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Warship Wednesday, 11 March 2026: Mighty Morrill

Posted on March 11, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling 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

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Warship Wednesday 11 March 2026: Mighty Morrill

Detroit Publishing Collection in the Library of Congress. LC-D4-9007

Above we see, roughly some 125 years ago, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Morrill, forward, just off the sleek yacht Pathfinder, “standing guard at the first turn,” during the Canada’s Cup yacht race on Lake Ontario in 1901, when Pathfinder hosted the judges. The race was won by the Invader of Mr. Aemilius Jarvis, for the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, besting the yacht Cadillac of the Chicago Club in three of four races.

While dressed in gleaming white and buff, Morrill was a fighter when needed and had already seen service in one war with the “Mosquito Fleet” and had another on the schedule.

Meet Morrill

Our subject is the only U.S. warship named for President Ulysses S. Grant’s circa 1876-77 Treasury Secretary, Lot Myrick Morrill, a former Maine governor and longtime U.S. Senator who passed in 1883. As such, the vessel continued the cutter service’s common naming convention, which repeatedly used the names of past Treasury Secretaries, dating back to Alexander Hamilton.

Part of a trend in the 1880s-90s to build new cutters that could double as gunboats and dispatch boats for the Navy in time of war, USRC Morrill was steel-hulled and had a steam plant capable of pushing her at 13 knots on a compound steam plant (engine cylinders measuring 24 and 38 inches, with a 30-inch stroke). At the same time, her auxiliary schooner rig could be used to extend cruising range.

Some 145 feet overall with a 24-foot beam, Morrill displaced 288 tons and had a draft of just over 12 feet on a standard load. She was a forerunner of the six slightly larger 205-foot “Propeller-class” plow-bowed cruising cutters built 1896-98.

USRC Morrill, circa 1898-1917, while stationed on the Great Lakes, via the Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

USCG Morrill, circa 1916-1917 (note her “Coast Guard” life rings), while stationed on the Great Lakes, via the Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

USRC Morrill, circa 1898-1917, while stationed on the Great Lakes, via the Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

Morrill’s peacetime armament was a single light 6-pounder 57mm Hotchkiss QF gun forward, which could be quickly doubled and augmented with a 3-inch mount in time of war, with weight and space reserved for the extra ordnance. Cutters of the era typically shipped with 55 service rounds for their main gun and 110 blank charges for drill, salutes, or “shots across the bow.”

2nd LT Godfrey L. Carden instructing a 6-pounder gun crew aboard the Revenue Cutter Morill in South Carolina waters, circa 1892. Note the rarely-seen USRSC officer’s sword. Carden would later become the Captain of the Port for New York City in the Great War. USCGH Photo 210210-G-G0000-1002

A significant small arms locker of rifles and revolvers could arm half of her 40-man crew for duty ashore or in seizing vessels, be they bandits and smugglers in peacetime or enemy shipping in war. The service of the era was often called upon to restore law and order ashore, as exemplified in a famous incident where a squad from the revenue cutter McLane landed in Cedar Key, Florida, in 1890 to reclaim the town from its pistol-toting mayor and his gang of ruffians!

Morrill’s berth deck enlisted accommodations were considered spacious for the period and, if needed, would “readily admit of 70 men.”

Her magazine included provision for several large electrically detonated “wrecking mines” packed with as much as 238 pounds of guncotton, used in destroying derelicts– or in reducing hazardous icebergs and blasting paths in the ice sheet both on the Great Lakes and North Atlantic.

Back in the days of wooden-hulled fishing vessels and cargo schooners (sometimes loaded with buoyant cargo such as timber), abandoned vessels could often remain afloat for weeks and remain an enduring hazard to navigation, requiring the dangerous task of sending a wrecking crew in a small boat to rig the gun cotton mines to a waterlogged, unstable hulk.

Cutter destroying a derelict ‘A subject for Dynamite’ drawn by W. Taber, engraved by H. Davidson.

