was commissioned.

I can only assume it is somewhere in Boise, hopefully on display.

The USS Idaho website remembers all ships of that name.

Specs:

As built, U.S. service, image via Shipbucket

In Greek service, image via Shipbucket

Displacement: 13,000 long tons (13,200 metric tons); 14,500 full load
Length:     382 ft. (116 m)
Beam:     77 ft. (23 m)
Draft:     24.7 ft. (7.5 m)
Speed:     17 kn (20 mph; 31 km/h)
Range:        1,900 nm at 10 knots with standard 600t coal bunkerage. When overloaded with 1,800 tons could make 5,800
Complement: 34 officers and 710 enlisted in U.S. service. Unknown in Hellenic service.
Armament:     (As commissioned, largely disarmed 1932)
4 × 12 in (305 mm)/45 caliber Mark 5 guns (2×2)
8 × 8 in (203 mm)/45 caliber guns (4×2)
8 × 7 in (180 mm)/45 caliber Mark 2 guns
12 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 caliber guns
2 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor:
Belt: 7–9 in (178–229 mm)
Barbettes: 6–10 in (152–254 mm)
Turret (mains) 8–12 in (203–305 mm)
Turret (secondary): 7 in (178 mm)
Conning tower: 9 in (229 mm)

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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Lighting it up, 72 years ago on this day:

(IWM Photo)

Starboard 4-inch (102 mm) Mk XVI dual purpose guns of the Town-class light cruiser HMS BELFAST (C35) open fire on German positions around Ver-sur-Mer on the night of 27 June 1944. Just weeks before on D-Day, she was  flagship of Bombardment Force E, supporting troops landing at Gold and Juno beaches. Her first target was the German gun battery at La Marefontaine and fired some 5,000 shells over the course of the month– the vibration cracking the crew’s toilets.

Commissioned 5 August 1939, Belfast enjoyed just under a month of peacetime service before Britain entered WWII and went on to provide 24 years of hard service to HM’s Royal Navy.

Her honours include:
Arctic 1943
North Cape 1943
Normandy 1944
Korea 1950–52

She has been on exhibit, maintained in conjunction with the Imperial War Museum, at The Queen’s Walk, London, since 1978.

Her motto:  Pro Tanto Quid Retribuamus

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday June 29, 2016: Greely’s last hope

Library of Congress LC-DIG-det-4a14781

Here we see the gunboat USS Thetis, a 189-foot, 1,250-ton barquentine-rigged sealer and whaler constructed with a reinforced hull for operations in ice, purchased by the Navy for the Greeley relief expedition, for which it had been so employed about a decade before the above image was taken.

What was the Greely expedition?

Officially dubbed the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, it was a wholly U.S. Army (Signal Corps) backed endeavor led by 1st Lt. Adolphus Greely (5th U.S. Cav), and numbered some 20 officers and enlisted men along with tag along civilians astronomer Edward Israel and Dr. Octave Pavy; joined by two Inuit dogsled drivers/hunters, Frederick Thorlip Christiansen and Jens Edward.

Embarked on the charted merchant ship SS Proteus (formerly a steam sealer hired by the War Department), the expedition was one of science and not warfare with its members dressed in civilian mufti for press photographs.

The expedition…. via NOAA G2V1-040-B

Proteus Photo: NOAA

The hardy and rather dapper group set sail for the Far North, being disembarked by Proteus at Lady Franklin Bay near the northeastern shore of Ellesmere Island 11 Aug 1881 to establish a meteorological-observation station as part of the First International Polar Year from where they would winter over and collect weather and geophysical information (as well as push as far north as possible).

Two men, 1SG David Legge Brainard, late of the 2nd Cavalry and the Nez Perce War, and Lt. James Booth Lockwood, pushed the furthest north that any expedition until then ever had. Suffering through average temperatures of -75 degrees, violent storms and rough ice, they reached latitude 83 degrees 30′ North, within 350 miles of the North Pole, the farthest north ever reached by man. A silk U.S. flag made by Mrs. Greeley was unfurled on land they named Lockwood Island. Their record stood for 13 years until Norwegians Fridtjof Nansen and Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen reached latitude 86°14′ N.

As time wore on, shit got real, with 1882 coming and going and no resupply ship able to reach the expedition. This led to a rescue mission the next year.

Proteus, placed under the command of young Army 1st Lt. Ernest Albert Garlington (USMA 1876 and later a MOH recipient), attempted to retrieve Greely and company in 1883 along with the yacht Yantic, but failed dramatically when the big sealer was crushed in the ice. They had left New York with 50,000 rations and had only succeeded in landing 1,000, some of which Greely later found at Cape Sabine.

However, the rations would not be enough and the expedition wound up eating bird eggs, moss, seals, tiny shrimp, their dogs, their shoes, and any other thing they could (more on this) to keep alive as madness, scurvy and frostbite set in.

Then, with 1884 rearing its head with the prospect of our desperate Army meteorologists and civilian experts (whose contracts had expired and really wanted to go home) becoming popsicles or polar bear scat, the Navy stepped in.

Which brings us to Thetis.

The Scottish firm of Alexander Stephen & Sons Ltd., Greenock, was renowned at the time for being a global leader in the craft of large ocean-going sealers and whalers. One hull, the 198-foot/703-ton sealer Bear, was completed by the firm in 1874 and had been operating out of St. Johns, Newfoundland for a decade when the U.S. Navy bought her up for use in helping to rescue the Greely expedition.

Another Alexander Stephen & Sons’ vessel, the brand new and slightly larger sealer, Thetis, was just finishing her fit out in Dundee and purchased by the Navy 2 February 1884 to accompany Bear as the flag of the mission. She was a beautiful and very functional vessel with a strengthened wooden hull capable of operating in light ice conditions in the days before dedicated icebreakers.

Thetis put into New York for a very brief militarization and was ready for service as a commissioned warship within weeks.

USS THETIS at New York Navy Yard, 1 May 1884. Description: Courtesy of Ray Spear Catalog #: USN 900793

Commanding Officer, Commander Winfield Scott Schley’s cabin on the USS THETIS, May-June 1884. Description: Catalog #: USN 900624

Hold of the relief ship USS THETIS showing the method of providing against an ice crush, 1884. Description: Catalog #: USN 900625

With the two-ship expedition placed under the command of CDR. Winfield Scott Schley (later to become a hero and Rear Admiral for his actions at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba in 1898), they set out from New York on 11 May 1884.

USS THETIS leaving New York Navy Yard, 11 May 1884. Description: Courtesy of Ray Spear Catalog #: USN 900798

Bow of the USS THETIS, Eskimos with their dogs, sleds, and a seal, during the Greely relief expedition in Greenland, May-June 1884. Description: Collection of Mr. Ray Spear, 1933 Catalog #: NH 1724

Thetis, Royal Navy steam sloop HMS Alert mislabled as “Arctic,”  British merchantman Aurora and USS Bear threading their way through the ice. The two British ships, not ice strengthened, only went part of the way and were used to set up supply dumps to support Bear and Thetis in the extrication of Greely and his men

Crewmembers of USS THETIS at the time of the North Pole Expedition, 1884 Description: Courtesy Capital Gazette Press, INC., Annapolis, MD Catalog #: NH 119220

CDR Schley (4th from left) and his officers on Thetis June 1884

May – August 1884 USS Thetis (1884-1899) in the ice off Horse Head Island, Greenland on 4 June 1884, early in the search for survivors of the Greely polar exploration party. USS Bear (1884-1885, later AG-29) is astern (at left). U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 2145

Bird’s eye view from the crow’s nest of the USS THETIS of the USS BEAR among the ice floes, 22 June 1884. Description: Courtesy of Ray Spear Catalog #: USN 900738

USS THETIS plows through ice by use of a torpedo (mine) explosion off Waigat Straits, Greenland, 4 June 1884. USN 900610

The way was hazardous as there was much more ice back in the 19th century and today’s satellite and aerial survey was not available. Nevertheless, the two ships along with a pair of Royal Navy vessels in partnership poked through some 1,400 miles of ice, sometimes having to blow a course through the pack until on 22 June, near Cape Sabine in Grinnell Land, Schley rescued Greely and his six remaining emaciated companions who were sheltering in a broken down tent.

That’s right. Just seven of 25 were taken alive from the frozen wasteland after 34 grueling months in the inhospitable North. The dead had succumbed to starvation, hypothermia, drowning, and other perils.

Greely himself, who enlisted in the 19th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment at the age of 17 during the Civil War and had over two decades of legit campaigning under his belt, was a task-maker and conducted a 3-man firing squad execution of at least one private (Charles B. Henry, the heaviest man on the expedition) who proved an incurable food thief.

Portrait of Survivors of the Greely Relief Expedition, on board USS THETIS, at Cape Sabine on July 4-8, 1884. Caption: Survivors are shown on board the USS THETIS, at Cape Sabine on July 4-8, 1884. Back row, left to right: Private Francis Long, Sergeant Julius R. Frederick, Private Maurice Connell, Hospital Steward Henry Bierderbick. Seated, left to right: Sergeant David L. Brainard and Lieutenant A.W. Greely (not facing the camera).  A seventh survivor was languishing below decks and would die before making Portsmouth. Description: Catalog #: NH 2146

Then came the 1,400-mile trip back through the same ice.

One of the seven rescuees, Sgt. Joseph Ellison, who was recovered from Cape Sabine missing a foot and a finger, died 16 days later while at a weight of just 78-pounds.

Then soon after the expedition made Portsmouth, there were allegations of cannibalism.

Second in command 2nd Lt. Frederick F. Kislingbury, a Little Big Born survivor who died of starvation (and whose fork is in the Smithsonian), was found to have his cadaver  “methodically carved” postmortem.

From the New York Times, 12 August 1884:

When their food gave out the unfortunate members of the colony, shivering and starving in their little tent on the bleak shore of Smith’s Sound were led by the horrible necessity to become cannibals. The complete history of their experience in that terrible Winter must be told, and the facts hitherto concealed will make the record of the Greely colony — already full of horrors — the most dreadful and repulsive chapter in the long annals of arctic exploration.

As noted by the Army in their official history, all was forgiven due to the circumstances:

Criticized at first, Greely was eventually absolved of blame and recognized for his accomplishments. In 1886, he received the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London and the Roquette Medal of the Societe de Geographie of Paris. In 1923, the American Geographical Society awarded him the Charles P. Daly Medal.

As for the Thetis, and Bear for that matter, the Navy had little continued use for ice-strengthened rescue ships from Scotland in a time when every dollar counted so both were laid up rapidly after their return from the Arctic. Thetis, her total time of active service in the Navy being just over nine months, was decommissioned 26 November 1884 and laid up at New York.

Refitted for work as a gunboat to include mounting a single Hotchkiss 53mm 5-barreled revolving cannon forward (the largest gatling gun model ever made), she was recommissioned 15 Jan 1887.  This gun appeared to be the only one in federal service for a time so you can call her armament unique.

Detail of the gatling gun from the LOC photo that is the first one of this post above

Thetis then sailed from New York to San Francisco on a leisurely eight-month low budget patrol during which she stopped at most of the large Latin American ports and waved the flag.

Then came three lengthy summer survey patrols along the Alaskan coast, which took her as far as Point Barrow and Cape Sabine– where she had rescued Greenly and his men a few years before. Pressed into work as a gunboat, Thetis sortied to El Salvador to babysit American interests there during an attempted coup in July 1890, which lasted several months.

Then came more Alaska surveys, a trip to Hawaii in 1892, and a four-year period conducting coastal surveys off the Mexican Pacific coast, going out of commission in 1897.

Transferred to the Revenue Cutter Service as USRC Thetis in 1899– after landing her peculiar 53mm gatling gun for a more appropriate trio of 3-Pdr (47mm) singles– she served out of Seattle where she sailed on the Bering Sea Patrol along with her old Greely companion USRC Bear.

Eagle? Is that you? Note her scheme has change to Revenue Cutter Service standard white and buff

While stationed there, Thetis cruised the Bering Sea for the “protection of seal fisheries,” assisted vessels in distress, and carried officials from a U.S. District Court to become a “floating court.”

c. 1901 Broadside view of USRC Thetis at Pt. Barrow Donated to Mare Island Shipyard in 1987 by 2nd LT Francis R. Shoemaker Mare Island photo PG Thetis Pt. Barrow 1901-01 via Navsource

For many years, the Revenue Service was the sole source of Federal authority in the territory, including seven years when the Treasury Department was given charge of the rugged landmass. Duties of these vessels and men included protection of sealers and whalers, providing general police protection, and emergency operations.

One of the more unusual tasks Thetis performed was importing 81 Siberian reindeer to provide a food staple for starving Eskimos and she had an abundance of mascots aboard.

Officers of the Cutter THETIS circa 1904. Note the distinctive USRCS shields on their uniforms, modified M1852 Naval officer’s swords and the dog at their heels

Mascot of the Revenue Cutter Thetis, somewhere up in Alaska in 1913. As the dog has 10 years of service marks, providing they aren’t in dog years, it may be the one in the photo above.

