Former super-carrier USS Ranger, being towed from US west coast to Texas, around the tip of South America where she will be scrapped, halted tow in Balboa to refuel the tow boats.
That’s when a local with a drone decided to buzz the ship as it sat in the Bay of Panama. Footage recorded by former officer in the Navy, who works and lives in Panama as a Panama canal Pilot.
Pretty neat video
I’ve long been a fan of the cruiser-hulled light carrier USS Independence (CVL-22) and her class on the blog. She was rushed into service when the Pacific Fleet was whittled down to almost a single operational flattop in 1943 then cast out after a pair of A-bomb tests left her wrecked after the War. Scuttled off California in 1951, her estimated position has long been known.
Light aircraft carrier USS Independence, after the Bikini Atoll nuclear bomb test.
Well NOAA in conjunction with private industry partners, has confirmed the location and condition of the USS Independence. Resting upright in 2,600 feet of water off California’s Farallon Islands, the aircraft carrier’s hull and flight deck are clearly visible in sonar images, with what appears to be a plane in the carrier’s hangar bay.
Click to big up
So 30-feet worth of old fishing trawler just washed up off the Oregon Coast
They could tell because it was reportedly full of marine life only found on the Japanese coast.
The song “Radioactive” just started playing in my head.
The Coast Guard had to sink a similar ghost ship off the Alaska Coast back in 2012.
75 Years ago today the pride of the German Kriegsmarine, the Hipper-class heavy cruiser Blücher, met an unlikely end. Built to raid British shipping and help screen Hiter’s new grand blue water navy, the massive 16,000-ton super cruiser with her 8 203mm guns and up to 3-inches of armor never saw it coming on the morning of April 9, 1940, when she sailed quietly and darked out into neutral Norwegian waters.
Without a declaration of war, Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of Norway had begun with a series of sea and air penetrations of the Scandinavian county, one of which Blucher was leading.
As the flag of Konteradmiral Oskar Kummetz, she was packed with an 800-man contingent of the 163rd Infantry Division who would be landed in the nation’s capital of Oslo and quickly seize the government. Passing through the Oslofjord in the dark of that morning, two of the ancient 28cm Krupp (!) guns mounted at Oscarsborg Fortress opened fire on the German cruiser at point blank range, damaging the ship severely and setting it alight.
Then, a hidden and unknown battery (although it had been installed in 1901!) of shore-based torpedo tubes with 30-year old Whitehead torpedoes made in Austria-Hungary engaged the ship. Though they had but 220-lb warheads, the good Austrian tin fish held true and holed Blucher at 04:34.
All that is above ground of the secret Oscarborg torpedo battery. The six tubes themselves are below ground and were manned by reservists that morning that had never fired a live torpedo before!
Between 1887 and 1913, Norway ordered no less than 377 torpedoes of various marks from Whitehead Di Fiume S.A., with the largest buy (of 100 fish) in 1912.
She rolled over and sank by 0730 in 210 feet, with heavy loss of life. This allowed the Norwegian King and government from being taken a prisoner, enabling them to escape to the north and eventually Britain. In all, the Blucher had only been in service for six months and 18 days.
The guns, torpedo tubes, and the Blucher are still in their respective places as on that fateful morning 75 years ago today. That’s a lesson to never underestimate decades old but simple gear, especially if you park your brand new cruisers right in front of it.
She is also remembered at the Internationales Maritimes Museum Hamburg, where a detailed scale model and one of her practice shells are on display.
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, April 8, 2015– The Mud Lump Picket Gang
Click to very much big up. USCG Photo
Here we see an excellent bow-on shot of a 38 Foot Cabin Picket Boat CG-4371 of the United States Coast Guard as she would have appeared during World War II when all dolled up in her war paint. From 1920-1960, these boats were the local “Coasties” and fought bootleggers in the Rum Wars, the Germans, and Japanese during the real live shooting war that followed, and set the benchmark for peacetime service afterward.
Moreover, altogether there were over 600 of them.
Why were they needed?
With the passage of the Volstead Act, perhaps the biggest effort at pissing in the wind in the history of the Federal Government, liquor was made the scapegoat for poor societal growth by the Temperance Movement and made thereby illegal- that should have fixed everything. Well, it only made matters far worse as the demand never went away and enterprising suppliers, many fresh from military service in the Great War and with few qualms about taking risks, began bootlegging booze by land, sea, and air. The first was risky as it was too predictable, and the final couldn’t handle the volume, which led to the serious rum-runners selecting offshore delivery as the preferred means.
