laststandonzombieisland

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk navies of the 1880s-1930s and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Feb 29

Here we have the USS Texas was a second-class pre-dreadnought battleship built by the United States in the early 1890s. She was the first American battleship and the first ship named in honor of the state of Texas to be built by the United States.She was built in reaction to the acquisition of armored warships by several South American countries.Texas was authorized by the U.S. Congress on 3 August 1886.

During the Spanish American War On 3 July, 1898, she was steaming off Santiago de Cuba when the Spanish Fleet under Admiral Cervera attempted to escape past the American Fleet. Texas took four of the enemy ships under fire immediately. While the battleship’s main battery pounded the armored cruisers Vizcaya and Cristobal Colon, her secondary battery joined Iowa, Gloucester, and Indiana in battering two torpedo-boat destroyers.

Decommissioned and used as a station ship she was sunk in shallow water in Tangier Sound in Chesapeake Bay on 21–22 March 1911 by gunfire from the battleship New Hampshire. Her hulk remained visible and was used by entire generations of ships and aircraft for target practice as late as 1959

Displacement:     6,316 long tons (6,417 t) full load (1896)
Length:     308 ft 10 in (94.1 m)
Beam:     64 ft 1 in (19.5 m)
Draft:     24 ft 6 in (7.5 m)
Installed power:     8,610 ihp (6,420 kW)
Propulsion:

2 × vertical triple-expansion steam engines
2 × screws, 4 × boilers

Speed:     17.8 knots (33.0 km/h; 20.5 mph)
Complement:     392 officers and men (1896)
Armament:

2 × 1 – 12 in (305 mm) guns
6 × 1 – 6 in (152 mm) guns
12 × 1 – 57 mm (2.2 in) QF 6 pounder Hotchkiss guns
4 × 1 – 37 mm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss 5-barrel revolving guns
6 × 1 – Driggs-Schroeder guns
4 × 1 – 14 in (360 mm) torpedo tubes

Armor:

Belt: 12 in (305 mm)
Deck: 1–3 in (25–76 mm)
Redoubt: 12 in (305 mm)
Turrets: 1–3 in (25–76 mm)
Conning Tower: 9 in (229 mm)
Bulkheads: 8 in (203 mm)