Probably the largest mascot that ever served in the Coast Guard. Here is an unnamed black bear, another mascot of the cutter Thetis, taking a break from duty– sleeping on a block of ice

In May, 1904, Thetis sailed from Seattle to Honolulu, dropped off supplies for the station at Midway, and then continued to Lisianski Island. At Lisianski, 77 Japanese feather hunters were found illegally killing terns and gooney birds. These trespassing Japanese aliens were apprehended and transported to Honolulu.

c. 1905 USRC Thetis in Hawaiian waters Donated to Mare Island Shipyard in 1987 by 2nd LT Francis R. Shoemaker. Note the new pilothouse. Via Navsource

Thetis contiued operations in Hawaiian waters where she investigated poaching by Japanese fishermen and transported officials of the Department of Agriculture who were studying bird populations. For the remainder of her career she shipped between Hawaii and Alaska, continuing duty as a floating court (with a U.S. District Court judge, assistant U.S. Attorney, deputy U.S. Marshall, clerk and a stenographer aboard) and investigating bird reservations throughout the Pacific, including making voyages to Midway Island and even serving as a tour boat to take the territorial governor around on goodwill visits.

Thetis was decommissioned 30 April 1916 after some 32 years of U.S. maritime service equally split between the Navy and Revenue Service.

She was sold in June to the W&S Job Co, NY, NY for $24,800 and used as a Newfoundland-based sealer until 1950 when the old girl was grounded approximately 2 miles from St. Johns and broken up, seven decades on her keel.

Today, one of the few relics of her on public display is the oddball 53mm Hotchkiss she carried from 1887-99, preserved at the Mare Island Shipyard Museum.

USS Thetis’s 53mm Hotchkiss 5-Barrel Revolver Gun, Mare Island Shipyard, by Vladimir Yakubov

Thetis, of course, was named for a sea nymph of Greek mythology who was the daughter of the sea god Nereus and the mother of the Trojan War hero Achilles. While the first Navy or Coast Guard ship to carry the name was our crush-proof sealer/rescue ship/gunboat/cutter, it would not be the last in either service.

The Navy commissioned USS Thetis (SP-391), an armed 100-ton yacht during WWI and kept her on the Navy List until 31 March 1919; then in 1944 commissioned the escort carrier USS Thetis Bay (CVE-90/CVHA-1/LPH-6) which remained in service through 1964.

USS Thetis Bay pictured underway transporting PBY Catalinas and other aircraft in need of repair to Alameda,CA. July 8,1944

For the Coast Guard’s part, they celebrated their former Revenue Marine Cutter with the 165-foot patrol cutter Thetis (WPC-115) who served from 1931-47 and chalked up at least one German U-boat during WWII as well as the more modern 270-foot medium-endurance cutter USCGC Thetis (WMEC- 910) which has been based out of Key West since 1989.

USCGC Thetis (WMEC-910) docked in the La Puntilla USCG base in San Juan, Puerto Rico

As for Greely and his expedition, he went on to become head of the Signal Corps, led the government’s responce to the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, retired as Maj. General, was issued a MoH for lifetime achievement, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Of the other survivors, many were active in exploration the rest of their lives:

• 1SG David L. Brainard went on to serve throughout the Spanish-American War, wrote two books about the expedition, and was the last member of the group to die in 1946. Rising to Brig. Gen., he was U.S. military attaché in Buenos Aires then Lisbon, Portugal during the Great War.
• Hospital Steward Henry Bierderbick was active in the National Geographic Society, Explorers’ Club, and the Arctic Club until his death on March 25, 1916 and wrote several scholarly works about the polar region.
• Pvt. Julius Frederick named his daughter Thetis and worked for the Weather Bureau for years.
• Pvt. Francis Long would later join the Baldwin-Ziegler Expedition, which would attempt to reach the North Pole.
• Pvt. Maurice Connell continued working for the Weather Bureau well into the 20th century after his retirement from the Signal Corps.

The expedition, gathering three years of met data in the far North at a time when none existed, produced a wealth of information that is still proving useful today.

“We are now using [Greely’s] data to understand how global warming happens,” says historian Michael Frederick Robinson, “to understand how the climate has changed over the last hundred years.”

A memorial placed in 1923 by the National Geographic Society near the site of the Greely Expedition’s landing on Pim Island endures.

Image via Wiki

Then of course, there is the Bear, but that is another story…

Specs:

Displacement: 1,250 tons
Rig: Barquentine
Length: 188′ 6″
Beam: 29′
Draft: 17′ 10″
Machinery: Compound-expansion steam
Propellers: 1
Armament:
(As commissioned)
Small arms and mines
(USN, 1887-97)
1x53mm Hotchkiss 5-barreled gatling gun
(USRM)
3 x 3-pounder 47mm rapid-fire guns

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 6, 2016: Of British frogmen and Japanese holy mountains

Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter

Here we see His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Ship Takao, the leader of her class, who would go on to fight giants only to be crippled by midgets.

Beginning in the 1920s, the Imperial Japanese Navy had progressed from their traditional enemies– the Chinese, Russians, and Imperial Germans– to the prospect of taking on the British and Americans in the Pacific. This led to new battleships and carriers.

To screen these ships, heavy cruisers were needed. This led to the eight ships that included the 9,500-ton Furutaka-class, 8,900-ton Aoba-class, and 14,500-ton Myōkō-class heavy cruisers built between 1925-29. Building on the lessons learned from these, the Navy ordered four impressive 15,490-ton Takao-class ships, each mounting 10 20 cm/50 3rd Year Type naval guns (the heaviest armament of any heavy cruiser in the world at the time) and buttressed by up to five inches of armor plate.

Bow turrets of Takao about 1932. Via Navweaps

Capable of making 35+ knots, these were bruisers and if their main guns did not catch you then their eight tubes of Type 90 (and later Type 93) torpedoes would.

Laid down at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 28 April 1927, class leader Takao was named after the holy mountain in Kyoto which is home to the Jingo-ji temple that dates back to the 9th Century.

She was commissioned 20 May 1932 and soon three sisters followed her into service.

IJN heavy cruiser Takao as published in The Air and Sea Co. – The Air and Sea, vol.2, no.6 1933

Japanese heavy cruiser ship: H.I.J.M.S. TAKAO Catalog #: NH 111672

May.11,1937 Takao class Heavy-cruiser Takao at Sukumo Bay. Note her extensive bridge and mast location. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter

Proving top-heavy, Takao and to a lesser degree her sisters were modified by having their bridge reduced, main mast was relocated aft, and hull budges added to improve stability.

World War II era recognition drawings, showing the configuration of Takao (1932-1945) and Atago (1932-1944), as modernized in 1938-39. The original print came from Office of Naval Intelligence files. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 97770

July 14, 1939 Takao-class Heavy cruiser “Takao” on sea trials at Tateyama after reconstruction. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter

1939 Yokosuka

Takao cut her teeth patrolling off the coast of China during military operations there and on Dec. 8, 1941 fired her first shots in anger against Americans when she plastered the shoreline of the Lingayen Gulf on Luzon in the Philippines.

Moving into the Dutch East Indies operating with Cruiser Division 4, she quickly sank five Dutch merchantmen, the British minesweepers HMS Scott Harley and M-51, the Clemson-class destroyer USS Pillsbury (DD-227) with all hands, and the Royal Australian Navy sloop HMAS Yarra in the first part of 1942.

During the Battle of Midway, Takao and her sister Maya took part in the diversionary task force to capture Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians.

November 1942 found her off Guadalcanal with Adm.Nobutake Kondō’s task force built around the battleship Kirishima, Takao and her sister Atago, light cruisers Nagara and Sendai, and nine destroyers. There they collided with TF-64 under Admiral Willis A. Lee made up of the new battleships USS Washington (BB-56) and South Dakota (BB-57), together with four destroyers.

By Lukasz Kasperczyk

In the ensuing melee, Takao hit SoDak multiple times with shells, knocking out her radar and fire controls and fired Long Lance torpedoes at Washington but missed. Kirishima sank and the battle was a strategic victory for Halsey and the U.S. fleet.

For the next year, she spent her life on the run, hiding from the ever-increasing U.S. submarine force while she helped evac Guadalcanal and hid out at Truk. During the war her armament and sensor package changed a number of times (as evidenced by the plans under the specs section below).

In Nov. 1943 Takao was shellacked by SBDs Dauntless from USS Saratoga, dodged torps from USS Dace the next April, then sucked up two torpedoes from USS Darter that October which left her unable to do much more than limp around the ocean at 10-knots.

By Halloween 1944, Takao was the last of her class. Sisterships Atago, Maya and Chokai were all sunk (two by submarines) within the same week during the Battle of Leyte Gulf/Samar by U.S. forces.

A wreck, by Nov. 1944 she was largely immobile at Singapore, afloat with nothing but a skeleton crew on board and no ammunition for her large guns. Her value strictly as a floating and heavily camouflaged anti-air battery.

Crucero Takao en 1945 – Lukasz Kasperczyk

She was joined there by Myōkō, who like Takao and the rest of the available Combined Fleet, had participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf which left her with an air-dropped torpedo in her hull and another, picked up from the submarine USS Bergall as the heavy cruiser staggered off to Southeast Asia, left her irreparable at Singapore without more materials, and impossible to tow to Japan.

Operation Struggle

During the war, the British built a more than two dozen 54-foot long X/XE/XT-class midget submarines. Capable of just a short 24-36 hour sortie, they had to be launched close to their target (think SMS Tirpitz) by a tender ship and, after penetrating an enemy harbor, frogmen would attach demo charges to ships belonging to the Emperor or Der Fuhrer.

They carried a crew of four: typically a Lieutenant in command, with a Sub-Lieutenant as deputy, an Engine Room Artificer in charge of the mechanical side and a Seaman or Leading-Seaman. At least one of them was qualified as a diver.

In January 1945, the converted freighter HMS Bonaventure (F139) set sail for the Pacific with six XE-type submarines on her deck, arriving at Brisbane, Australia on 27 April– as the European war ended. The first action these Lilliputian subs saw was in an attempt to cut the Japanese underwater telegraph lines off Borneo.

In Hervey Bay, Queensland, XE3 prepares for trials July 1945

Warming up for more daring missions, the Brits launched Operation Struggle in August in which Bonaventure sailed for the coast near Singapore and launched HMS XE1 and XE3 into the waves with a mission to sink the (already busted) Japanese cruisers Myōkō and Takao respectively. Escorted closer by the S-class submarine HMS Stygian, the tiny XE boats took all afternoon and night to penetrate the harbor defenses.

Lieutenant Ian Edward Fraser RNR, commanded the three-man crew inside XE-3 when they found Takao, then lying in the Johore Straits to guard the entrance to occupied Singapore, and what he saw was surreal.

The plates of the hull and the rivets of the big cruiser could be seen very clearly through the porthole of XE-3 in the 18-feet of seawater between the bottom of the ship and the mud. One side tank held 2-tons of amatol high explosive, the second one held six 200-pound limpet mines, and Fraser held two “spare” limpets in the casing of the midget sub.

After setting all of their charges, Fraser surfaced the tiny sub not too far off from the cruiser so the crew could see the vessel for what they thought was the last time, “I thought they might like to see it,” he said in a post-war interview.

Six hours later the charges tore a gaping hole in the cruiser’s hull, putting her turrets out of action, damaging her range finders, flooding numerous compartments and immobilizing the cruiser for the remainder of the war. She settled six feet six feet deeper into the harbor though her 01 deck was still above water even at high tide and was still technically afloat.

Both Magennis and Fraser gained the Victoria Cross for this hazardous mission, with the other two crew members also decorated ( Sub-Lieutenant William James Lanyon Smith, RNZNVR, who was at the controls of XE3 during the attack, received the DSO; Engine Room Artificer Third Class Charles Alfred Reed, who was at the wheel, received the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal).

James Magennis VC and Ian Fraser VC WWII IWM 26940A

A week later, after aerial recon showed the Takao was still in the harbor– though nearly on the bottom of it– Fraser and his crew were readying a second go round on the ship and the Myōkō that was postponed by the dropping of the A-bomb and then later canceled once the surrender was announced.

This, Fraser said, made him a big fan of the Bomb and left him with a rough attitude towards Japanese.

Both Myōkō and Takao surrendered to the British when they arrived in Singapore in force on Sept. 21 as part of Operation Tiderace, and when the RN got a closer look at the two found out the truth about their condition.

Fraser even returned to inspect the Takao in Singapore himself just after the end of the war. The beaten cruiser, however, would never see Japan again. She was patched up and scuttled 27 October 1946 by British Forces, with the Crown Colony-class light cruiser HMS Newfoundland (59) sending her into very deep water by the judicious use of naval gunfire and torpedoes– likely one of the last time a cruiser used a torpedo on another.

Her crew was repatriated to Japan in 1947.

As for XE-3, she was scrapped along with most of the other British midgets with only XE8 “Expunger” saved and put on public display at the Chatham Historic Dockyard.

For Takao, little remains.

A 1930 1:100 scale builder’s model of the Takao, captured in Japan in 1945, is in the collection of the Naval History and Heritage Command and has been displayed off an on for generations.

Catalog #: NH 84079. Note her original mast and bridge.

Takao has, however, inspired a number of pieces of naval art, mainly for model covers over the past several decades.

In the UK, the Imperial War Museum has the frogman swim suit worn on by Leading Seaman James Joseph Magennis RN, VC when as the diver of the midget submarine XE3 (commanded by Lieutenant Ian Edward Fraser RNR) he attached limpet explosive charges to the hull of  ‘Takao‘, as well as a white IJN captain’s field cap recovered from the vessel.

The IWM also has a 1980 interview with XE 3 skipper Lt. Comm. Ian Fraser, V.C., D S.C. that includes his own account of the Takao strike (reel 2 and 3).

He wrote a book about his WWII exploits, which is long out of print but is still very much in circulation.