It was simple, buy a surplus freighter or deep draft sailing ship (there were literally thousands of them cheap after the war) load it with legal rum in Cuba or the Bahamas if down south or good Canadian Whiskey if up north, then haul the hooch to a few hundred yards offshore of the (then) 3-mile federal limit and sell it to any enterprising small boat owner that came your way– by the case and at several times the cost. And it worked, for example, the number of quarts of rum sold in Nassau, the Bahamas in 1917 was just 50,000. By 1922, it skyrocketed to 10-million. It was a boon with coastal port towns in the nearby Caribbean turning into gold rush cities and some 500,000 Americans believed involved at one stage or another in the new instant economy of bootlegging.
A schooner loaded high with whiskey on rum row.USCG Photo
The government’s answer to shut down this “Rum Row” was the USCG.
The thing is, the Coasties had few capable large craft as their offshore cutters were slow and couldn’t pursue the smaller fast boats of the rum runners headed back to shore, and the local harbor launches and rescue boats of the Coast Guard stations were likewise too slow and light (often rowboats or 36-footers Hunnewell Type lifeboats that could make 8-knots) to chase the speedy little powerboats over the local mud lumps.
Therefore, while the Coast Guard quickly acquired a fleet of Navy 4-piper destroyers and sub chasers from mothballs and ordered a ton of new 165-foot, 125-foot, and 75-foot gunboats, but they still needed smaller boys for when the speeds got north of 20 knots and the shoals got shallower than two fathoms. That is where the picket boats came in.
Design
Based on the classic sea bright dory fishing boats that were popular along the Jersey Coast in the late 19th Century, the Coast Guard came up with two general plans (one for a 36-foot boat, the other for a 38-footer) of fast “Cabin Picket Boats.”
A 38-foot cabin picket in their peacetime livery.USCG Photo
38-foot picket USCG Photo
Each had a wood carvel design hull with single planking and ice sheathing, either a single or double cabin, and a single gasoline engine, prop or rudder. Speeds were in the 25-knot range. They were self-bailing, had electrical lights and refrigerator, and could accommodate as many as ten coasties but only needed two to operate.
With their small cabins and galley, they carried enough fuel to go out overnight and come back, venturing out to Rum Row and back several times. Too small for names, they were all given numbers.
Given a law enforcement role as primary, a first for a USCG small boat, they were tasked with patrolling and policing of harbors, shallow inlets and protected waters along the coasts. Initially, the 36 footers were built to two very, um, flexible designs one with a double cabin and one with a single, and 103 were ordered from small boat builders around the country, all delivered by 1926.
From the USCG Historian’s office on the design of the 36s:
Procurement procedures for these smaller craft varied by type. In the case of the single-cabin model, a brief outline plan was distributed to boat building contractors with instructions that they retain their own naval architect to complete the boat’s final plans and specifications. With the double-cabin model, however, complete plans were drawn up and provided by the Coast Guard to prospective builders. Seven different yards were contracted for single-cabin boat construction, and six yards for double-cabin boat construction.
The 38s were all built to a single plan with 68 examples created before Dec. 7, 1941, and another 470 built between then and 1944— but we’ll get to that.
Rum War
By 1924 the Coast Guard, armed with their new boats small and large and a huge influx of cash from the Hoover administration, was set loose on Rum Row. Boat crews, often called Hammerheads due to their distinctive booze smashing (and head knocking) sledges destroyed rum and whiskey alike. Off New London alone in one year, no less than 65 ships were captured with $1.5 milly in booze as well as 290 bootleggers along with them. The crews were heavily armed with BARs, M1903s and pistols because shootouts, as well as encounters with pirate ships out to rob the bootleggers themselves were increasingly common. One source cites that over 200 civilians were killed off the U.S. East Coast during the 1920s while involved in the booze campaign.
The Coast Guard was hard-handed when needed and they suffered their own losses, even exacting retribution in the hanging (at the Ft. Lauderdale Coast Guard Station) of a bootlegger, James “The Gulf Stream Pirate” Alderman that killed a Coast Guardsman.