Derelict located by Revenue Cutter Seneca had drifted 285 miles, circa 1900. NARA 56-AR-006

Revenue Cutter McCulloch, attaching mines to destroy a derelict, circa 1900. National Archives Identifier 158884024. NARA Local Identifier 56-AR-63

Revenue Cutter Miami, Preparing to place mines to destroy derelict, circa 1900

Revenue Cutter Onondaga, Loading mines for destroyed sunken wreck, circa 1900. NARA AR-066

Built in 1889 by the Pusey and Jones Corp., Wilmington, Delaware, for a cost of $72,600, USRC Lot M. Morrill (typically only ever seen as “Morrill” in paperwork) was commissioned on 10 October of that year.

In typical Revenue Cutter fashion, her crew crossed decked from an older cutter that was decommissioned in the same stroke– the Civil War-era USRC Naugatuck, which had been based at New Bern, North Carolina since 1865.

Taking up Naugatuck’s old beat– which her experienced crew was familiar with– Morrill was stationed at Wilmington, North Carolina, for her first homeport.

In March 1891, our new cutter performed a then novel inland passage, a military experiment, making it the 155 miles from Charleston, South Carolina, to Fernandina, Florida via the North Edisto, Ashley, Wadmalaw, Stono, and Amelia rivers. She did so with sometimes just a foot of water under her keel and just 30 feet of wetted width between banks as opposed to her 24-foot beam! It was often slow going, especally in tight bends, and in some stretches the charts of the river were quite bad, but via leading with a small boat ahead of her bow dropping lead to verify depth, the task was accomplished in three winding days, only running up on a mudbank once –some six miles up the Wadmalaw– and able to free herself with minor effort. At night, the cutter lay up, ablaze with electric light, proving much the attraction to the locals who came out to watch the curious “bluejackets” in the marsh.

Still, she proved, at least in theory, that a squadron of torpedo boats could run the shallow brackish and fresh waterways from Philadelphia to Fernandina– save for a short break between Moorehead City, North Carolina, and Bulls Bay, South Carolina– keeping well hidden from a European blockading squadron.

With Morrill’s officers dutifully updating their chart and leaving range stakes behind them, it was deemed that, with a little minor dredging here and there, a blue water vessel under 175 feet overall drawing less than 11 feet could make the run from Philly to Florida almost completely inland, enabling dispersed operations of torpedo boat squadrons which could run out from river mouths and shoreline bays to strike enemy battlelines then retreat into their havens.

It should be noted that the USS Cushing (Torpedo Boat #1), which entered service in 1890, was only 140 feet overall with a draft of just less than five feet, and it was only when Farragut (TB-11) joined the fleet in 1899 that American torpedo boats stretched longer than 175 feet.

While the river haven tactic wasn’t actively pursued much further in the U.S., Morrill’s marsh cruise did help lay the way for today’s Intracoastal Waterway, which has rambled 3,000 miles from Boston to Brownsville since 1949 and is key for the movement of commerce in the country today.

Anyway, speaking of Fernandina, Florida, and points south, in early January 1895, Cuban exile leader Jose Marti completed preparations in the area to attempt to ignite a revolt against Spanish colonial despotism in his homeland. He and his followers purchased three small ships, the Amadis, Baracoa, and Lagonda, then outfitted them to carry his freedom fighters and supplies to Cuba. These were foiled by the Treasury Department, which had been ordered to southern Florida to abort such filibuster activities, with Morrill helping with the seizure of Lagonda at Fernandina directly.

From 1895 to 1898, cutters, including our Morrill, Boutwell, Colfax, Forward, McLane, and Winona, patrolled the Straits of Florida to enforce neutrality laws amid attempts to launch illegal expeditions to Cuba. According to Commandant Capt. Charles F. Shoemaker, these efforts required constant vigilance. One tug, Dauntless, was seized by cutters no less than three times. The cutters seized seven ships (besides Dauntless, including all three of Marti’s), detained 12 suspected violators, and disrupted two organized filibustering plots (Marti’s and one by Cuba Gen. Enrique Collazo) before the USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana harbor in February 1898.

Remember the Maine!

With the war drum beating, Morrill and her fellow cutters were soon mobilized a full month before war was declared by Congress on 25 April 1898.