Specs:

Takao’s ever-changing plans via shipbucket

Displacement:
9,850 t (9,690 long tons) (standard)
15,490 t (15,250 long tons) (full load)
Length:
192.5 m (632 ft.)
203.76 m (668.5 ft.) overall
Beam:
19 m (62 ft.)
20.4 m (67 ft.)
Draft:
6.11 m (20.0 ft)
6.32 m (20.7 ft.)
Propulsion:
4 shaft geared turbine
12 Kampon boilers
132,000 shp (98,000 kW)
Speed: 35.5–34.2 knots (65.7–63.3 km/h; 40.9–39.4 mph)
Range: 8,500 nautical miles (15,700 km; 9,800 mi) at 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph)
Complement: 773
Armament:
Original layout:
10 × 20 cm/50 3rd Year Type naval guns (5×2)
4 × Type 10 12 cm high angle guns (4×1)
8 × 61 cm torpedo tubes (4×2)
2 × 40 mm AA guns (2×1)
2 x 7.7 mm Type 92 MG (2×1)
Final Layout (Takao):
10 × 20 cm/50 3rd Year Type naval guns (5×2)
4 × Type 89 12.7 cm (5 in) dual-purpose guns, (4×1)
66 × Type 96 25 mm (1.0 in) AA guns (26×1, 12×2, 24×3)
4 × Type 93 13.2 mm (0.5 in) AA machine guns
Type 93 torpedoes (4×4 + 8 reloads)
depth charges
Armor:
main belt: 38 to 127 mm
main deck: 37 mm (max)
upper deck: 12.7 to 25 mm
bulkheads: 76 to 100 mm
turrets: 25 mm
Aircraft carried:
One Aichi E13A1 “Jake”
Two F1M2 “Pete” seaplanes
Aviation facilities: 2 catapults

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 13, 2016: The tale of the pre-owned polar sub

Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1978 #: NH 86969

Here we see the O-class diesel-electric submarine USS O-12 (SS-73) at the Lake Torpedo Boat Co., Bridgeport, Connecticut, on 7 October 1918, just prior to her completion. Although her Naval service during the Great War and immediately after was limited, her mark on history was not.

The U.S. Navy, dating back to the Revolutionary War’s Turtle and the Civil War’s Alligator, was a world leader in submarine development.

Starting with the 64-ton gas/electric USS Holland (SS-1) in 1900, the Navy proceeded with the 7-vessel Plunger-class; 3-ship Viper/B-class; 5-ship Octopus/C-class (the first United States submarines with two-shaft propulsion and an overall length longer than 100-feet); 3-ship Narwhal/D-class (designed to survive flooding in one compartment); 2-ship E-class (first US diesel-powered submarines and first with bow-planes); 4-ship F-class; 4-ship G-class; 9-ship H-class; 8-ship K-class; 11 L-class boats (first US submarine class equipped with a deck gun); the unique M-1 (world’s first double-hulled design); 3 large 1,500-ton AA-1-class boats capable of 20-knots; and 7 smaller N-class boats (first US Navy submarine class completed with metal bridge shields) by 1917.

In all, some 67 submersibles built in less than two decades, with each teaching a lesson.

This led to the most capable class of U.S. Navy subs commissioned in World War I, the O-class.

Originally designed to fight off German U-boats along the East Coast, the boats of this class were not gigantic (500-600 tons, 173 feet oal) but had a decent 5,500 nm range and could carry 8 torpedoes as well as a deck gun. Laid down in five different yards (and two slightly different designs, one by Electric Boat the other by Lake) on both coasts starting in March 1916, all 16 were completed in 1918.

Built for $550,000 each, they were the first U.S. boats with really reliable diesel engines as well as the first in which each officer and man had his own berth and locker (even later designs would require “hot-bunking” well into the 1970s)

Wartime service on the O-class as limited, with two being shelled by an armed British steamer who thought them to be U-boats being the closest they came to combat.

The hero of our tale, USS O-12, was laid down at the Mr. Simon Lake’s Torpedo Boat Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut and commissioned 18 October 1918.

USS O-12 (SS-73) Photographed as she left her dock at the Lake Torpedo Boat Co., to start her official trials, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 21 August 1918. Note damaged bridge in background. #: NH 44559

Made part of Submarine Division 1, she was sent with several sisters to secure the Panama Canal, where she spent almost all of her U.S. Naval career.

USS O-12 (Submarine # 73) At Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone in February 1920. Donation of Lieutenant Gustave Freret, USN (Retired), 1971. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 74644

“O” Class Submarines photographed in Panama by A.E. Wells of Washington, D.C., circa 1919, with S.S. SOTHERLAND in background. Subs are (l-r): O-12 (SS-73), O-15 (SS-76), O-16 (SS-77), O-14 (SS-75), O-13 (SS-74), O-11 (SS-72).#: NH 44558

Submarines O-12, O-14, O-11, and others in dry-dock circa 1919 with floating Derrick No. 5 (YD-5). Description: Courtesy Philadelphia evening ledger. #: NH 42566

On 17 June 1924, after just a few years in commission, she was pulled from service along with all of her Lake Torpedo Boat Company design sisters, replaced by newer R and S-class submarines. Meanwhile nine of her Electric Boat designed classmates continued service (one, USS O-5, was lost in a collision 28 October 1923).

Rusting away in Philadelphia, O-12 was stricken on 29 July 1930 and was soon leased for $1 per year (with a maximum of five years in options) to Lake’s company for use as a private research submarine– as far as I can tell the first time this occurred. As part of the lease, she was disarmed and had to be either returned to the Navy or scuttled in at least 1,200 feet of water at the conclusion of her scientific use.

Australian explorer and man of letters Sir George Hubert Wilkins, MC & Bar, and American polar explorer and philanthropist Lincoln Ellsworth (whose family bankrolled Roald Amundsen’s 1925 attempt to fly from Svalbard to the North Pole) hammered out a deal to use the retired sub on a private trip to the North.

Simon Lake was all-in, and made tremendous modifications to the ex-O-12.

Cutaway illustration of the O-12/Nautilus for Modern Mechanics magazine, 1931

The prow of the submarine was equipped with a rounded plunger, which served as extra protection while diving under the ice. Her topside structure cleared for operating under ice, she was outfitted with a custom designed drill that would allow her to bore through ice pack overhead for ventilation and even transfer crew through the pack.

Elevating conning tower showing crewman exiting through tube on to ice

All 18 crewmembers–mostly ex-Navy men– had to sign a contract indemnifying Lake, the submarine’s skipper Sloan Danenhower and the Expedition against damages, including particularly claims for death.

Jean Jules Verne, grandson of Jules Verne, author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was present at christening, at the invitation of Lake, and the ship was named Nautilus. She was christened with a bucket of ice cubes.

Ellsworth contributed $90,000 to the project while newspaper tycoon Randolph Hearst added $61,000 for exclusive rights to the story. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute pitched in $35,000 and even Wilkins chipped in $25,000 of his own money. There were also a number of moneymaking tie-ins.

During the expedition, special radio telegrams were sent as were a series of 12,655 postal covers (mailed during the voyage at London, Bergen, Spitsbergen and from an unidentified port at the end of the expedition. The basic fee was 75 cents per cover for the first three legs, $1 for the final leg with additional fees for registry service and autographs.)

However, things started going bad almost immediately.

A June 1931 crossing to Europe almost ended in failure had Nautilus not been towed by the battleship USS Wyoming in the mid-Atlantic and emergency repairs in England. Setting out from Norway in August, they only had 600 miles to go to reach the Pole and make history.

Nautilus in the dry dock in Devonport, England undergoing repairs to the engines and other items things that failed during the first part of the voyage

Nautilus reached 82°N, the farthest north any vessel had reached under its own power, and preparations began to dive –first submarine to operate under the polar ice cap.

Captain Sloan Danenhower opening the conning tower hatch following a dive. A huge cake of ice can be seen jammed on the main ice drill

The Nautilus in the Arctic, 1931.

The thing is, she was missing her diving planes, suffering from mechanical issues, facing thicker ice than anticipated and fighting severe storms and by September had to turn back for Spitsbergen and then Norway, for repairs, without ever reaching the Pole.

In Bergen

There in Norway, Wilkins threw in the towel on Nautilus and agreed with the Navy to sink her in deep water outside Bergen, which was done 30 November 1931.

Her wreck, in over 1,100 feet of water, was found in 1985 and has been visited several times since then. In good condition, the Bergen Maritime Museum has an extensive exhibit on her though there are no plans to raise this world’s first Arctic submarine.

As for her sisters, the five other Lake designs were scrapped in 1930, USS O-9 (SS-70) and her 33 officers and men was lost on a test dive in 1941, and seven Electric-design classmates served through World War II at New London training thousands of students at the Submarine School, being scrapped in 1946. Few enduring relics remain of the class.

The Ohio State University Libraries have an extensive online exhibit on Nautilus as does PigBoats.com from which many of the images in this post originate. Dr. Stewart B. Nelson has a great post covering the vessel and her discovery here while the Universal Ship Cancellation Society Log details the philately history of the Nautilus covers in a way far outside the scope of this post.

Wilkins’ 1931 book “Under the North Pole: the Wilkins-Ellsworth Submarine Expedition” is available for download free online in multiple formats.

After his death, the Navy later took his ashes to the North Pole aboard the submarine USS Skate on 17 March 1959. The Navy confirmed on 27 March that, “In a solemn memorial ceremony conducted by Skate shortly after surfacing, the ashes of Sir Hubert Wilkins were scattered at the North Pole in accordance with his last wishes.”

Specs:

Simon Lake’s O-12 (SS-73) retained his trademark stern and amidships planes (shown folded down in the outboard view). Note the separate flooding ports in the watertight superstructure. Drawing by Jim Christley, text courtesy of U.S. Submarines Through 1945, An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman. Naval Institute Press. Via Navsource

O-12 (SS-73) was discarded in 1930 to be rebuilt by Lake & Danenhower Inc., of Bridgeport CT., for the Wilkins Artic expedition. Lake had long thought about submarine operations under ice; in 1903, he built a trestle atop his Protector and deliberately operated her in iced waters. The Nautilus conversion, shown here, was far more sophisticated. Drawing by Jim Christley, text courtesy of U.S. Submarines Through 1945, An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman. Naval Institute Press. Via Navsource

Displacement:
491 long tons (499 t) surfaced
566 long tons (575 t) submerged
Length: 175 ft. (53 m)
Beam: 16 ft. 7 in (5.05 m)
Draft: 13 ft. 11 in (4.24 m)
Propulsion:
Diesel-electric
2 × 500 hp (373 kW) Busch Sulzer diesel engines
2 × 400 hp (298 kW) Diehl electric motors
1 shaft
18,588 US gallons (70,360 l; 15,478 imp gal) fuel
Speed:
14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph) surfaced
11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph) submerged
Test depth: 200 ft (61 m)
Complement: 2 officers, 27 men (Naval service), 20 scientists, explorers, and crew in civilian
Armament: (Disarmed 1930)
4 × 18 in (457 mm) torpedo tubes, 8 torpedoes
1 × 3″/50 caliber deck gun

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 20, 2016: The Majestic, if unlucky, Aussie flattop

Here we see the lead ship of the Majestic-class of British Royal Navy carriers, the HMAS Melbourne (R21) with Gannets and Sea Venoms ranged on deck, early during her career in the Royal Australian Navy.

She was one of 16 planned 1942 Design Light Fleet Carriers for the RN. This class, broken up into Colossus and Majestic-class sub-variants, were nifty 19,500-ton, 695-foot long carriers that the U.S. Navy would have classified at the time as a CVL. They were slower than the fast fleet carriers at just 25-knots with all four 3-drum Admiralty boilers were lit and glowing red, but they had long legs (over 14,000 miles at cruising speed) which allowed them to cross the Atlantic escorting convoys, travel to the Pacific to retake lost colonies, or remain on station in the South Atlantic (Falklands anyone?) or Indian Ocean for weeks.

Capable of carrying up to 52 piston engine aircraft of the time, these carriers had enough punch to make it count.

The thing is, only seven of these carriers were completed before the end of World War II and even those came in during the last months and weeks. They effectively saw no service. Laid down beginning in 1942, most of the ships were launched and afloat in 1945 but when the war ended, construction was canceled.

That’s what happened to the hero of our tale, HMS Majestic, which was laid down at Vickers-Armstrongs, Barrow-in-Furness in April 1943, around the time of the invasion of Sicily, though work stopped on her floating hull in 1945.

Fast-forward ten years.

With the Post-WWII Royal Navy not having a need for 16 flash new oceangoing landing strips, they kept a few, then started selling off the rest. Three went to Canada, one to France, one to Holland, one to India, others were scrapped.

Of the Colossus/Majestic, light carriers, three– Majestic, Vengeance and Terrible— were transferred to Australia as HMAS Melbourne, HMAS Vengeance, and HMAS Sydney, respectively.

Completed after a dozen years in the builder’s yard, Melbourne was commissioned 28 October 1955 and had the benefit of an angled reinforced flight deck, steam catapult, beefed up arrester gear and a mirror landing aid added during her time under construction– in effect, updating her WWII design to operate jet aircraft.

Gannet landing on Melbourne

Once received, the RAN gave HMAS Vengeance back to the Brits who sold her to Brazil as the Minas Gerais and passed Sydney into use as a training vessel and transport, comfortable with operating just Melbourne as a fleet carrier and flagship, carrying the flag of a rear admiral while in commission.