One of the spicer incidents was the capture of the SS Economy. Ensign Charles L. Duke was aboard a picket boat on the night of 3 July 1927– right before the holiday. He and two sailors were patrolling New York Harbor onboard the 36-footer CG-2327 when they saw a beat-up old steamer pass in the night. With the ship in poor shape and only the name “Economy” painted across her stern in a fresh script, Duke decided to board her. After the ship refused to stop following two rounds from Duke’s revolver, he ordered his two sailors that, “If I’m not out of that pilot house in two minutes you turn the machine gun on them,” and jumped on the freighter with his half-empty revolver and a flashlight.
Duke boarding the Economy. USCG Painting
He seized control of the bridge, took the ship’s wheel and grounded the vessel, then waited for reinforcements the rest of the night. Finally relieved just before dawn by additional cuttermen from all over New York, they found 22 bootleggers and 3,000 barrels of hooch in what was called “perhaps the most heroic” exploit in the rum war.
For more on the Rum War at sea, the USCG in 1964 produced a very informative 229-page report here in pdf format free.
Crazy marine life
Off Brielle, New Jersey in the summer of 1933, one local angler by the name of Captain A.L. Kahn, master of the F/V Miss Pensacola II, came face to face with a Jules Verne-sized monster of the depths. You see his anchor line became tangled in a Giant Manta Devil Fish (Manta Birostris) almost capsizing the boat. The local Coast Guard station sent its picket boat, CG-2390, and unable to free the boat or beast, dispatched it with “22 shots from a high-powered rifle.”
Giant Manta Devil Fish 1933. Click to big up
More on the Manta!
The ray was towed to Feuerbach and Hansen’s Marina in Brielle, New Jersey where it was hoisted ashore on August 26, 1933, with a travel lift. In the end, the beast weighed some 5,000-pounds and measured more than 20 feet across the wing. Kahn, with likely the biggest and weirdest catch of his life, exhibited the stuffed specimen for years.
Peacetime roles.
With the bootleggers killed by the repeal of the Volstead Act, and barring the occasional sea monster fight, the pickets were some of the few Rum War-era craft that were kept in full service during the Depression due to their ease of operation, versatility, and low-cost. They continued to serve as coastal patrol and search and rescue craft, assist in maritime accidents, police fishing grounds for poachers, and even go far upriver for flood relief due to their very shallow draft.
A dozen Coast Guard picket boats (double cabin 36 footers) muster beside the former CGC Yocona on the Mississippi River during The Great Ohio, Mississippi River Valley Flood of 1937. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Yocona was a 182-foot Kankakee-class stern paddle wheeler built for the Coast Guard in 1919 and stationed at Vicksburg. Click to big up
Back at war
When Pearl Harbor jump-started the U.S. into the middle of WWII, the Coast Guard and their picket boats soon found themselves unexpectedly on the front lines. Never meant for combat, they mounted no crew-served weapons. Their gasoline engines would prove fireballs if any of these ships took a hit from a major caliber shell (even if the projectile itself did not break the cabin cruiser in two). Nevertheless, by 1942, the picket boats were in the thick of it and another 470 were soon built to join the 170~ already in service.
1943 photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society showing a 38 under construction near Seattle in 1942
1943 photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society showing 38s under construction near Seattle in 1942
Issued submachine guns, hammers (to break periscope lenses if they got close enough) and grenades (to throw in the open hatches of surfaced U-boats, the pickets mounted regular patrols in the coastal waterways and harbor mouths across the nation.
The 38-foot cabin picket boat. Click to very much big up. USCG Photo
The 38-foot cabin picket boat, CG-4371. Click to very much big up. USCG Photo
Painted in dull war schemes and loaded up with food, these tiny boats would ply the 50-fathom curve on “five days out and two days in port” patrol rotations and later a few even received some 25-pound paint can-sized depth charges and WWI-era Marlin machine guns found in storage. They tended anti-submarine nets watching for frogmen, raced to the rescue of downed patrol fliers, and all too often responded to the site of successful U-boat attacks, picking up those still alive and those that were not.
In February 1942, 432,000 tons of shipping went down in the Atlantic, 80 percent off the American coast. The pickets were everywhere picking up survivors. For example:
And so it went during the war until the U-boat menace abated after 1943. Still, the picket boats provided yeoman service day after day, ready to fight or save lives.