On 24 March, President McKinley ordered Morrill, along with the cutters Gresham (206 foot), Manning (206 foot), Windom (170 foot), Woodbury (138 foot), Hamilton (133 foot), Hudson (94 foot), Guthrie (85 foot) and Calumet (95 foot), “with their officers and crews, be placed under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, and cooperate with the Navy, until further orders…”

Before the conflict was over, 13 revenue cutters were transferred to naval service, staffed by 98 officers and 562 enlisted RCS men. Eight would serve at sea with the North Atlantic Squadron, one (McCulloch) famously fought with Dewey in the Philippines, and four patrolled the U.S. West Coast.

Morrill proceeded to Norfolk Navy Yard and was gently made ready for war, largely via adding at least one extra deck gun, which had varied widely in reports from a second 6-pounder to a gun as large as a 6-incher! Her crew was boosted to nine officers (including a surgeon) and 47 enlisted, allowing for an extra gun crew and ammo handlers.

Morrill’s wardroom during the Spanish-American War:

Captain Horatio Davis Smith, commanding
First Lieutenant John Cassin Cantwell, executive
Second Lieutenant F.A. Levis, navigator
Second Lieutenant C.S. Craig
Third Lieutenant Henry G. Fisher
Chief Engineer E.P. Webber
First Assistant Engineer William Robinson
Second Assistant Engineer F.G. Snyder
Surgeon J. Spencer Hough

USRC Morrill at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, 22 April 1898. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-19-21-10

Morrill and her fellow cutters Hudson, Hamilton, and Windom would join the 1st division of the North Atlantic Squadron under the bewhiskered Commodore John Adams Howell (USNA, 1858, best known to history for his early locomotive torpedo). A veteran of the Battle of Mobile Bay, Howell’s division included his flag, the 4,800-ton USS San Francisco I (Cruiser No. 5), the cruiser Montgomery (C-9), four monitors, and 15~ gunboats, with many of the latter being armed yachts quickly converted.

Morrill linked up with the three-masted 204-foot Annapolis-class gunboat USS Vicksburg (PG-11) for the first time on 31 March at Hampton Roads. The two would become partners off Havana, with Vicksburg’s logs mentioning our cutter at least 31 times between then and 14 August. The two worked in conjunction with Vicksburg’s sistership Annapolis, the 275-foot armed yacht USS Mayflower (PY-1), and the plucky 88-foot armed tug USS Tecumseh (YT-24, ex-Edward Luckenbach).

On 24 April 1898, the up-armed Morrill, Hudson, and Hamilton, bound for Howell’s “Mosquito Fleet,” passed through Hampton Roads and, after asking formal permission of the Commodore, proceeded to Key West. From that point, they joined the Navy ships of the Cuban blockading fleet.

After delivering dispatches to the flagship USS New York, Morrill joined the blockade station 5 miles west of the Havana entrance on 5 May and soon captured the Spanish schooner Orienta. One of 25 seized Spanish merchantmen sold as prizes at Key West on 21 June 1898, Orienta must have been either very small or in poor condition, or both, as the vessel, including cargo and equipment, only brought $350 at auction (about $12K when adjusted for inflation) — the lowest of all 25.

It was off Havana that Vicksburg and Morrill became targets for Spanish coastal batteries mounting heavy 10- and 12-inch German pieces for about 20 minutes, with Smith noting in his official report, “came very close” and damaged the bridge with a fragment of shrapnel.

As chronicled in Our War with Spain for Cuba’s Freedom by Trumbull White:

The Spanish set a trap one day during the blockade. The wily Spaniards arranged a trap to send a couple of our ships to the bottom. A small schooner was sent out from Havana harbor to draw some of the Americans into the ambuscade. The ruse worked like a charm. The Vicksburg and the Morrill, in the heat of the chase and in their contempt for Spanish gunnery, walked straight into the trap that had been set for them. Had the Spaniards possessed their souls in patience but five minutes longer, not even their bad gun practice would have saved our ships, and two more of our vessels would lie at the bottom within two lengths of the wreck of the ill-starred Maine.