Taking her name from one of the first ships of the Australian Navy, in this case a WWI cruiser, Melbourne sailed from Glasgow for Australia on 11 March 1956 with 808 Squadron (Sea Venom all-weather fighters) and 816 & 817 Squadrons (Gannet anti-submarine aircraft) embarked, a total of some 64 aircraft packed aboard.

Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne greets her Hawaiian hosts. Pearl Harbor 1958 note 9 Gannets on stern

For the next several years, she participated in regular South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) exercises and operations that took her all over the Pacific. During one cruise in 1958, she clocked more than 25,000-nautical-miles alone.

HMAS Melbourne conducting damage control drills off Thistle Island, Spencer Gulf, SA, 3 March 1960. She would need them in the future.

In 1963, due to budget constraints, the Sea Venoms and Gannets began to retire, replaced eventually with A-4G Skyhawks, S-2 trackers (whose wingspan was only three feet less than her flight deck width) and Westland Wessex anti-submarine helicopters.

On 17 March of that year, Melbourne celebrated her 20,000th landing when Lieutenant Ryland Gill, RAN, landed his Gannet on board.

HMAS Melbourne, HMAS Vendetta (D08), HMAS Voyager (D04) and HMAS Quiberon (G81) sailing alongside each other. Voyager and Melbourne would soon meet again under less happy conditions

Tragedy struck on 10 February 1964 when, Melbourne was performing trials in Jervis Bay and collided with the Daring-class destroyer HMAS Voyager while zigzagging, which left the smaller warship cut in two and sinking, taking 82 lives with her in just 10 minutes.

Bow of HMAS Melbourne after the collision with HMAS Voyager

A Royal Commission ultimately found that Melbourne‘s skipper was unfit to command for medical reasons while an earlier Commission held that Voyager was primarily at fault for failing to maintain effective situational awareness.

After repairs, Melbourne returned to sea on 11 May 1964.

Soon she became involved in the periphery of the Vietnam conflict, with some of her Skyhawk crews training to fly on combat missions there from bases in Thailand, though they ultimately were not used. She escorted her sister Sydney on several trips to Vietnam carrying Australian troops to the war zone. It should be noted that between 1962-75 some almost 60,000 Australians, including ground troops and air force and navy personnel, served in Vietnam; 521 died as a result of the war and over 3,000 were wounded.

It was during that conflict that Melbourne was involved in a repeat of the Voyager incident when on 3 June 1969, while participating in SEATO exercise Sea Spirit in the South China Sea, she collided with USS Frank E. Evans (DD-754), slicing the vessel in two in the dark and killing 74 of her crew.

Evans, her stern cut away, post-collision

A joint RAN–USN board of inquiry found officers on both ships to blame. The Wessex unit onboard, 817 Squadron RAN, was later awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for their rescue efforts in the aftermath of the event.

Repaired, Melbourne undertook regular ANZUK, RIMPAC and SEATO exercises as well as waved the flag extensively around the Pacific. At one point in 1974, she even embarked a US Coast Guard Sikorsky HH 52 Seaguard helicopter for a time in the spirit of jointness.

National Salutes exchanged as Melbourne enters Manila Bay at 0850, 22 May 1969 prior to anchoring at 0900. she would keep her WWII-era Bofors, though reduced in number, until her decommissioning

A-4G Skyhawks conduct a low flypast 2 September 1971.

S-2 landing HMAS Melbourne. Via the STOOF Facebook page. Note how big the S-2 is on M’s bow.

RAF Avro Vulcan makes a low pass over HMAS Melbourne (R21) during Exercise Bersatu Padu, South-East Asia 1970.

HMAS Melbourne on RIMPAC ’73– look at those Skyhawks!

Her hangar deck– note the Scooter and Wessex

With Vietnam coming to a close, Melbourne‘s sister and the only other Australian flattop at the time, Sydney, was decommissioned 12 November 1973 and sold for scrap two years later. That largely disarmed carrier conducted some 25 voyages to Vietnam between 1965 and 1972, earning the ship the nickname “Vung Tau Ferry” after the RVN port she called at so regularly.

When 1977 came, the aging Melbourne took a trip to the land of her birth, passing through the Indian Ocean and the Med to the UK where she participated in Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee– shadowed off and on by Soviet intelligence ships who came danger close at times.

HMAS Melbourne note how big those S-2 trackers are

Sept.1977 HMAS MELBOURNE [II] and escorts HMNZS CANTERBURY and HMAS BRISBANE

HMAS MELBOURNE SPITHEAD REVIEW JULY 77

HMAS Melbourne celebrates the silver jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 1977.

By the 1980s, her days were clearly numbered. Almost all of her sisters had gone to the breakers already with only the Argentine Navy’s ARA Veinticinco de Mayo (ex-HMS Venerable), Brazil’s Minas Gerais (ex-HMS/HMAS Vengeance) and the Indian Navy’s Vikrant (ex-HMS Hercules) still afloat.

Tracker 848 about to take the wire aboard HMAS Melbourne, 1980 the USN had retired trackers in 1976. Look how broad that wingspan is.

HMAS Melbourne (R21) at Honiara, Solomon Islands. 1st of April 1980. note Skyhawks on deck

HMAS Melbourne (R21) note Sea King on deck

The plan at the time was hatched for Australia to buy the new British “Harrier carrier” HMS Invincible, then under construction, as Melbourne’s replacement.

HMAS Melbourne was decommissioned on 30 June 1982, having spent 62,036 hours underway and steamed 868,893 nautical miles in her 27 years with the RAN.

However, with the Brits finding HMS Invincible newly useful during the Falkland Islands War, the deal fell through and Australia has been without a carrier for the past 34 years. The last Australian A-4G flights took place on 30 June 1984 followed the next week by the last S-2G.

The stricken Melbourne was initially sold in June 1984 to an Australian company for A$1.7 million, however the sale fell through, and the next year she was sold to a Chinese company for A$1.4 million to be broken up for scrap metal in the port of Dalian, China.

Though her rudders were welded in place and all sensitive gear removed, the Chinese still got more than some scrap iron and asbestos out of her. During a painstakingly slow disassembly over the next 15+ years, the Chinese reportedly made extensive notes on her construction and steam catapult and landing systems as first steps towards their own carrier program. Reportedly, the Chinese Navy reverse-engineered a land-based replica of Melbourne‘s cat by 1987 and has used it in a series of trials of their own carrier-based aircraft.

The PLAN further compared the 1940s British design to that of the 1970s Soviet helicopter carriers Kiev and Minsk, purchased in the 1990s as floating amusement parks for tourists, to help with their own best practices in flattop construction moving forward.

As for the Australians, the name Melbourne was recycled for the Oliver Hazard Perry/Adelaide-class frigate HMAS Melbourne (FFG 05) that entered service in 1992.

A vibrant veterans group for all ships of that name exists as does a very in-depth page maintained by the RAN from which a number of these images originate.

In the U.S., Melbourne‘s legacy is remembered by the veterans of the Evans and the survivors of those who were lost. The Department of Defense has agreed to review a request from families of 74 U.S. Navy sailors to add their names to the national Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall.

The USS Frank E Evans Association keeps that vessel’s story alive.

In 2012, the Australian government issued a formal and official apology to Melbourne Capt. John Stevenson, who was in charge of the vessel during the Evans collision saying he was “not treated fairly” by the government of the day and the Australian Navy.

All of the Colossus/Majestic class carriers are now gone, with INS Vikrant, saved briefly as a museum ship, scrapped in 2014, ending the era of these light carriers.

However, Australia’s two Canberra-class landing helicopter docks, 30,000-ton ships larger than Melbourne and Sydney ever were by far, are envisioned to be capable of handling the F-35B with some modifications and Prime Minister Tony Abbott instructed 2015 Defence White Paper planners to consider the option of embarking F-35B squadrons aboard the two ships, though at present it seems unlikely.

Specs:

Displacement:
Standard: 15,740 long tons (17,630 short tons)
Full load: 20,000 long tons (22,000 short tons)
Length:
213.97 m (702 ft.) overall
Increased by 2.43 m (8 ft.) in 1969
Beam: 24.38 m (80 ft.)
Draught: 7.62 m (25 ft.)
Propulsion: Two Parsons single-reduction geared turbine sets; four Admiralty 3-drum boilers; two screws (port: 3 blade, starboard: 4 blade); 40,000 shp (30,000 kW)
Speed: 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph)
Range:
12,000 nautical miles (22,000 km; 14,000 mi) at 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph)
6,200 nautical miles (11,500 km; 7,100 mi) at 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph)
Complement: 1,350, including 350 Air Group personnel
Sensors and processing systems:
Radar:
1955–1968:
3 × Type 277Q height finding set
1 × Type 293Q surface search set
1 × Type 978 navigational set
1969–1982:
1 × Type 293Q surface search set
1 × Type 978 navigational set
1 × LW-02 air search set
1 × SPN-35 landing aid radar
Armament:
1955–1959:
25 × 40 mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns (6 twin mountings, 13 single mountings)
1959–1968:
21 × Bofors (6 twin, 9 single)
1969–1980:
12 × Bofors (4 twin, 4 single)
1980–1982:
4 × Bofors (4 single)
Aircraft carried: Up to 27 aircraft, including helicopters.
Typical airgroup 1956-1965: 8 Sea Venoms, 16 Gannets, 2 Sycamore helicopters
Typical airgroup 1965-1972: 4 Skyhawks, 6 Trackers, 8 Wessex
Typical airgroup 1972-1984 : 8 Skyhawks, 6 Trackers, 8 Sea Kings, 3 Wessex
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

23 May 1928-CGC Haida and the USLHT Cedar rescued 312 passengers and crew from the sailing vessel Star of Falkland near Unimak Pass, Alaska after Star of Falkland had run aground in the fog the previous evening. Both the cutter and the tender managed to save all but eight from the sailing vessel. This rescue was one of the most successful in Coast Guard history and was also one of the few instances where the Coast Guard and one of its future integrated agencies worked together to perform a major rescue.

Colorised photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

HMS Hermes was laid down at Vickers-Armstrong on 21 June 1944, two weeks after the Allies stormed ashore at D-Day. She was the last of the quartet of Centaur-class carriers whose construction was started. Originally to be named HMS Elephant, she picked up the messenger of the gods moniker of the old carrier (Pennant #95) sunk by the Japanese in 1942.

Only finished on 18 November 1959 (after 15 years at the builders) with a much-altered plan that included an angled flight deck to allow the operation of jet-powered aircraft at sea, and carried the RN Ensign for a very solid three decades. She carried the 63 foot long, 30-ton Blackburn Buccaneer–which was the same size as the later F-14 Tomcat and could carry up to 6-tons of ordnance including the British Red Beard or WE.177 tactical nuclear bombs to a range of some 2,300 nautical miles, only she did so off a tiny deck compared with U.S. super carriers.

During the Falklands, Hermes did the bulk of the heavy lifting as the flagship of Rear Adm. Sandy Woodward’s Task Force 317.8 for the war and it was her Harriers, along with HMS Invincible‘s that prosecuted the airwar.

Refitted, she was sold to India in 1987 and took the name INS Viraat (R22) and, home ported in Mumbai, she has served the Indian Navy for 29 continuous years, undergoing a further five refits while in Indian service. While in Indian service, INS Viraat – the Grand Old Lady, as she was fondly referred to – spent 2,250 days at sea covering 1.09 million kms — or encircling the globe 27 times.

The last British-built ship serving the Indian Navy, INS Viraat was the star attraction at the International Fleet Review held in Visakhapatnam in February this year. Her last Sea Harrier, (White Tigers in Indian service), flew from her deck on May 6, and was given a formal farewell at INS Hansa, in Goa two days later.

She sailed under her own power for Kochi on Saturday, her last voyage as a warship.

There, her sensitive and usable equipment will be removed over the next two months. Afterwards, she will be towed back to her base in Mumbai, for formal decommissioning, the date of which has not been finalized.

The Indians are trying to keep her as a museum ship, and two cities, Goa and Visakhapatnam are vying for her, which is a good thing.

With a total of 57 years of active service in two fleets, she beats out the longest serving U.S. carriers: USS Lexington (CV/AVT-16) which put in 48 years; and USS Enterprise (CVN-65) which put in 50. Even USS Midway (CVB/CVA/CV-41), commissioned in 1945 and struck in 1997 though decommissioned five years before that, only served 52 years if you count her time on red lead row.

Plus Hermes/Viraat‘s hull actually has another 15 years on it before she was even commissioned, so there is that.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.
– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 27, 2016: The RNs factory for curiosities in gun-mountings

Via IWM

Here we see the Powerful-type first-class protected cruiser HMS Terrible during her brief career, decked in a tropical white scheme that she used around 1900. Although beautiful in her own respect as a late 19th Century brawler, it was the use of her guns ashore that brought her lasting fame.

Built to rule the waves as independent units capable of raiding enemy merchant ships in time of war– while safeguarding HMs own from the enemy’s similar raiders– the Powerfuls were a two-ship class of very large cruisers with lots of coal bunkerage that enabled them to sail 7,000 nm at 14 knots. Should they stumble on an enemy surface raider, their twin 9.2″/40 (23.4 cm) Mark VIII cocoa-powder breechloaders could fire a 382-pound CPC shell out to 12,846 yards, which was pretty good for the era. A large number of QF 6-inch and QF 12-pounder 12 cwt naval gun (3-inch) guns made up secondary and tertiary armament (though at some point a few 6-inchers were traded for 4.7-inchers, but more on this later).