During the War, as reported by one who sailed these craft on the West Coast, the crew typically consisted of six men spread across BM, MM and unrated seamen. As they were often away from the regular full-sized bases, these men were on their own, “The crews of the patrol boats received a dollar and 20 cents per day subsistence money extra with their pay. We had to buy our own food supplies from the commissary and pay our bill at the end of each month. Each boat also had an old-fashioned icebox and a two-burner alcohol stove. We carried government vouchers in case we had to buy gasoline at a harbor away from the Alameda base.”
German U-Boat U-858 after surrendering to American forces in May 1945. The photo also shows a US Navy “K” class patrol blimp and a rare view of a Sikorsky R-4B helicopter. In the background, a 38 foot USCG picket boat
After the conclusion of the war, many of the most used vessels, those dating from the Rum Row era, were withdrawn.
By 1950, the Coast Guard planned to replace these old 36 and 38 footers that remained with a new class of 40-foot utility boats of which 236 were complete by 1966. With that, the days of the Cabin Pickets were over, although some were passed on to the U.S. Geological Survey and other government agencies for further use.
A few are still around as private yachts and are easily recognizable by their lines.
A retired picket used as a personal yacht in Virginia 1960s
An old 38 up for sale in 2012. Not too bad a shape for a 70+-year-old wooden boat built by the lowest bidder.
Today, the 40-foot utilities that replaced the picket boats were themselves phased out by the 41-footers of the 1970s which were in turn retired recently in favor of the new 45 ft. Response Boats are a common sight along the waterways of the country. This new 174-member class still largely conducts the same mission pioneered by the venerable cabin cruisers.
A new 45-foot response boat medium (RB-M) passes by the Washington Monument on the Potomac River during a capabilities demonstration. This boat was the first model put into testing and is currently assigned to Station Little Creek, Va. The RB-M will re-capitalize the capabilities of the existing multi-mission 41-foot utility boats (UTB) and multiple nonstandard boats to meet the needs of the Coast Guard. U.S. Coast Guard photo by PA1 Adam Eggers – (Click to big up)
Clocking in every day.
Specs
38
38- foot
Hull numbers: CG2385-4372, later changed to 38300-38836 during WWII
Displacement: 15,700-pounds (8~ tons)
Length overall: 38 feet, 3-inches
Beam: 10.33 feet
Draft: 3 feet
Crew-2-8
Fuel: 240 gallons
Engine: One single. These included either Hall Scott Model 168 270hp V6s, 300hp Sterling Dolphins, Murray and Tregurtha 325s, although most of these after 1942 were completed with 225hp Kermath models.
Speed: 20-25 knots depending on load and engines fitted. One, CG2385, hit 26.5kts on trails.
Range; 175 miles
Cost: $10,000
36.USCG Photo
36-foot
Hull numbers: CG2200-2229 (open cabin), 2300-2372 (double cabin)
Displacement: 10,000 lbs. (5~ tons)
Length overall: 35.8 feet
Beam: 8.9 feet
Draft: 30 inches
Crew-3+
Fuel: 240 gallons
Engine: 180 HP Consolidated Speedway MR-6 six-cylinder gasoline engine
Speed: 20-25 knots depending on load and engines fitted
Range; 175 miles
Cost: $8,800
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During the 1950s and 60s, the amphibs of the gator navy, tasked with hauling Marines from place to place, were either ships that crashed their open front bows on the beach ala WWII style (LSTs), mini-carriers that were crammed full of choppers (LPHs) or dock landing ships that served as mother ships for small boats (LPD, LSDs). None of these, even the largest, were over 16,000~ tons.
So how about take a flattop chopper carrier like a LPH, double the size of it, and add a well deck like a LSD/LPH and give it the cargo capacity of an LST to make one motherbig assault ship that could double as a harrier carrier/ASW base for sea control or as a mine sweeper mother-ship if needed.
With that the Tarawa class of amphibious assault ships (LHA) were ordered from Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula during the Nixon era. These 44,000-ton ships, the size of the WWII era Essex class fleet carriers they in some roles replaced, were designed to shlep up to 1700 Marines in style while carrying 25-30 helicopters, a battalion’s worth of vehicles, and a small flotilla of landing craft.