Friday evening, the Vicksburg and the Morrill, cruising to the west of Morro Castle, were fired on by the big guns of the Cojimar batteries. Two shots were fired at the Vicksburg, and one at the Morrill. Both fell short, and both vessels, without returning the fire, steamed out of range. It would have been folly to have done otherwise. But this time the Spaniards had better luck. The schooner they had sent out before daylight ran off to the eastward, hugging the shore, with the wind on her starboard quarter. About three miles east of the entrance to the harbor, she came over on the port tack. A light haze fringed the horizon, and she was not discovered until three miles offshore, when the Mayflower made her out and signaled the Morrill and Vicksburg.

Captain Smith, of the Morrill, and Commander Lilly, of the Vicksburg, immediately slapped on all steam and started in pursuit. The schooner instantly put about and ran for Morro Castle before the wind. By doing so, she would, according to the well-conceived Spanish plot, lead the two American warships directly under the guns of the Santa Clara batteries. These works are a short mile west of Morro and are a part of the defenses of the harbor. There are two batteries, one at the shore, which has been recently thrown up, of sand and mortar, with wide embrasures for eight-inch guns, and the other on the crest of the rocky eminence which juts out into the water of the gulf at the point.

The upper battery mounts modern 10-inch and 12-inch Krupp guns behind a six-foot stone parapet, in front of which are twenty feet of earthwork and a belting of railroad iron. This battery is considered the most formidable of Havana’s defenses, except Morro Castle. It is masked and has not been absolutely located by the American warships. It is probably due to the fact that the Spanish did not desire to expose its position that the Vicksburg and Morrill are now afloat.

The Morrill and Vicksburg were about six miles from the schooner when the chase began. They steamed after her at full speed, the Morrill leading until within a mile and a half of the Santa Clara batteries. Commander Smith, of the Vicksburg, was the first to realize the danger into which the reckless pursuit had led them. He concluded it was time to haul off and sent a shot across the bow of the schooner.

The Spanish skipper instantly brought his vessel about, but while she was still rolling in the trough of the sea, with her sails flapping, an 8-inch shrapnel shell came hurtling through the air from the water battery, a mile and a half away. It passed over the Morrill between the pilothouse and the smokestack and exploded less than fifty feet on the port quarter. The small shot rattled against her side. It was a close call.

Two more shots followed in quick succession, both shrapnel. One burst close under the starboard quarter, filling the engine room with the smoke of the explosion of the shell, and the other, like the first, passed over and exploded just beyond.

The Spanish gunners had the range, and their time fuses were accurately set. The crews of both ships were at their guns. Lieutenant Craig, who was in charge of the bow 4-inch rapid-fire gun of the Morrill, asked for and obtained permission to return fire. At the first shot, the Vicksburg, which was in the wake of the Morrill, slightly in-shore, sheared off and passed to windward under the Morrill’s stern.

In the meantime, Captain Smith also put his helm to port, and was none too soon, for as the Morrill stood off, a solid 8-inch shot grazed her starboard quarter and kicked up tons of water as it struck a wave 100 yards beyond. Captain Smith said afterward that this was undoubtedly an 8-inch armor-piercing projectile, and that it would have passed through the Morrill’s boilers had he not changed his course in the nick of time.

All the guns of the water battery were now at work. One of them cut the Jacob’s ladder of the Vicksburg adrift, and another carried away a portion of the rigging. As the Morrill and the Vicksburg steamed away, their aft guns were used, but only a few shots were fired. The Morrill’s 6-inch gun was elevated for 4,000 yards and struck the earthworks repeatedly. The Vicksburg fired but three shots from her 6-pounder.

The Spaniards continued to fire shot and shell for twenty minutes, but the shots were ineffective. Some of them were so wild that they roused the American “Jackies” to jeers. The Spaniards only ceased firing when the Morrill and Vicksburg were completely out of range.

If all the Spanish gunners had been suffering from strabismus, their practice could not have been worse. But the officers of both the Morrill and Vicksburg frankly admit their own recklessness and the narrow escape of their vessels from destruction. They are firmly convinced that the pursuit of the schooner was a neatly planned trick, which almost proved successful.

If any one of the shots had struck the thin skin of either vessel, it would have offered no more resistance than a piece of paper to a rifle ball.

