Warship Wednesday Oct 10

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk navies of the 1866-1938 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  October 10th

Here we see the Second Class Battleship/Armored Cruiser USS Maine sailing past the Brooklyn Bridge around 1895.

This beautiful ship was the start of the US Navy’s Great Battleship race that ran from about 1886 to the Post-WWI Washington Naval Treaty. Although she was the most advanced ship in the world when laid down in 1886, by the time she was commissioned 9 years later she was already obsolete. At only 6,000-tons she was too small for a battleship, and at 16-knots too slow for a cruiser. Although she had up to 12-inches of  nickel steel armor, by 1900 new Harvey and later Krupp armor made it look like cardboard. Likewise her mixed armament of 25 guns of 6 different calibers from .45-70 to 254mm, would be made totally obsolete by 1905. However she would not be around by then….

At 21:40 on 15 February, 1898 an explosion of unknown origin on board Maine occurred in the Havana Harbor. Later investigations revealed that more than 5 long tons (5.1 t) of powder charges for the vessel’s six and ten-inch guns had detonated, obliterating the forward third of the ship. The remaining wreckage rapidly settled to the bottom of the harbor.  Even though she was  divided into 214 watertight compartments, she sank in less than five minutes. The ship’s crew consisted of 355: 26 officers, 290 sailors, and 39 marines. Of these, there were 261 fatalities:

2 officers and 251 sailors/marines either killed by the explosion or drowned
7 others were rescued but soon died of their injuries
1 officer later died of “cerebral affection” (shock)

Of the 94 survivors, only 16 were uninjured.

The Maine became a rallying cry for revenge and the Spanish-American War was a direct result of the sinking. Teddy Roosevelt himself, the Asst Secretary of the Navy when the Maine was sunk, carried a salvaged Navy 38 revolver from the ship up San Juan Hill.

After the war, the crippled ship was raised and towed to sea, where she was interred in the Florida Straits in over 600 fathoms of water. Parts of her including the main mast, anchors, brass torpedo tube hatches, the conning tower, artillery shells, and the capstan are on public display in more than twenty states from coast to coast, making her the one of the best remembered battleships….that really wasnt a battleship…

Specs:
Displacement:     6,682 long tons (6,789 t)
Length:     324 ft 4 in (98.9 m)
Beam:     57 ft (17.4 m)
Draft:     22 ft 6 in (6.9 m)
Installed power:     9,293 ihp (6,930 kW)
Propulsion:

2 × shafts
2 × vertical triple expansion steam engines
8 × boilers

Speed:     16.45 kn (30.47 km/h; 18.93 mph)
Range:     6670km (3600nm) at 10 knots
Complement:     374 officers and men
Armament:

2 × 2 – 10 in (254 mm) guns
6 × 1 – 6 in (152 mm) guns
7 × 1 – Driggs-Schroeder 6-pounder (57 mm (2.2 in)) guns
4 × 1 – 1-pounder (37 mm (1.5 in)) Hotchkiss guns
4 × 1 – Driggs-Schroeder 1-pounder (37 mm (1.5 in)) guns
4 x 1 – Gatling guns .45-70 caliber
4 × 18 in (457 mm) torpedo tubes

Armor:

Belt: 12 in (305 mm)
Deck: 2–3 in (51–76 mm)
Turrets: 8 in (203 mm)
Conning tower: 10 in (254 mm)
Bulkheads: 6 in (152 mm)