141022-N-NZ935-083 PHILIPPINE SEA (Oct. 22, 2014) The amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu (LHA 5) (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Joshua Hammond/Released) Click to big up. *Note the two dimples in the flight deck were for 5-inch guns that were removed in the 90s.
Five of these hardy greenside flattops were built with the last, USS Peleliu (LHA-5) commissioning in 1980. I was six when I watched that ship leave ‘Goula as a kid, standing at the old Coast Guard station with a fishing pole in the water.
She was named after the 1944 Battle of Peleliu, where US Marines had to fight for every inch of real estate. Note the BAR and M1919 dropping it like its hot.
Now, as I myself have grown into an old man, the “Iron Nickle” is being put out to pasture, replaced by the new USS America (LHA-6) which I saw leave Pascagoula just a couple months ago.
Peleliu has been in the thick of it for the past 35 years.
As noted by Navy Times,
During the ship’s three decade run, it set many firsts for the blue/green team, which conducted 178,051 flight operations, steamed approximately 1,011,946 nautical miles and counted 57,983 crewmembers.
They include the first:
Fleet firing of the RIM 116 Rolling Airframe Missile, in October 1995.
MH-60S Knighthawk landing on a Pacific Fleet ship, in April 2003.
Expeditionary Strike Group to deploy (led by Peleliu), in August 2003.
LHA-class ship to receive the expeditionary fighting vehicle in its welldeck, in January 2009.
She also helped evac Subic and Clark following Mt. Pinatubo, responded to San Fransisco after the great World Series Earthquake, and deployed with her Marines 17 times, many of which turned hot and spicy in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.
140813-N-LQ926-186 PACIFIC OCEAN (Aug. 13, 2014) Sailors participate in a swim call aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu (LHA 5). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Alex Van’tLeven/Released)
140903-N-HU377-024 EAST CHINA SEA (Sept. 3, 2014) AV-8B Harriers assigned to Marine Attack Squadron (VMA) 542, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, taxi into position during flight operations aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu (LHA 5). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dustin Knight/Released)
She will now be placed into strategic reserve at Pearl Harbor where she will be reunited with her long decommissioned sisters Tarawa (LHA-1) and Nassau (LHA-4) in mothballs. Two other class members, Saipan (LHA-2) and Belleau Wood (LHA-3) have been scrapped and expended as targets respectively, fates that are likely to be options for the remaining sisters.
“Pax per Potens”
The U.S. Navy in World War II commissioned just under 100 16″/50 (40.6 cm) Mark 7 guns for their Iowa-class battleships. Possibly the finest naval big gun of its era (although yes, the Yamato‘s 18.1-inch Type 94’s were bigger– but the Mark 7s had more diverse ammunition selections and better fire control), these guns were the last super large caliber naval rifles in service.
Luckily the entire quartet of Iowas were preserved as museum ships, making 36 of these big sticks open for viewing across the country. The thing is, those guns, although on WWII era ships, weren’t fired during that war. You see in the 1950s the Navy swapped out the well used combat tested guns for fresh brand new ones that had been acquired as spares and to equip the never-completed USS Illinois (BB-65) and USS Kentucky (BB-66).
New Jersey firing 16 inch guns
Other spares went to Dr. Gerald Bull’s Harp project (where at least one still used to fire a shell 112-miles high still sits rusting away in Barbados) and to the 1950s Gunfighter tests in Nevada using 11-inch saboted shells.
By 2011, with the Iowas all disposed of to museum status, the Navy decided it no longer needed its 22 remaining 16-inch barrels, most of which were WWII guns left over from the 1950s swap out. 14 located in Nevada were cut up for scrap and 8, left at the St Juliens Creek Naval Annex in Chesapeake, Virginia, were given a brief reprieve to see if anyone wanted them or they would suffer the same fate.
Over the past two years three were placed in museums ranging from Delaware to Arizona, and the USAF is taking three on for a fuse testing project, but the last two remaining barrels at St Juliens are only being held on a month to month basis.
Well one 120-ton gun, appropriately used by the USS New Jersey during WWII and Korea before being offloaded in 1953 for a new tube, was delivered to Hartshorne Woods Park, part of the Monmouth County Park System in Middleton, New Jersey this week where it will be on public display moving forward.
