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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 June 11, The other battleship New Jersey

Here we see the early Virginia-class pre-dreadnought battleship USS New Jersey (BB-16) in 1907, on the eve of that ship’s voyage as part of Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet. Most often when people think of a battleship named for the Garden State, the classic Iowa-class BB-62 ship comes to mind immediately. However, there was also BB-16, and her story, which saw a lot less action than the ship that would later carry on the name, is no less intriguing.

The Virginia class was one of the first ocean-going battleships of the newly emergent sea-power that was the United States Navy, built on earlier experience with the Kearsarge, Illinois, and Maine classes. Like the Kearsarge, they were given superimposed main and secondary armament turrets, which cut down on weight but hampered both batteries when in action and limited their range. Some 441-feet long and with a 15,000-ton displacement, they were of average size for pre-dreadnought battleships and are comparable to a large destroyer today (paging the Zumwalt…). She was fast for her time, able to touch 20-knots with her 12-boiler steam plant pushing twin engines/shafts/screws. At the time of the class design, they were the first U.S-made ships to carry Krupp armor, and they had up to 12-inches of it in the turrets.

She was a New England-made ship through and through, being built at Fore River Shipbuilding Company, Quincy, Massachusetts. She was commissioned 11 May 1906 and soon joined the fleet. After a brief tour of the Caribbean, including laying at anchor in Havana as a reminder of who controlled the purse strings of that country at the time, New Jersey became part of the 15-month epic voyage that was the Great White Fleet.

She, and three of her Virginia-class sister-ships, made up the Second Division of that fleet which was commanded by Rear Admiral William H. Emory (yes, the same guy that the destroyer tender was named after). The combined force of 16 battleships, supported by nearly forty coalers and a host of auxiliary craft, left Hampton Roads 16 Dec 1907, then, 43,000 nautical miles and twenty port calls on six continents later, arrived back there on 22 February 1909, just in time to be join the International fleet review as part of the 1909 Hudson-Fulton exhibition.

USS New Jersey (BB-16) In a China Sea typhoon, during the “Great White Fleet’s” cruise around the World, 1908. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1967.

Of course, this placed most of the U.S. fleet out of service and away from the continent for over a year, but it taught the growing steam navy how to operate on a global basis.

New Jersey at the 1909 Hudson-Fulton International Fleet review in New York. Note the more warlike haze gray scheme the navy switched to after the return of the Great White Fleet

After spending most of 1910 out of commission, her crew being sent to man new, more modern battleships coming down the ways. Recommissioned 15 July 1911, she was soon landing naval parties in Mexico in 1914 during the Tampico incident and from there to support US Marines in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

When the US entered WWI in 1917, she spent the conflict escorting the occasional coastal convoy, camouflaged in a special pattern. However her main contribution was in training gunnery crews. Once the conflict ended, she made no less than four trips to Europe to carry dough boys back home from ‘over there’, transporting no less than 5000 US Army troops.

At the end of the war, the Navy deemed her surplus, decommissioning the mighty NJ 6 August 1920. Once the various series of Naval Limitations treaties started to be negotiated, she was stricken from the Navy List so that her tonnage could not be counted against precious battleship totals.

Turned over to the War Department for use by the Army, both New Jersey and her sister ship Virginia were towed to Diamond Shoals, off Cape Hatteras NC in Sept. 1923. There, lumbering Army Air Corps MB-2 bombers under Brig. Gen Billy Mitchell subjected New Jersey to a series of bombing runs of 600 lb bombs that left the ship damaged and taking on water. Focus was then shifted to Virginia and, after she was sunk, returned to New Jersey. The ship was subjected to further attacks until she took what is likely a fatal bomb hit just aft her main mast and sank in the afternoon.

Infograph of New Jersey, from the Courier-Post Online

The wreck lies upside down in a section of ocean where currents keep her scoured clean of marine life 355 feet down.

Specs:

Displacement: 14,948 tons (13,561 tonnes)
Length: 441 ft 3 in (134.49 m)
Beam: 76 ft 3 in (23.24 m)
Draft: 23 ft 9 in (7.24 m)
Speed: 19 kn (22 mph; 35 km/h)
Complement: 812 officers and men
Armament:

4 × 12 in (300 mm)/40 cal guns
8 × 8 in (200 mm)/45 cal guns
12 × 6 in (150 mm)/50 cal guns
4 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes

Armor:

Belt: 6–11 in (152–279 mm)
Barbettes: 6–10 in (152–254 mm)
Turrets (main): 6–12 in (152–305 mm)
Turrets (secondary): 4–12 in (102–305 mm)
Conning tower: 9 in (229 mm)
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