Class leader HMS Powerful was laid down in 1894 at Vickers Limited, Barrow-in-Furness while her sister and the subject of our tale, HMS Terrible, was laid down at the same time at J.& G. Thomson, Clydebank (Glasgow). As such, she was the seventh such RN vessel with that name dating back to 1694.

HMS Powerful Steaming up the English Channel, 1900, by maritime painter Charles Dixon RI. Note the black hull, buff stacks/masts, and white superstructure. Both ships of this class carried this scheme through about 1900.

Completed 8 June 1897 at a cost of £740,584, Terrible beat her design top speed of 22 knots on her trials by hitting 22.4 kn over a four-hour period and made  Portsmouth to Gibraltar with an average speed of 18, which was fast for a pre-Dreadnought era cruiser, especially one of some 15,000-tons.

They were stately ships.

The Captain’s cabin was ornate

HMS Terrible portrait via Royal Grenwich Museum

Note how Terrible differed from the first image in this post as she looked in 1897 in these two images.

Her first use in war came when the Boers kicked it off against the British in South Africa.

In November 1899, HMS Terrible disembarked six naval guns (two 4.7″, 4 12 pounders) at Durban and, accompanied by 280 members of the Naval Brigade, saw them off by train to Ladysmith, just before the Boers closed the ring and began the storied Siege of Ladysmith. The naval guns were to play an important role in disabling the fire from the Boer Long Toms long enough till a relieving column rescued the town some months later.

Her sister HMS Powerful likewise dismounted a contingent and more guns at Simonstown, and under Commander AP Ethelston above became part of a Naval Brigade, with four guns, and several hundred men. They were sent by train to join the army of Lord Methuen, which was following the western Cape Colony railway hoping to rout the Boers blocking its advance to relieve the town of Kimberley, and engaging the Boers at Graspan on 25 November, which left half the force dead or wounded.

HMS TERRIBLE He who sups with me require a devil of a long spoon

Note the straw hats common to RN sailors, coupled with Army style field uniforms

4.7 Naval Gun on Carriage Improvised by Capt. Percy Scott of H.M.S. Terrible. Photo by E. Kennard

From “South Africa and the Transvaal War” 1899:

“You may be interested to hear a little about the Navy, who have come to the front as usual and met an emergency. From the first it would seem that what was wanted were long-range guns which could shell the enemy at a distance outside the range of their Mauser rifles, and the captain of the Terrible, therefore, proposed a field-mounting for the Naval long 12-pounder of 12 cwt., which has a much longer range than any artillery gun out here. A pair of waggon wheels were picked up, a balk of timber used as a trail, and in twenty-four hours a 12-pounder was ready for land service. Captain Scott then designed a mounting for a 4.7-inch Naval gun by simply bolting a ship’s mounting down on to four pieces of pile. Experts declared that the 12-pounder would smash up the trail, and that the 4.7-inch would turn a somersault; the designer insisted, however, on a trial. When it took place, nothing of the kind happened, except that at extreme elevation the 12-pounder shell went 9000 yards and the 4.7-inch (lyddite) projectile 12,000 yards. Captain Scott was, therefore, encouraged to go ahead, and four 12-pounders were fitted and sent round to Durban in the Powerful, and also two 4.7-inch guns. People say here that these guns saved the situation at Ladysmith. A Naval friend writing to me from the camp says: ‘The Boers complain that we are not “playing the game”; they only expected to fight rooineks, not sailors who use guns that range seven miles, and they want us to go back to our ships. One of our lyddite shells went over a hill into their camp, killed fourteen men and wounded thirty. Guns of this description are not, according to the Boer idea, at all proper, and[Pg 142] they do not like our way of staggering humanity. Had these guns been landed earlier, how much might have been saved? It is a peculiar sight to see the 4.7-inch fired. Many thought it would turn over, but Captain Percy Scott appears to have well calculated the stresses; there is with a full charge of cordite a slight rise of the fore end, which practically relieves all the fastenings. Hastily put together, and crude as it looks, it really embraces all the points of a scientific mounting, and it wants a great expert to pronounce an opinion on it. The gun is mounted so high that to the uninitiated it looks as if it must turn over on firing, but it does not, and the higher angle of elevation the less strain there is on it. The arrival of our guns practically put the Royal Artillery guns out of use, for they can come into action 2000 yards behind those supplied to the soldiers and then make better practice. Their arrival has, every one admits, quite changed the situation.’

***

“Captain Scott has also rigged up a searchlight on a railway truck with a flasher attachment, the idea being to use it for communication with Kimberley and Ladysmith if these places are surrounded. It has been tested at a distance of forty miles, and proved a great success. I am told, too, that he is now engaged in designing a travelling carriage for a 6-inch gun, and has, indeed, converted the Terrible into a factory for curiosities in gun-mountings.

“Each mounting, by the way, has an inscription upon it, presumably concocted by the ship’s painter. One, a parody upon the Scotch proverb, runs, ‘Those who sup with me will require a devil of a long spoon’; another, ‘For what we are going to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful—Oom Paul’; and a third, ‘Lay me true and load me tight, the Boers will soon be out of sight.’ I saw one of these guns fired with an elevation of 24 degrees and a range of 12,000 yards, and fully expected to see the whole thing capsize, but it hardly moved. After the firing of several rounds I carefully examined the mounting, and noticed that, crude as it might appear, a wonderful amount of practical knowledge was apparent in its construction; the strain was beautifully distributed, every bolt and each balk bearing its proportionate share. It is in every way creditable to the navy that when emergency arises such a thing could be devised and made by the ship’s engineering staff in twenty-four hours.”

Besides her 4.7’s in use, Terrible‘s Marines and Tars manned a series of armored trains that they helped craft.

A British armored train designed and manned by Terrible’s crew during the Second Boer War, covered with 6 inch anchor rope, provided by the Royal Navy, to provide it protection. The improvised additional armor was the source of its name, “Hairy Mary.” (Photo from the McGregor Museum)

Royal Navy bluejackets of HMS Terrible pose by an armored train at Durban during the Boer War. Mounted on the flatbed carriage is an improvised signal lamp consisting of a searchlight and shutter mechanism, powered by a dynamo attached to the train. The officer to the right of the image is possibly Capt. Percy Scott RN. The tower of Durban Post Office can be seen in the background. IWM Q 115145

They also found time to do a spot of fishing:

The next year, Terrible sailed for China station where she repeated her efforts ashore though in a smaller scale, during the Boxer Rebellion. On that trip, she carried 300 Tommies of 2 Btln. Royal Welsh Fusiliers and 40 Royal Engineers.

Arriving in Tientsin 21 June 1900, Terrible landed four of her 12 pounders and, with the help of muscle from Col. Bower’s Wei-hai-Wei (1st Chinese) Regiment, engaged in the relief of that city the next month.

1902 Crewmen of HMS Terrible at Hong Kong. Note the teak decking and that flatcaps have replaced straw hats. The RN was changing…

Returning to the UK, she and her sister were soon obsolete (their 9.2-inch guns were unique) and, after a brief refit, were placed in ordinary in 1904 after less than a decade’s service.

During WWI, she was reactivated and used as a high speed troop transport (sans most of her armament and with reduced crews) in the Med and Northern Africa, bringing as many as 2,000 soldiers at a time to far off ports to support operations in Salonika, Egypt and Palestine.

Great War service had her in a more sedate haze gray with only her small casemate guns still mounted.

In 1920, she was disarmed, renamed the ignoble TS Fisgard III (taken from the old central-battery ironclad ex-HMS Hercules), and used as an accommodations and training ship for another decade. She was sold in July 1932 for scrap.

Likewise, Powerful was renamed TS Impregnable in November 1919, and was sold on 31 August 1929 for breaking up.

The teak decking from both of these vessels was extensively salvaged and crafted into everything from ashtrays to inkwells, chairs and desks and are out there, typically with commemorative brass plates in great numbers.

Even her bell was sold off.

Her most enduring legacy, and that of her sister Powerful, is the long-running Royal Navy Field Gun competition which has in turn evolved into the Royal Military Tournament race, which celebrates the epic Ladysmith (and later Tientsin) gun train that saw the scratch Naval Brigade manhandle six field guns each weighing nearly half a metric tonne over rough terrain to save their Army brethren.

Although a Majestic-class carrier, HMS Terrible (R93), was to carry on the old cruiser’s memory, that vessel was instead sold to Australia who commissioned her as HMAS Sydney (R17/A214/P214/L134) in 1948. Thus, the Royal Navy has not had a “Terrible” on their active list since 1920 when our old girl took the “Fisgard” moniker.

Speaking of which, TS Fisgard itself remains as the National Sea Cadet Engineering Training Centre aboard RNAS Prestwick.

More information about Terrible, especially her use at Ladysmith, can be found at Anglo-Boer War.com, Roll of Honour and the Royal Museums Greenwich.

Specs:

Ship model HMS Terrible by Oldham Hugh, via IWM

Displacement: 14,200 tons deep load
Length:     500 ft. (150 m)
Beam:     71 ft. (22 m)
Draught:     27 ft. (8.2 m)
Propulsion:
Two shafts
4-cylinder VTE steam engines
48 Bellville-type water-tube boilers
25,000 hp
Speed:     22 knots (41 km/h)
Range:     7,000 nautical miles (13,000 km) at 14 knots (26 km/h)
Endurance:     3000 tons coal
Complement: 894 (designed). By 1915, ~300.
Armament:     (Largely disarmed 1915)
2 × BL 9.2-inch (233.7 mm) Mk VIII guns
12 × QF 6 in (15.2 cm) guns
16 × 12 pdr 3 in guns
12 × 3 pdr guns
4 torpedo tubes (deactivated 1904)
Armour:
2–6 inches (51–152 mm) deck
6 inches (150 mm) barbettes
6 inches (150 mm) gun shields

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 3, 2016: The Grand Ole Bear

With tomorrow being the 226th birthday of the U.S. Coast Guard (by proxy of the Revenue Marine Service), I figured we would get a jump on it by celebrating their most famous vessel today.

Here we see the one-of-a-kind Revenue Cutter/U.S. Navy Gunboat/Coast Guard Cutter Bear. She remained afloat some 89-years and spent about half of that in armed maritime service, making 35 patrols to Alaska, three trips to Antarctica, and serving in the Spanish-American War as well as both World Wars.

Built in 1874 by the firm of Alexander Stephen & Son in their Dundee Shipyard (Hull No. 56) on the east coast of Scotland, she was reinforced to operate in dense sea ice as a sealing vessel operating in the Far North. Crafted of live oak, with planks six inches thick and a deck of teak wood, some spots on her hull were over 30-inches thick and braced by timbers 18-inches square. A three-masted barkentine with yards on her foremast and gaffs and booms on her main and mizzen, she could make a stately 14-knots under canvass and was fitted with a steam plant that could push her at 6-knots.

Delivered to W. Grieve, Sons & Company of Dundee (and St. John), she was operated by that firm from Newfoundland until 1880 when ownership changed to one Mr. R. Steele, Jr, who continued her sealing career, completing 10 annual trips to the waters off Greenland in the search of then-valuable seal pelts.

With the fiasco that was the U.S. Army’s Greeley Expedition needing rescue from their brothers in blue, who had no such vessels capable of service in the ice, Bear was purchased for $100,000 by the U.S. Navy, 28 January 1884, at St John’s and duly commissioned after brief refit as USS Bear, 17 March 1884, with one LT. (later RADM) William Hemsley Emory (USNA 1866) in command.

After her brief naval career that involved assisting in the retrieval of Greeley and remaining associates (which can be read in more detail here) the 10-year old scratch-and-dent sealer turned rescue ship was decommissioned and struck from the Naval Register in April 1885, transferring to the Treasury Department’s Revenue Cutter Service.

Leaving New York 9 Nov after picking up a trio of 6-pounder popguns and a magazine filled with torpedoes (mines) for destroying derelicts found at sea, USRC Bear arrived in San Francisco after a fairly rapid passage of just 87 days.

Soon after arriving, she picked up her most famous master.

Captain Michael A Healy, USRC Bear. Note parrot

From the Coast Guard Historian’s office:

In 1885 the colorful “Hell Roaring”‘ Mike Healy, a dynamo of a man with an unpredictable temper, assumed command. Healy was a good skipper, and he commanded the Bear for more than nine years, longer than any other. He had another distinction as well: he was the first African-American to command a U.S. Government vessel. In time, Healy and his ship became legend in the lusty, brawling Territory of Alaska.

The Bear’s duties on the Alaskan Patrol were many. She carried mail which had accumulated at Seattle during the winter, as well as Government agents and supplies. On her trip south from Alaska, she transported Federal prisoners and other questionable characters whose presence in Alaska ‘was undesirable. The deck of the Bear often served as a court where justice was dispensed swiftly but fairly. The Bear also conducted investigations, undertook crime prevention and law enforcement. She and other cutters like her were often the only law in that turbulent part of the world. The Bear also conducted soundings to improve charts of Alaskan waters, and her surgeon furnished medical attention and surgery to natives, prospectors, missionaries, and whalers. These duties are still part of today’s Bering Sea Patrol.

“Hoisting Deer aboard the Bear, Siberia, Aug 28th 1891.”; no photo number; photographer unknown. USCG Photo

Photograph shows a Native American child and man sitting on the deck of a ship, the revenue cutter Bear during a relief voyage to rescue whalers off the Alaska coast in 1897. The man is showing the child how to smoke a pipe. By photographer Samuel Call. LOC.