One of the NJs tubes being delivered to a park in…New Jersey this week
“We’ve had quite a crowd out there the last two days,” said Gail Hunton, supervising historic preservation specialist for the Monmouth County Park System. “What’s very gratifying is how many people have gotten so enthusiastic about this who didn’t know about Harshorne Woods Park.”
The Coast Guard has been neck deep in the fighting in every U.S. war from the 1800s to the Persian Gulf, with WWII being no exception. One of the coasties that served in that conflict was Linwood “Tick” Thumb, the oldest living veteran from that war.
He just had his 100th.
Tick served on a 83-foot “splinter boat” operating out of Hampton Roads (Little Creek) during the height of Operation Drumbeat, the German U-boat campaign on the U.S East Coast.
From the USCG story about Tick last week:
Having grown up on the water, Thumm figured he would take to the Coast Guard like the Wright brothers took to flying. After joining the Coast Guard and becoming a seaman 1st class, he tested for the Coast Guard Academy. Thumm’s proficiency in math paid off on the exam when he achieved a near perfect score on the celestial navigation portion. Having entered and successfully completed the program, he became an officer and was given command of an 83-foot cutter crew stationed at Naval Base Little Creek in what is now Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Thumm and his crew spent the first part of the war escorting convoys along the Atlantic seaboard, mostly from New Jersey to North Carolina. During one of these escorts, Thumm and the crew spotted a German U-boat, and with the help of a few depth charges, sent the U-boat to its final resting place on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. A naval panel at Fort Story in Virginia Beach investigated the encounter, but only credited them with a possible kill – a categorization Thumm attributes more to jealousy on behalf of the navy than a lack of evidence. In his mind, Thumm didn’t need the Navy to confirm the kill – his crew found half of a German officer’s body in the water and that was good enough for him.
Happy 100th Tick, thank you for your service.
Linwood “Tick” Thumm displays an oar received from the Portsmouth Federal Building’s Chief’s Mess in Portsmouth, Va., March 26, 2015. Thumm, a World War II Coast Guard veteran, had just turned 100 and was celebrating with fellow Coast Guard members and civilians. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class David Weydert)
Click to big up. Its really a very stunning image.
CARIBBEAN SEA (Feb. 24, 2015) An SH-60B Sea Hawk helicopter assigned to The Immortals of Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron (Light) (HSL) 60, lands aboard the guided-missile frigate USS Kauffman (FFG 59) during night flight operations. Kauffman is underway in support of Operation Martillo, a joint operation with the U.S. Coast Guard and partner nations within the 4th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Shane A. Jackson/Released)
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 March 25, 2015 the Granite Ship of the Line
Here we see the once-majestic old ship of the line USS Granite State as she appeared in a much more humble state towards the end of her career. When this image was taken, she was the last such ship afloat on the Naval List.
During the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy gave a good account of itself, especially for its size, and its frigates such as Constitution and Constellation, proved their weight in gold repeatedly.
With the end of the war, the U.S. Navy had to be revitalized and as such, “An Act for the Gradual Increase of the Navy of the United States,” was approved 29 April 1816. This provided for nine larger 74-gun ships of the line and funding of $1 million per year for a period of 8 years to see these craft completed. These were to be monster ships capable of taking on just about anything the modern European powers could send across the Atlantic in single ship combat.
Do not let the name fool you, most of the American ‘74s generally carried more like 80-90 guns. Alabama‘s sistership, USS North Carolina was actually pierced (had gunports) for 102 guns. Another, ’74 sister, USS Pennsylvania carried 16 8-inch shell guns and 104 32-pounders.
Some 196-feet long, these triple-deckers were exceptionally wide at 53-feet, giving them a very tubby 1:4 length-to-beam ratio and were very deep in hold ships, drawing over 30 feet full draft when fully loaded with over 800 officers, men and Marines and shipping a pretty respectable 2600-tons displacement.
James Guy Evans (United States, born England, circa 1810–1860) U.S. Ships of the Line “Delaware” and “North Carolina” and Frigates “Brandywine” and “Constellation,” circa 1835–60 Oil on canvas, 31¾ x 44⅛ inches New-York Historical Society; The Alabama was the sistership to the two ’74s shown here, Delaware and North Carolina, though she never shipped in this configuration.
These nine ships it was decided would be named Columbus, Alabama, Delaware, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Virginia and all were nominally completed by 1825.
