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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 their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, May 2, 2018: The 1,000-ton consular insurance policy

Here we see the rather fetching schooner-rigged Patrol Gunboat No. 15, the Wheeling-class USS Marietta, at the New York Navy Yard, circa 1902. Note her white hull and extensive small boat arrangement that included a two-masted 28-foot gig whaleboat and two 26-foot steam cutters as well as miscellaneous smaller dinghies. Marietta was celebrated as an integral part of the new all-steel steam Navy at the turn of the new century.

Laid down at Union Iron Works, San Francisco, the two 1,000-ton unarmored steel-hulled gunboats of the Wheeling-class were ordered in 1895 and intended for use as station ships to show the flag in America’s interests overseas. Able to float in just 12-feet of seawater, they could visit small backwater ports and perform caretaker roles to far-flung consular posts across Latin America, the Pacific station and the Caribbean on their own, while their quartet of 4-inch guns gave a moment of respite against unrest. Capable of plugging along at 13-knots, they could revert to their auxiliary sail rig when coal was scarce.

The two sisters were built side by side and commissioned within three weeks of each other in the summer of 1897 and were beautifully appointed.

Marietta was the third and (thus far) last warship to carry that name on the U.S. Navy List, following in the wake of a 28-oar 5-gun rowboat ordered by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 and a Civil War-era monitor that was accepted but never commissioned.

Marietta soon became part of the Spanish-American War.

From DANFS:

Marietta departed San Francisco 19 March 1898 for Callao, Peru, to arrange for the coaling of Battleship Oregon (BB‑3) which was steaming to join the North Atlantic Squadron off Cuba. Moving on to Valparaiso, Chile, 31 March, the gunboat was joined by Oregon 6 April and together the two warships proceeded through the Straits of Magellan and up the east coast of South America, separating at Bahia, Brazil 11 May. Marietta arrived Key West, Fla., 4 June, then joined the blockade of Havana Harbor.

When the war ended, she remained on the East Coast and was used to help clear mines from Cuban waters until she was needed again.

In what became known as the Bluefields Expedition, she was dispatched to the Mosquito coast of Nicaragua at the outset of unrest there that had the local consulate worried as it involved several American and European adventurers who were soon to have their necks stretched by the Nicaraguans. She arrived on 24 Feb 1899 and landed a small force of about 50 sailors and Marines that remained ashore for about a week until things cooled down, co-opting with a similar force landed by the British.

By the end of 1899, it was decided her shallow draft and heavy armament (for a ship her size) could prove useful in fighting on the other side of the globe and Marietta arrived in Manila 3 January 1900. Operating in support of American forces ending the Philippine insurrection, the busy gunboat acted as a patrol and convoy escort vessel in the islands, assisting and cooperating with the Army in military expeditions and landings until ordered home 3 June 1901 for duties with the North Atlantic Squadron until moving into ordinary in 1903 for a refit.

The next year she operated off Central America, protecting American interests in Panama during that nation’s revolution against Colombia, which led to the Canal becoming a wholly American operation for the remainder of the Century. Marietta then spent nearly a decade around the Caribbean, “calling at numerous Latin American ports and protecting American lives and property from damage.”

By 1912, pushing age 20 and outclassed by most things afloat, the hard-used gunboat which had circumnavigated the globe and mixed it up in two hemispheres was taken out of front-line service and turned over to the New Jersey Naval Militia for use as a training ship.

When the Great War erupted in Europe, she was returned to the Navy and served on Neutrality Patrol duties in the Atlantic before seeing the elephant once more in the 1916 Vera Cruz crisis in Mexican waters, again landing armed bluejackets for service ashore.

When the U.S. entered WWI for real in April 1917, Marietta was up-armed and assigned to the Atlantic Fleet patrol force for convoy duty, eventually crossing the big water to Brest, France where she served on anti-submarine patrol under the command of CPT Harry G. Hamlet, U.S. Coast Guard (a future Commandant of that service), with a mixed crew of Navy vets, Coasties, and new recruits.

She appeared to be a happy and popular little gunboat during this wartime period, with several snaps of her crew preserved to history.

In 1919, on a convoy home out of the Bay of Biscay to Boston, the 150-foot converted menhaden trawler USS James (SP-429) began taking on water in heavy seas. Marietta, under her Coast Guard skipper, moved to rescue her two officers and 45 men in the maelstrom.

As noted by the Coast Guard Historian’s office on Hamlet:

With high seas threatening to crash the two vessels together, he skillfully and courageously maneuvered his ship alongside James and was instrumental in saving all on board. In recognition of his gallant conduct, the Secretary of the Treasury awarded him the Congressional Gold Lifesaving Medal and he received a Special Commendation from the Secretary of the Navy entitling him to wear the Silver Star upon his service ribbon.

On the way back to the East Coast, Marietta was involved in a fender-bender with the nominally larger Wickes-class destroyer USS Stevens (DD-86) at Ponta Delgada, in the Azores, the latter supporting the NC seaplane transatlantic flight efforts.

Marietta, worn out and unrepaired, was decommissioned 12 July 1919 at New Orleans and sold the following Spring for her value in scrap. Rumor is she was repurposed as a banana boat, plying in Central American waters in the 1920s and 30s, but I can’t confirm that from Lloyds.

As for her sister, Wheeling was used as a training ship after the Great War for a while and eventually as a berthing barge for motor torpedo boat crews during WWII. She was sold for scrap 5 October 1946. The Navy certainly got their dollars’ worth out of them.

In the National Archives, the Trial Board records of both Marietta and Wheeling are on file as is their logbooks and the court documents from the Stevens incident.

Specs:

Displacement 1,000 t., 1914 – 990 t.
Length 189 ‘ 7″
Beam 34′
Draft 12’
Propulsion: Two Babcock and Wilcox boilers, two 518ihp vertical triple expansion steam engines, two shafts.
Speed 13 knots.
Complement 140 as built, 1914 – 163
Armament:
(As built)
6×4″ gun mounts
1×3″ gun mount
4×6-pounders
2×1-pounders
Colt .30-caliber “potato digger” machine gun
(1905)
6×4″ rapid fire mounts
2×1-pounder rapid fire mounts
Colt machine gun
(1911)
6×4″/40 rapid fire mounts
4×6-pounder rapid fire mounts
2×1-pounder rapid fire mounts

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