In 1897, Bear was involved in the great Overland Rescue of eight whaling vessels and 250 crewmembers who were trapped in the ice and was able to penetrate to within about 85 miles of Nome, still far too short to do the whalers any good. The ship then dispatched an over-land party of’ 1LT D. H. Jarvis, 2LT B. P. Bertholf, and Surgeon S. J. Call. Equipped with dog teams, sleds, and guides, Jarvis and his companions set out for Point Barrow.

Crew of the Revenue Cutter Bear ferrying stranded whalemen,

Again, the Coast Guard office:

Before them lay a 1,600-mile journey through frozen, trackless wilderness. But the “Overland Expedition for the Relief of the Whalers in the Arctic Ocean” as it was ponderously called, became one of the great epics of the north.

During the exhausting journey, Jarvis and Call collected a herd of nearly 450 reindeer. Driving the herd ahead of them in the face of icy winds the party reached Point Barrow about three and one-half months after being put ashore by the Bear. To the despairing whalers, the arrival of the relief party was nothing short of a miracle.

An in-depth Harpers article from 1899 details the mission with maps and illustrations.

The Spanish-American War saw Revenue Cutters mobilized under Naval service but the slow and increasingly creaky Bear simply maintained her annual trip to Alaska and performed patrol on the West Coast on the outside prospect that a Spanish auxiliary cruiser may pop up over the horizon.

This followed a tough couple of years during the Klondike and Yukon gold rushes from 1898-1900 in which she was the only law enforcement asset in the territory, her bluejackets having to enforce order on more than one occasion while in port. She likewise had to rescue many a lost landlubber who had packed aboard condemned craft in Seattle and set off for Alaskan waters or bust.

Off Barrow

USRC Bear Dressed with flags circa 1900. Description: Catalog #: NH 56690

USRC BEAR Caption: At San Diego, California, before World War I. Description: Courtesy of Thomas P. Naughton, 1973. Catalog #: NH 92207 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command

Alaskan natives dancing on deck of USRC BEAR circa 1913

When World War I came, Bear conducted neutrality patrols along the Alaskan coast while on 28 January 1915, the Revenue Cutter Service, and the U.S. Life-Saving Service were combined to form the United States Coast Guard.

COAST GUARD BUREAU OF TREASURY DEPARTMENT. REVENUE CUTTER ‘BEAR’, RIGHT, WITH S.S. CORWIN, 1916. Harris & Ewing Collection. LOC LC-H261- 6165 [P&P]

Then, came another decade of more traditional service on the frozen beat.

USCGC BEAR At Point Barrow, Alaska, 21 August 1922. Catalog #: NH 91762
Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command. Note she still maintained her 1917 “war-paint” which was not painted over with the more standard white scheme until the following year.

The midnight watch on 10 June 1924 showing the crew in the land of the midnight sun, literally. Courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard, 1930. Catalog #: NH 56694

USCGC BEAR in the Arctic Ocean. Description: Courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard, Catalog #: NH 56692

United States Coast Guard cutter BEAR (1884-1948), in ice pads. Description: Received from Coast Guard, 1930. Catalog #: NH 170.

In 1929, after 35 annual deployments to Alaska and service on the periphery of two wars, Bear was removed from the Treasury Department and offered for sale, with a half-century under her keel. Her place had already been taken in the fleet with the commissioning in late 1927 of the purpose-built steel-hulled icebreaking gunboat USCGC Northland (WPG-49).

Saved from the scrappers by the city of Oakland, California, for a token fee, she was renamed Bear of Oakland and used as a museum ship.

In 1930, she was used as the filming location for the sealer “Ghost,” in the Milton Sills as ‘Wolf’ Larsen version of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf.

Then came the famed Arctic explorer, Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd, USN, who was looking for a (cheap but capable) vessel for his Antarctic Expedition and he purchased the Bear of Oakland from the city for just $1,050 in the Spring of 1932.

The thing is, Bear (renamed SS Jacob Ruppert) still had her 1885-mounted 6-pounders aboard (with breech blocks) which caused Byrd, officially a civilian on a civilian ship, some heartburn in Mexican ports when he stopped to recoal her on the way through the Panama Canal to Boston, but he nevertheless appeared in that New England port in August.

For visibility in the whiteout, she was painted coal black

Leaving for the Antarctic in 1934, the ship was vital to Byrd’s successful expedition, which included the explorer spending four months over-winter on the frozen continent that is discussed in his autobiography Alone.

Note her black scheme

Returning to Boston in 1935, Byrd leased Ruppert/Bear to the Navy for $1 per year, and she was stored at the Boston Naval Yard in poor condition.

Then in 1939, Byrd’s United States Antarctic Service Expedition got underway and the old Bear was refitted with a diesel engine, her original figurehead was replaced with a carved polar bear, new canvas and rigging was brought aboard, and new spars and a foreyard of fresh Oregon pine were fitted.

She was given stores for 18-months, kennels for 78 sled dogs were built on deck, and a U.S. Army M2A2 light tank was heaved aboard to test in the ice. A Barkley-Grow T8P-1 two-engine seaplane was hoisted aft.

This resulted in her second official (not counting her unofficial transfers in 1898 and 1917) Navy commission as USS Bear (AG-29), 11 September 1939.

USS Bear (AG-29), formerly the US Revenue Cutter Bear, operates in Antarctic waters during the 1939-40 season as part of the U.S. Antarctic Service. The aesthetic of the seaplane on a three-master is pure 1930s.

Photographed circa 1939, possibly during Byrd’s 1940 Antarctic Expedition. This ship also served as USS BEAR (AG-29) and as USCGC BEAR. Description: Catalog #: 80-G-1033748

In early 1941, Bear returned to the Antarctic for her third and last trip, this time to evacuate the Americans from the continent with the looming war.

USS BEAR (AG-29) Awaiting to evacuate west base in the Bay of Whales, Antarctica in 1941, she noses against bay ice. Supplies had to be carried from the base camp in the background. Ross Barrier is the thick ice on the left. Description: Catalog #: NH 56697 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command

Returning to Boston, her newly rejuvenated sail rig was scrapped. Her spars and yard removed, only the stumps of her masts remained. Equipped with a Grumman J2F-1 seaplane and armed with some AAA mounts (seen under tarps below).

She was a warship again.

In May 1941, the Northeast Greenland Patrol was organized with Bear, her ice-strengthened Coast Guard replacement Northland, and her old sailing companion the former Interior Department ship North Star, with Captain Edward H. “Iceberg” Smith, USCG, in overall command of the force.

USS BEAR (AG-29) Off the Boston Navy Yard, 2 July 1941. Catalog #: 19-N-24311 Copyright Owner: National Archives. Note Grumman J2F-1 aircraft carried.

They soon struck pay dirt and Northland seized a three-man German weather station along with the Norwegian sealer D/S Buskø (159 gt) in September (three months before Pearl Harbor) and took her to MacKenzie Bay, on the Greenland coast, where Bear took up tow and “protective custody” of her prisoners for the trip down to Boston.

Buskø carried with a crew of 20 Norwegian quislings, a supposed German agent, and “one other dog,” who was working as a radio supply ship to keep German weather stations operating in the Far North operational. She was the first capture of a belligerent ship by U.S. Naval forces in World War II and arrived on 14 October to a big international news splash.

A few more trips around Greenland and Iceland were left for her, but by 1944, the writing was on the wall for the old warrior.

Decommissioned, 17 May 1944, Bear was transferred to the Maritime Commission for disposal, 13 February 1948.

Sold by the Maritime Commission for commercial service in 1948, she was renamed Arctic Sealer and was to be used as a sealer home ported at Halifax, Canada– her original purpose, but this largely fell by the wayside and she did not return to her old stomping grounds after all.

After moldering away in Halifax for almost 15 years, she was resold for conversion to a floating museum and restaurant at Philadelphia, PA, but she foundered under tow 90 miles south of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia on 19 March 1963.

Note that her rigging and masts have been partially restored

Her wreck site is unknown, despite the best efforts of a 1979 search conducted by cadets from the Coast Guard Academy.

The old ship remains alive in the work of maritime artists.

The famous old Coast Guard cutter BEAR. From the Collection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt Catalog #: NH 1918 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command Original Creator: Charles Robert Patterson, artist

USCGC BEAR, 1884-1948. Description: Copied from U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1945 Catalog #: NH 56695 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command Original Creator: Hunter Wood, USCG, artist

Her bell is at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling and is kept in tip-top shape while her binnacle has been retained at the USCGA.

The polar bear figurehead from Bear is in the collection at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Following his celebrated 1940 expedition, Admiral Byrd presented the figurehead to the facility.

The Coast Guard maintains an extensive 40-page online scrapbook of the old Bear as well as an extensive website.

Since 1980, her name has been perpetuated by the class-leader of the Famous-class 270-foot medium endurance cutters, USCGC Bear (WMEC 901) based at Portsmouth, VA.

Coast Guard Cutter Bear transits past the Statue of Liberty in New York City June 19, 2016. The Bear is a 270-feet medium endurance cutter

As for “Roaring Mike” Healy, the Coast Guard named their newest icebreaker (WAGB-20) for him in 1997, shown below, while reindeer-herding lieutenants Berthoff and Jarvis each had a cutter named after them in modern times.

Specs:

Length: 198′ 4″
Beam: 30′
Draft: 17′ 11″
Displacement: 703 tons
Launched: 1874
Machinery: Compound-expansion steam, 25-5/8″ and 50″ diameter x 30″ stroke, 101 nominal hp (1885)
Diesel engine/sail rig (1935) Diesel only after 1939.
Speed: 14kts max on sail, 6 on steam, 8 on diesel
Complement: 51 (1884) 39 (1939)
Armament: 3 x 6-pound rapid-fire guns (1885) disarmed 1935. Equipped with small arms and light machine guns 1940.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 10, 2016: The Dynamite Buffalo of Rio

Cruzador Nitheroy [sic] [i.e. Nictheroy] by Marc Ferrez, Detroit Publishing Co. Image via LOC LC-D4-21236

A Dynamite Gun, that is.

In March 1892, a group of Brazilian navy commanders and army leaders started to run afoul of President Marshal Floriano Peixoto that led to an open manifesto between the military and the executive branch that basically said, either you listen to us and fix the government, or we will fix it for you. It wasn’t farfetched as the year before the Brazilian Navy had a hand in replacing President Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca.

Well, Peixoto called their bluff and by Sept. 1893 the Navy was in an open revolt known to history as Revolta da Armada, and the best ships, including the ironclad battleship Aquidabã (5,500-tons, 4×9.2-inch guns) went over to the rebels in Rio harbor/Guanabara Bay.

This left Peixoto fresh out of a Navy to command and his agents went about assembling what was derided as the “cardboard squadron” to blockade the rogue forces into surrender.

Guns were thrown on fishing vessels coastal steamers acquired locally and manned by whatever mariners could be enticed to put to sea, but everyone knew they and the handful of torpedo boats still loyal to the government would be no match for the big Aquidabã should the leviathan make a determined break for open water.

Aquidabã at Hampton Roads 1893. A formidable foe indeed.

In New York, agents of the Peixoto government purchased the pleasure yachts Feiseen and Javelin as well as the merchant steamers Britannia (Norwegian-built, 2600-tons) and El Cid for rapid conversion to warships for the new fleet.

The SS El Cid, a 7,080-ton cargo ship with some accommodation for passengers, was built for the Morgan Line at Mr. Collis P. Huntington’s Chesapeake Dry Dock & Construction Company, only the sixth ship constructed by that yard, since known as Newport News Shipbuilding. Delivered for merchant service 24 August 1893, the Brazilians purchased her almost sight unseen on 26 October.

El Cid and her three sisters (El Sud, El Norte, and El Rio) were designed as auxiliary cruisers for wartime service if needed and had three deckhouses, a 17-knot speed (very fast for the merchantmen of the day), coal bunkers arranged to protect her machinery and boilers from naval gunfire, watertight bulkheads, and a main deck with weight and space reserved for a decent naval gun forward.

Speaking of guns, the Brazilians went all out.

Dynamite gun on Brazilian ship, Nitheroy [i.e. Nictheroy] by Marc Ferrez, Detroit Publishing Co. Image via LOC LC-D4-32259

All guns are projectile weapons. In other words, they use force to propel an object down a barrel out to a target. The only thing that changes is the type of propellant and the projectile. In a Remington 870, a load of shot is scattered out of the muzzle by an explosion of smokeless powder set off by a primer. Well the dynamite gun does the same thing, it’s just that the projectile is made of TNT and it’s pushed out by a charge of compressed air. Kinda like a spud gun, but instead of a potato, you fire a bomb. The father of this device was one Edmund Zalinski.

Born in Kórnik, Prussian Poland on December 13, 1849, Edmund Zalinski immigrated to the US with his parents at age four. Not quite 15 years old, he dropped out of high school and volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War. Serving in the artillery, he finished the war as an officer and remained in the Army once peace broke out. A pretty smart guy, he taught military science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while inventing several mechanical doo dads. One of these was a dynamite gun. Showing his device to the military, (he was still on the Army rolls as a First Lieutenant); it was love at first sight.

By the next year, Zalinski had teamed up with a company calling itself the Pneumatic Dynamite Gun Company of New York (presumably to tell itself apart from the Pneumatic Dynamite Gun Company of other towns) and was off and running. The gun was huge, and looked like something Jules Verne would use to shoot a missile to the moon. It had a 15-inch (379.5mm) bore. Using compressed air, it could catapult 500-pounds of dynamite more than two miles with better accuracy than the black-powder cannon of the era. The air was produced by a steam-powered (think locomotive) compressor fueled by coal.