I say nominally because by the time they were complete, the Navy had run out of money to pay for things like cannons, sails, rigging and crews so some of these ships were left “in the stocks” on land until cash could be freed.
Alabama was one of the most neglected, although President Madison himself visited her while under construction at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
While most of her sisters joined the fleet eventually in the 1830s, although some with much less firepower than designed, Alabama was still on land when the Civil War started.
She was a ship built, at least initially, in the period just after the War of 1812 and as such was constructed with fine live oak timbers from the South and fitted with copper spikes, sheeting, and deck nails made by the Paul Revere and Sons Copper Company of Massachusetts. Revere himself in fact, was still alive when his firm won the contract in 1816.
Doughty, the man who literally designed the early U.S. Navy
Alabama was designed by no less a naval architect than William Doughty, the same nautical genius who was responsible for the USS President, USS Independence, and USS United States 74s, Peacock class, Erie class, Java and Guerrier, North Carolina 74s class, Brandywine 44s Class, brigs, revenue cutters, and the Baltimore Clipper model so she had a good pedigree.
It was as an ode to this impressive lineage that the old girl was finally completed during the war. Her original name, now belonging to a succeeded southern state, was somewhat too ironic so she was renamed New Hampshire on 28 October 1863. She then took to the water for the first time at launching on 23 April 1864 and proceeded to fitting out.
The thing is, the U.S. Navy of 1864 did not need a classic 1816-designed ’74 in its battle line. In fact, the old girl, with provision for sail only, was an anachronism in a fleet increasingly populated with steam and iron monitors equipped with rifled guns. Therefore, she was armed much more simply with a quartet of 100-pounder Parrott rifles and a half dozen 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbore guns, so ten pieces rather than 74, but hey, at least she was afloat!
Commissioned 13 May 1864 at Portsmouth, just 48 years after she was authorized, she proceeded to Port Royal South Carolina where she spent the last nine months of the Civil War as a depot and store ship, her huge below deck berthing areas designed for up to and empty cannon ports proving just the thing to make her a floating warehouse.
It was while at Port Royal, a photographer who took a number of iconic images of her crew visited her.
Believed to be taken on the USS New Hampshire in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1864 note the boarding cutlasses on wall.
USS New Hampshire in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1864 powder monkey, same cutlasses same cannon
After the war ended, she was put out to pasture and sailed to Norfolk, once more the headquarters of the U.S. Navy, where she served as a receiving ship (again, lots of unused hammock space on a ’74 with less than a dozen guns) for more than a decade.
It was then that the Navy figured out a better use for the grand old girl.
New Hampshire as apprentice ship at Newport
According to the Naval War College Museum Blog,
In 1881 the USS New Hampshire became the flagship for Commodore Stephen B. Luce’s Apprentice Training Program in Newport. Luce and others established an apprentice system to formally educate young boys and improve the overall quality of naval recruits. The boys needed parental permission and criminals were not allowed to apply. New Hampshire, docked at ‘South Point’ on Coasters Harbor Island, was the home of these boys for a six-month period before each was assigned to a training ship. In nearby buildings the teenagers were instructed in seamanship and gunnery as well as reading, writing, arithmetic, and history.
New Hampshire was not alone in this ultimate fate. By the late 19th century, many of the famous old sailing ships of the Navy to include the USS Constitution, Farragut’s USS Hartford, and the fellow Doughty-designed ’74 USS Independence were still in daily use as roofed-over receiving ships. Their gun ports were replaced by windows, their sails and riggings largely trashed, and their armament replaced by training sets with powder enough for harbor salutes.
The Newport experiment continued for over a decade until, decommissioned 5 June 1892 but still on the Naval List, she was loaned to the New York Naval Militia as a stationary training ship based in New York City.
For the next 28 years, the mighty ship of the line endured at her post in the Hudson River where she participated in the 1892 Columbia Ship parade as well as the 1909 Hudson Fulton parade and trained thousands of naval reservists that went on to serve in both the Spanish American War and WWI. During the flare up with Spain, she was armed and made ready to repel an assault by wayward Spanish cruisers on the Big Apple that never came.
In that time, she lost her New Hampshire name (let’s be honest, it was never really hers anyway, she was a Dixie girl) to the new battleship BB-25 and was renamed Granite State, 30 November 1904.
She was the floating armory for the 1st Battalion, New York Naval Militia, who had a pretty good football team.
According to NYNM records, she “moored at first at East 27th Street & the East River (In 1898 during Spanish-American War it was used as the Naval Militia Receiving Ship); then at Whitestone, finally from 1912 at West 97th Street (to W. 94th) on the Hudson River. The barracks were on the dock side”
Bayonet drill 1898. Note the very Civil War style dress of the pre-Span Am War New York Naval Militia. At the time it was cheap surplus and Bannerman’s downtown sold it by the pound.
In April 1913 she suffered a topside fire that caused more than $3800 in damages, which is about $95K in today’s cash.
In 1918, she again chopped from NYNM service to active duty, performing duties as a U.S. Navy Hospital Ship in New York for the duration of the War. Enlisting on her deck at the time was a local boy, S1C Humphrey Bogart, who went on to star in a few movies later in life.
One of the Granite State’s toughguys
On July 21, 1918, she suffered her only known death during warfare when John James Malone, Seaman, 2nd class, USNRF, drowned during a training evolution.
Moving back to the militia after the war, with 105 years on her hull she suffered yet another fire, this time with a near catastrophic loss.
Oil, pooling around the ship from a leaking 6-inch Standard Oil Company pipe, was ignited from the backfire of a passing Captains gig. The resulting fire destroyed the gig, a three story naval office, storehouse, and the Granite State. Low water pressure on shore contributed to the loss. However, before the crew abandoned ship the vessels powder magazine was flooded, preventing an explosion that would have devastated the surrounding area. Fireboats pumped tons of water into the flaming hulk until it settled into the mud. Listing sharply to port only the mooring chains kept the vessel from capsizing.
Here we see the “Granite State,” sunk and listing, after burning at her pier in the Hudson River on May 23, 1921. The Granite State was formerly the USS New Hampshire, built in 1825, launched in 1864, and served as part of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron in the Civil War. (Eugene de Salignac/Courtesy NYC Municipal Archives)
A total loss, she was stricken from the Naval List, and her hulk was sold for $5000 for salvage 19 August 1921 to the Mulhollund Machinery Corp. Fastened and sheathed with over 100 tons of copper, it was estimated in a New York Times article then that $70,000 of salvageable material could be removed from the hulk. Two, five ton anchors along with 100 tons of chain were still aboard and it was rumored there were three gold spikes in the ship’s keel from her original 1816 construction.
She refloated in July 1922 and was taken in tow to the Bay of Fundy. The towline parted during a storm, she again caught fire for a third time while under tow (!) and sank off Half Way Rock in Massachusetts Bay.
Wreck of the Granite State (U.S.S. New Hampshire) by Charles Hopkinson, 1922 Cape Ann Museum
The wreck’s remains on Graves Island, Manchester, Mass, just off east side of island are well documented and are in very shallow water (20-30 feet) making it an easy dive. In fact, the USS New Hampshire Exempt Site is on the list of Marine Protected Areas maintained by NOAA.
The copper bits, harkening back to Paul Revere, have been collected by local Gloucester divers for years, are held in the collection of the Gloucester Marine Heritage Center, and at least one 7-inch spike is now aboard the current Virginia-class attack submarine USS New Hampshire (SSN-778) commissioned in Portsmouth in 2008.
Spikes and recovered copper wear from New Hampshire
Speaking of copper bolts and pins, at least 22-pounds worth of these were collected in the early 1970s by Boston area scuba divers and melted down to form the Boston Cup, which is used by area schools as a liberty trophy in drum corps competitions. Other spikes and flotsam from the NH has been floating around on the collectors market for years.
Today in Newport, where the old girl remained pier side for decades, there is New Hampshire road and New Hampshire field on board the Naval Station named in her honor rather than the state’s and the base museum houses a number of items from the ship.
Specs
Displacement 2,633 t.
Length 203′ 8″
Beam 51′ 4″
Draft 21′ 6″
Propulsion: Sail, Square Rigged, 3 masts
Speed As fast as the wind could carry her
Complement unknown as completed, 820 as designed
Armament (as designed) 74 guns, mix of 42 and 32 pounders
Armament (as completed)
Four 100-pdrs
Six 9″ Parrot guns
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