Well the Navy liked the idea so much that they built the world’s first “Dynamite Cruiser.” Ordered for $350,000 from cruiser and battleship maker William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia, she was laid down in 1887. Named appropriately the USS Vesuvius, its main battery would be these new guns. Mounting three of Zalinski’s 15-inch pneumatic guns, the guns were located with their breech along the keel of the ship three decks down and their 55-foot long barrels poking up through the 01 top deck. To aim the weapons, since the guns could not be turned, the whole ship tacked port or starboard while the pressure of the air was adjusted to correct range. Charges of various sizes ranging up to a quarter-ton could be used to do anything from bombard shore positions to sink ships and, being electrically fused, could fire on a delay or even while submerged.

Vesuvius in 1891…the three tubes on her main deck are 15inch FIXED Dynamite Guns

Other than Vesuvius, the Brazilians were the only other sucker taker for a large caliber Dynamite Gun naval mount. For the gun, they purchased one (1) full caliber 15-inch round and 10 10-inch sub-caliber projectiles meaning the ship had a very big but very brief bark. A further 2 full caliber rounds and 16 10-inch sub-calibers were loaded on the more lightly armed (2×4.7inch QF) steamer Britannia (renamed America by the Brazilians) who would serve as Nictheroy‘s escort of sorts.

As for the two yachts, they were stripped of their above deck structures, given a pivoting Hotchkiss torpedo tube and 1-pounder rapid-fire mount of the same make. They were hoisted aboard Nictheroy‘s deck for the voyage to Brazil.

Unlike on Vesuvius, in which the Dynamite Guns were fixed and the ship had to be tacked one way or the other to bring a target under fire, the gun on Nictheroy was made to slew port to starboard, allowing a much more efficient laying on target. A Rand air compressor below decks provided pneumatics for the gun.

Besides the 15-inch Zalinski forward, Nictheroy was well equipped from the works of Mr. Hotchkiss under the supervision of E. W. Very, late Lieutenant USN and now General Director of the Hotchkiss Ordnance Co, to include a 120mm rapid-fire single mount (with 50 rounds) aft of the after deck house, two rapid-fire 100mm mounts (with 200 rounds) on the bluff of the bow, eight rapid-fire 6-pounders (with 1,419 rounds) distributed broadside firing through the existing freight ports, nine 1-pounders (with 1,340 rounds) distributed on deck, and two 37mm revolving cannon on the bridge wings outside the pilothouse. Ports were cut for four torpedo tubes on deck to launch Howell automobile torpedoes of which the Brazilian agents bought 10, each with a 92-pound gun cotton warhead.

Two magazines were arranged in the former holds, reinforced with wooden planks, equipped with elevators, and flooding capabilities.

(Brazilian auxiliary cruiser, 1893-1898, formerly S.S. El Cid, later USS Buffalo) View on board, probably taken while fitting out for Brazilian Navy service in November 1893 at the Morgan Iron Works, New York City. The gun, which is mounted at the ship’s stern, is almost certainly a 4.7 quick-fire weapon built by the Hotchkiss Ordnance Co. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105944

View on board, probably taken while fitting out for Brazilian Navy service in November 1893 at the Morgan Iron Works, New York City. Her single 15-inch dynamite gun on the forecastle (left center) was offset 3 feet to starboard of the centerline and was trainable right ahead and on both bows. The gun on the right may be one of the two 33-pounder (4-inch) Hotchkiss quick-fire guns that were listed as having been mounted forward on the bluff of the bow on each side. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105942

View on board, probably taken while fitting out for Brazilian Navy service in November 1893 at the Morgan Iron Works, New York City. Shown looking forward from near the stern, aft of the main mast. The gun is probably one of the ship’s nine one-pounder Hotchkiss quick-fire weapons, eight of which were mounted on top of the deckhouses. She also had two 1-pounder Hotchkiss machine guns on top of the pilothouse. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105943

Probably shown fitting out for Brazilian Navy service in November 1893 at the Morgan Iron Works, New York City. Several barges are alongside. Nictheroy’s single 15-inch dynamite gun is on the forecastle. A small quick-fire gun, probably one of her eight 6-pounder Hotchkiss weapons, is barely visible behind a shield on the weather deck aft. Six of the other 6-pounders were carried behind ports in the hull, along with four tubes for Howell torpedoes. Her former name, El Cid, has been painted out on the bow but the ship still wears the rest of her mercantile paint scheme. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105941

In the span of just 24 days from when the Brazilians purchased El Cid, she was armed, equipped, painted, and recommissioned as Nictheroy. With the two yachts turned torpedo boats lashed to her deck and her holds filled with new shells for her never-fired guns, Nictheroy left New York on 20 November 1893. Her escort Britannia/America, carrying most of her Dynamite Gun shells, set out five days later as her armament was held up in shipping, delaying her departure.

As amazing as it sounds, just four months later this little formation took on the mighty Aquidabã and won.

On 16 April 1894, the ironclad warship was anchored off the coast of Santa Catarina, near the Fortress of Anhatomirim. Early in the morning, the loyalist government-controlled former yacht turned torpedo boat Gustavo Sampaio, accompanied by three other torpedo boats and Nictheroy in support, attacked Aquidabã. They managed to pump at least one Honeywell torpedo (some sources say two) into the bow of the once-proud battleship and, her front compartments open to the sea, she settled in the mud as her crew fled after thoroughly wrecking her.

During the battle, Nictheroy took Anhatomirim and a smaller rebel battery under naval gunfire and kept them from plastering her mosquito boat squadron.

The next day, when Nictheroy and company returned, Aquidabã and the forts were deserted and, as reported by the New York Times, a boarding crew from the Dynamite cruiser soon struck up song on the ironclad’s organ.

Over the next few years, with the naval revolt ended, Nictheroy was increasingly sidelined, no longer needed. The ship was subsequently used as an accommodation hulk for the school for apprentice seamen at Rio de Janeiro.

Going back home

When the United States entered into war with Spain in 1898, Nictheroy‘s three sisters were bought by the U.S. Navy from commercial service and, after a few guns were added, were used as the auxiliary cruisers USS Yosemite, USS Yankee and USS Dixie.

Remembering the Nictheroy, U.S. agents approached the Brazilians and arranged to purchase the former American steamer for the battle line (they already had the only other Dynamite cruiser in service, USS Vesuvius) on 11 July 1898. However, the Brazilians had the last laugh and disarmed the Nictheroy completely, forcing her back to the East Coast to rearm.

Rearmed with a more traditional battery of 2×5″/40cals and 4×4″/40s and refitted, she was commissioned into U.S. service as USS Buffalo on 22 September 1898 at New York Naval Yard. However, as hostilities halted with the signing in Washington of a Protocol of Peace between the United States and Spain more than a month before, her wartime service was moot and she was decommissioned, 3 July 1899 after a cruise to Manila.

A bugler sounding the call to breakfast in 1898. The gun appears to be a 4″/40cal. At this time the ship carried four of these weapons plus two 5/40 guns. Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN (Medical Service Corps), 1975. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 82990

Buffalo was brought back out of ordinary 2 April 1900, to serve as a Training Ship, a role she maintained for the next five years. During this period, she undertook four voyages to the Philippines with replacement crews for the Asiatic Fleet and on one of the return legs accomplished a circumnavigation.

She does look handsome in white! Photographed in 1902, while serving as a training ship. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 56644

USS Buffalo Photographed at Algiers in January 1904 while serving as a training ship. Courtesy of Rear Admiral Ammen Farenholt, USN (MC), 1933. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 434

A footlocker inspection on the main deck in 1904. The Sailor on the left, closest to the camera, is Chester Bryon Harper. Courtesy of Mr. Gene B. Reid (Harper’s grandson), 1983. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 94193

After layup at Mare Island Navy Yard in 1905, she was refitted for work as a transport and largely disarmed. She continued her operations carrying replacement crews to the far off Asiatic Fleet on China station, carried Marines to Nicaragua in 1909, and operated off Mexico during the troubles and civil war there.

In 1914, Buffalo undertook a seven-month expedition to Alaska to build radio stations and towers up and down the coast, many of which remained operational as late as the 1960s. Her expedition, which included some 44 civilian technicians, upgraded the facilities at Woody Island near Kodiak, on St. Paul and St. George in the Pribilof Islands, on the island of Unalga, and at Dutch Harbor near Unalaska as well as built new ones at Sitka and Cordova.

USS Buffalo at Mare Island, California loading materials for the expedition to Alaska radio stations. 1914 NHC Accession #: UA 557

Dressed with flags at Kodiak, Alaska, on Independence Day 1914, during the 1914 Alaskan Radio Expedition. Note her extensive away boats. Collection of Admiral Montgomery M. Taylor, donated by Louisa R. Alger, 1962. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105444-A

At the naval coaling station at Sitka, Alaska, in October or late September 1914. During the 1914 Alaskan Radio Expedition. Courtesy of the Naval Historical Foundation. Collection of Admiral Montgomery M. Taylor, donated by Louisa R. Alger, 1962. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105470

Teddy, a ship’s mascot, on the ship’s forecastle circa mid-1914 during the 1914 Alaskan Radio Expedition. Teddy, probably an Alaskan bear cub, is also shown posing with one of the ship’s divisions in Photo # NH 105464. Note the ship’s capstain in the background. Collection of Admiral Montgomery M. Taylor, donated by Louisa R. Alger, 1962. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105596.

When World War I broke out, Buffalo transported the U.S. diplomatic mission to Russia’s Provisional Government after the fall of the Tsar in 1917 and was then refitted as a destroyer tender (AD-8), serving in Europe until Sept. 1919 when she transitioned to the Pacific, serving in China and Japan until 1922.

On 12 November 1918 in European waters wearing pattern camouflage dazzle paint. Note her masts have been enhanced. Photographed by E. J. Kelty. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 56642

At Gibraltar circa December 1918, with USS Schley (Destroyer No. 103 ) alongside and the collier USS Jupiter (Fuel Ship No. 3) in the background. Note that Schley is still wearing pattern camouflage, while Buffalo has been repainted from the image above into overall grey. Also, of interest, Jupiter with her distinctive transfer stations, would go on to become USS Langley CV-1. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 56643

Now all gray. At Villefranche on the French Mediterranean coast in late 1918 or early 1919. Donation of Captain Stephen S. Roberts, USNR (Retired), 2008. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105907

The ship’s baseball team ashore in the Azores in March 1919. Photographed by St. Jacques. Courtesy of Paul H. Silverstone, 1983. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 94998

No longer useful, the aging steamer was decommissioned on 15 November 1922 at San Diego. She was used as a barracks ship until stricken from the Navy List on 27 May 1927. She was sold four months later for scrap. It is not believed that any artifacts remain from her although I would like to hope that some museum in Brazil has her Dynamite Gun in a dusty back room.

As for her merchant sisters turned SpAmWar auxiliary cruisers: El Sud/USS Yosemite hunted down the Spanish steamer Antionio Lopez during the war and was scuttled after being wrecked in a storm in 1900; El Norte/USS Yankee was very active off Cuba and survived as a Naval Militia training ship until she ran aground on Spindle Rock near Hen and Chickens lightship in 1908; and El Rio/USS Dixie (AD-1) gave her full measure as a warship then training ship and finally the Navy’s first official destroyer tender before she was sold for scrapping in 1922– meaning El Cid/Nictheroy/Buffalo was the last survivor of her class.

Specs:

Displacement: 7,080 tons (6,635 t)
Length: 406 ft. 1 in (123.77 m)
Beam: 48 ft. 3 in (14.71 m)
Draft: 20 ft. 8 in (6.30 m)
Propulsion
Coal fired boilers
Steam turbine
Single propeller
Speed: Designed for 17 knots, made 14.5 knots (26.9 km/h; 16.7 mph) in Naval service with armament.
Complement: A figure of 350 officers and enlisted given for Brazilian service. In U.S. service this was reduced to as little as 150 by 1898 and to >50 before 1909.
Armament:
(Brazil, 1893)
1×15 inch Dynamite Gun
1x 4.7-inch (120mm) rapid-fire single mount
2 4 inch (100mm) mounts
8 6-pounders
9 1-pounders
2 37mm revolving cannon
4 torpedo tubes
(US, 1898)
2x 5 in (130 mm) guns
4x 4 in (100 mm) guns
(*Disarmed by 1909 though her 5 inchers may have been removed by 1900)

*In 1917 she probably was rearmed, most likely with a few 3″/23 cal mounts and 6-pdrs though I cannot confirm this.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 17, 2016: The quiet but everlasting Alert

Photo by William Henry Jackson/Detroit Publishing Company, Via LOC LC-D4-21686 [P&P]

One of the few new naval ships built after the Civil War, Alert was built with funding authorized by the 42nd Congress and listed at the time as a Sloop of War. Powered by both sail and steam, she was the leader of a three-ship class and was 175 feet long, displaced 541 tons and were designed to carry up to a half-dozen Civil War surplus 9-inch guns split between broadsides.

Laid down at John Roach & Sons Shipbuilders in Chester, PA in 1873, Alert was commissioned 27 May 1875.

While under construction, her armament scheme was converted to a single 11-inch smoothbore Dahlgren rifle, two 9″ Dahlgrens, one 60-pounder Parrott, a single 12-pounder “boat” howitzer that weighed only 300-pounds in its carriage, and one Gatling gun– the latter two of which could be sent ashore by a naval landing party to conduct business with the locals as needed. Speaking of which, she could afford to send her small Marine detachment as well as up to 40 rifle-armed bluejackets on such festivities, but more on this later.

Alert had two sisters completed at the same time, one, Huron, was built at Roach and lost tragically on her first overseas deployment off the coast of North Carolina 24 November 1877 near Nag’s Head.

Although the Life Saving Service had been started three years prior to the Huron running aground, due to massive under funding the Service only manned stations in North Carolina for three winter months beginning December 1; one week too late to be of help to the crew of the Huron. The outrage over the Huron tragedy prompted Congress to fund the Service year-round. The Life Saving Service eventually evolved into the modern U.S. Coast Guard.

The second sistership to Alert, Ranger, was constructed at Harlan & Hollingsworth and commissioned 27 Nov 1876.

The trio were the last iron warships to be built for the U.S. Navy, with follow-on designs moving to steel.

Alert at the Boston Navy Yard in 1875. Note details of her iron hull; boat. Note her dark overall scheme, which she would keep for most of the 19th Century. Catalog #: NH 57105

Alert‘s first decade was quiet, being assigned to the Training Squadron where she carried Annapolis mids on summer cruises until being assigned to the exotic Asiatic Station in May 1876. There she would continue operations from China to Australia and Japan for more than a decade, only venturing back to the West Coast for regular overhauls.

In 1882, she was embarrassingly involved in a nighttime crack up with the Japanese ship Jingei, a side-paddle steamer that served as the Imperial yacht for Emperor Meiji. It was the Jingei‘s fault and no members of the court were aboard at the time.

Besides fighting the occasional Chinese pirate gangs on the water and warlords ashore, improving U.S. charts of the region, showing the flag, and just generally protecting American interests from Hawaii to Singapore to Alaska, Alert had to come to the rescue of lost and wrecked vessels from time to time.

This included responding to the disastrous 1889 hurricane in Samoa that left German, British and U.S. naval vessels alike wrecked and battered. Once she arrived, her crew helped perform repairs on the immobilized USS Nipsic and escorted her back to Hawaii.

Photographed after the Samoa hurricane of March 1889. She was configured thus until 1899. Note her white scheme and her extensive awnings in the tropical heat. Catalog #: NH 586

Following this effort, the 15-year-old gunboat with lots of miles on her hull sailed for Mare Island for refit.

In dry-dock at the Mare Island navy yard, about 1890. Catalog #: NH 71061

And from the stern– In dry-dock at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, about 1890. Note her huge rudder and prop Photograph from the William H. Topley Collection. Courtesy of Mr. Charles M. Loring, Napa, California, 1969. Catalog #: NH 68684

In 1891, with seals in Alaska facing near-extinction, the U.S. and Britain formed a joint 11-ship Bering Sea Squadron that operated in the area to enforce a prohibition on hunting over the summer. During this period, Alert intercepted and ejected dozens of interloping vessels from the exclusion zone.

Spending the next few years summering in Alaska chasing poachers and wintering in the Pacific Squadron’s stomping grounds in Korea and China, Alert was transferred to operate off the coast of Mexico and Central America in 1895, where she would spend the majority of three rough and tumble years in the politics of the banana Republics.

During this time, in 1898 Nicaragua’s President Zelaya decided to extend his tenure for still another term, the local U.S. consular agent requested Alert to anchor in the harbor of Bluefields, and stand by in case of an attack on the city.

On the morning of 7 February, the American flag rose union downward over the consulate– a sign of distress. In answer to this signal, an expeditionary force of 14 Marines and 19 Sailors was landed by Alert, Gatling gun in tow. On the following day, the government forces agreed to guarantee the safety of all foreigners, and the landing party was withdrawn, though she remained on station there through April.

Returning to Mare Island, she remained on guard against a possible Spanish attack (there was something of a war going on with Spain at the time) but when no such attack likely after Mr. Dewey’s actions in Manila Bay, Alert was decommissioned and partially disarmed on 4 June 1898.

After three years in ordinary, she was used as a training ship after 1901 and loaned off and on to the California Naval Militia until 1910.

Photographed about 1901. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Catalog #: NH 57108

Off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, about 1901. Catalog #: NH 57109

Postcard photo, probably taken while she was serving as California State Naval Militia Training Ship, 1906-1910. Note she still has some cannon mounted. Courtesy of Commander D.J. Robinson, USN (Ret), 1978 Catalog #: NH 86255

Once again emerging from ordinary, Alert was further converted to allow for transient sailors and became one of the Navy’s first official submarine tenders (AS-4), placed back in full commission 1 July 1912.

Post card image of USS Alert (Submarine Tender #4) moored at San Pedro, CA. The submarines alongside are “F” class boats, circa 1916. Note the wicker deck furniture over her extensive awnings.  Via Navsource: Photo – Ron Reeves Caption – Ric Hedman

USS Alert (Submarine Tender #4), serving as tender for the Third Submarine Division of the Pacific Fleet, laying alongside the wharf at Kuahua, U.S. Naval Station, Pearl Harbor, 22 August 1917. K-3 (Submarine #34) and K-4 (Submarine #35) are identifiable alongside; the unidentifiable “boat” is probably either K-7 (Submarine #38) or K-8 (Submarine #39). Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 42542

Ship’s baseball team, 1917. Note her deckhouse. Photo via San Diego City Archives.

This mission ended for her when the U.S. entered World War I and, for the first time in decades, she left the Pacific and made her way to the waters of her birth along the Eastern seaboard, briefly serving as a depot ship in Bermuda for outbound convoys to the Great War in Europe.

USS Alert. In port, circa late 1918 or early 1919. Note the old cannon used as a bollard in the left foreground, and the submarine chaser (SC) tied up astern of Alert. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2006. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 104155

With the war winding down, she reverted to the Pacific Squadron, once again serving as a submarine tender until she was decommissioned 9 March 1922 after a very respectable 47 years of service. She was sold three months later for scrap and I can find no trace of her today.

During her time in service, Alert had 23 official captains, including future RADM. William Thomas Sampson, known for his later victory in the Battle of Santiago.

As for her sisters, 60 sailors from the wreck of the Huron are buried together in Section Five of the United States Naval Academy Cemetery in well cared for lots while the ship herself is protected by federal mandate in her watery grave. A highway marker near Nag’s Head mentions her loss.

Alert‘s other classmate, USS Ranger, (later renamed USS Rockport and USS Nantucket PG-23/IX-18), was involved in the Barrundia Affair with Guatemala, patrolled the coast during WWI, and served as the training ship for first the Massachusetts Nautical Training School then the Merchant Marine Academy, only passing to the scrappers in 1958.

Ranger‘s original engine —  the only back-acting type known to be still in existence—was saved from destruction and is on display at the American Merchant Marine Museum in Kings Point, New York.

The last of her class.

Specs:

Displacement: 1,202 long tons
Length: 175 ft. (53 m)
Beam: 32 ft. (9.8 m)
Depth of hold: 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Draft: 13 ft. (mean)
Installed power: Five boilers driving 1 × 560 ihp, 64 rpm compound back-acting steam engine
Propulsion: 1 × 12 ft. diameter × 17.5 ft. pitch propeller, auxiliary sails
Speed: 10 knots under steam
Complement: 138 officers and enlisted (typically including a 15 man Marine detachment until 1898). Berthing for 200 after 1901.
Armament:
(1875)
1 × 11 in (280 mm) Dahlgren gun
2 × 9 in (230 mm) Dahlgren guns
1 × 60 pdr (27 kg) Parrott rifle
1 × 12 pdr (5.4 kg) howitzer
1 × Gatling gun
spar torpedoes for her steam launch (provision deleted after 1889)
(1901)
6 small pieces in gundeck broadside, possibly 6 pdrs or 3-inchers
(1912)
Largely disarmed other than saluting pieces and small arms.

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 24, 2016: 100-feet of Turkish Surprise

Here we see the steam-powered Nordenfelt-type submarine Abdülhamid of the Ottoman sultan’s fleet (Osmanlı Donanması) as she was completed in 1886.

The Ottoman Navy dates back to the 14th Century and was hardened in centuries of warfare with the Greeks, Russians, Venetians, Spaniards, Mamelukes, and Portuguese and ventured as far as the English Colonies in North America and the Indian Ocean by the 17th Century. However, the fleet peaked around 1708 and fell into steady decline, being annihilated first by the Tsar’s navy at Chesma in 1770 and then again by the Brits at Navarino in 1827. This led to a building and modernization spree under the reign of first Sultan Mahmud II, then Abdülaziz.

While the Ottoman Navy was largely inactive during the Crimean War, by 1876 the fleet was again the focus of attention as the country loomed to yet another war with Imperial Russia.

And, after getting another licking at the hands of the neighbors to the North, new Sultan Abdülhamid II had on his hands 13 ironclads including the British made Mesudiye (formerly HMS Superb) as well as a number of dated wooden vessels and river gunboats. Further, the Ottomans had been introduced to the bad end of a new weapon when Russian torpedo boats carrying surfaced launched torpedoes in 1878 sank the Turkish ship Intibah.

Unable to afford to go bigger, the Sultan needed to stretch his funds and innovate.

Enter Swedish industrialist Thorsten Nordenfelt.

With the help of British inventor George Garrett, who had crafted two small steam-powered submersibles in England, in 1885 the Swede living in the British Isles paid to build a 64-foot steam-powered submarine of some 56-tons, which he dubbed unimaginatively the Nordenfelt I.

The Greeks, fearing the Sultan’s ironclads and taking a cue from the Russian use of torpedoes in the late great regional hate, promptly purchased the tiny submarine– though they never used her. Further, and most ominous for the Turks, the Russians were looking at Nordenfelt’s designs as well.

Nordenfelt I in trials in Landskrona, Sweden just before she was handed over to the Greeks. (September 1885)

With the writing on the wall and already falling behind in the submarine arms race, the Ottomans doubled down and bought two improved Swedish steamboat subs.

Ordered 23 January 1886, the Turkish vessels were longer, some 100-feet overall, and as such topped 100-tons on the surface (160 submerged). Powered by a Lamm locomotive type engine and boiler fed by up to 8-tons of coal, they could make 6 knots on the surface by steam, then did the unusual and shut down the engine to dive and carry on underwater until the pressure on the boiler dropped– usually just a few minutes or so.

Armament was a pair of 14-inch torpedo tubes forward and outside of the pressure hull. An initial stockpile of Schwarzkopf torpedoes (Whiteheads made in Germany) were acquired, each capable of carrying a guncotton warhead some 600 yards. These fish were popular with navies of the time, being purchased by the Chinese and Japanese as well as both the Spanish and Americans on the eve of their dust up in 1898.

For surface action, Mr. Nordenfelt offered a pair of double-barreled 35mm heavy machine guns of his own design. Good guy Thorsten.

Nordenfelt two-barreled 25mm gun on naval mounting. The guns sold to the Turks were the same, except in a larger caliber. (Courtesy: Royal Armouries)

Barrow Shipyard in England built the two submarines under contract by Nordenfeld in 1886. The first sub, Nordenfeld-2 was dubbed Abdülhamid and was launched 9 June 1886 after the sections were assembled at the Tersane-i Amire shipyards in Constantinople.

The second vessel, built as Nordenfeld-3 in sections, was commissioned at Tersane-i Amire as Abdülmecid on 4 August 1887 (though she never had her torpedo tubes fitted).

Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

The Sultan paid some £22,000 for the two ships and their gear all told, which was quite an inflation from the £1,200 that the Greeks paid for their Nordenfeld boat.

The Ottomans were also forced to establish an entire infrastructure to support their fledgling submarine arm.

Turkish torpedo factory. Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

Turkish assembled torps. Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

Divers at the Imperial Naval Arsenal, 1893. Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

Battalion divers at the Imperial Naval Arsenal. Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

After trials in the Golden Horn and Bosporus in late 1887, the two submarines sailed together with a tender for the Bay of Izmit in 1888 and the wheels fell off. They suffered from stability problems and super easy to swamp on the surface in any sort of sea state. The longest leg of the trip completed without the assistance from their tender was just 10 miles.

Due to their lack of reliable propulsion while submerged, they were static when awash and, being very primitive indeed, their raw crews (no such thing as experienced submariners in 1888) were unwilling to submerge very deep, though they were thought capable of 160-feet submergence.

Still, that spring, Abdülhamid made history by firing a Schwarzkopf while submerged in the general direction of a target barge– the first such submarine to do so.

Like the Greeks, the Turks soon had their fill of their tricky Nordenfelds and the vessels were docked after the Izmit tests and scrapped in 1914 when it was found they were in condemned condition.

As for Nordenfelt, he had similar luck. Getting out of the U-boat biz after his fourth submarine sank while en route to the Russians, he was forced out of his machine gun company by a fellow named Hiram Maxim in 1890, which he fought in the courts for years without success. Bankrupt, he retired in 1903.

Specs:

Image by Michael Crisafulli

Displacement: 100 tons surfaced (160 submerged)
Length: 30.5 m (100 ft.)
Beam: 6 m (20 ft.)
Propulsion: Coal-fired 250 hp Lamm steam engine, 1 boiler, 1 screw
Bunkers: 8 tons of coal
Crew: 2 gunners, 2 firemen, 1 coxswain, 1 engineer, 1 officer (7)
Speed:
6 kn (11 km/h) surfaced (10 on trials)
4 kn (7.4 km/h)
Test depth: 160 ft (49 m)
Armament:
Two 356 mm torpedo tubes, Schwarzkopf torpedoes
Two 35mm Nordenfelt twin machine guns

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!