The accurate range of the first few shots is accounted for by the fact that the Spanish officers had ample time to make observations. The bearings of the two vessels were probably taken with a range-finder at the Santa Clara battery, and, as this battery is probably connected by wire with Morro, they were able to take bearings from both points, and by laborious calculations, they fixed the positions of the vessels pretty accurately. With such an opportunity for observation, it would have been no great trick for an American gunner to drop a shell down the smokestack of a vessel.

As soon as the ships sheered off after the first fire, the Spanish gunners lost the range, and their practice became ludicrous. If they had waited five minutes longer before opening fire, Captain Smith says it would have been well-nigh impossible to have missed the target.

By 28 May, Morrill was assigned duty as a guard ship at Tampa, which grew tense a week later when three Spanish warships were said to be closing on the roadstead there. She remained in the greater Tampa area until early August, when she was ordered to rejoin the blockade off Matanzas on the 11th, one that she was released from on the 14th with the cessation of hostilities.

She was then ordered to tow the small torpedo boat USS Ericsson back to Norfolk, where she arrived on the 21st. Morrill would be held there for another month on naval orders in reserve, just in case she was needed for further war service. She had suffered no casualties during the war and only very minor damage.

In addition to Orienta, Morrill is noted in her USCG history as also seizing the 3,364-ton French steamer, Lafayette, in conjunction with Annapolis, and the Espana, a little Spanish fishing sloop. Espana is marked as taken by the Morrill about three miles off Mariel, just after a sharp engagement. The USS Newport was close at hand at the time, and a prize crew made up from both ships brought the capture into Key West. The Espana sold at auction for $1,350 in prize money. Lafayette was later released after it was determined that she was not carrying Spanish soldiers or contraband and was permitted to continue to Havana, her declared destination.

Two of Morrill’s officers were later awarded Bronze West Indies Naval Campaign Medals under the authority of a joint resolution of Congress, approved on 3 March 1901.

White hull days

On 28 September 1898, after nearly a decade of tough service, Morrill, her extra wartime armament landed, left Norfolk for Philadelphia, to receive new boilers and undergo dry docking. Once complete, she shipped to her new homeport on the Great Lakes, replacing the larger 205-foot cutter Gresham, which had been cut in two to move to the East Coast during the SpanAm War, and the service was in no mood to bisect again to send her back.

Morrill arrived at her new home on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee on 19 November, closing out her busy year.

Later, shifting to Detroit, she would begin a very quiet time in her career, stretching some 17 years. Underway during the open shipping season, she patrolled the waters of Lakes Huron, St. Clair, Erie, and Ontario, aiding vessels in distress and enforcing navigation laws. When the ice came, she was laid up during the winter months.

Morrill became part of the service’s first Vessel Traffic Service (VTMS), established on 6 March 1896, to track the movement and anchorage of vessels and rafts in the St. Mary’s River from Point Iroquois on Lake Superior to Point Detour on Lake Huron.

Originally named the River Patrol Service, this first VTMS was comprised of the Revenue Cutter Morrell and lookout stations at Johnson’s Point, Middle Neebish Dyke, and Little Rapids Cut. The stations were connected by telegraph lines linked back to the Pittsburgh Steamship Company offices in Sault Sainte Marie. Throughout the next several years, many lookout stations were established and then closed as needs and funding levels fluctuated. At one point, there were as many as 11 active stations along the river. During the early days, lookouts communicated with passing ships by kerosene lanterns and signal flags. Often, messages were delivered to passing ships by lookouts rowing out to them in small dinghies.

USRC Morrill at a Great Lakes port, circa 1898-1917. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson. NH 45730

An image from a dry plate negative of the freighter William E. Corey passing alongside an unidentified, white-hulled vessel at anchor, circa 1905, is almost certainly the Morrill. Library of Congress – Detroit Publishing Co. Collection LC-D4-21878

She performed lots of local community service, including providing the honor guard and salutes for Civil War monument dedications (for instance, at Two Rivers, Wisconsin, in 1900, and another at Kenosha the same summer).

The U.S. Revenue Cutter W.P. Fessenden (center), along with other vessels in the harbor at Kenosha, Wis., for the unveiling of the Soldiers Monument in Library Park on Decoration Day, May 30, 1900. The ship on the left is the steam yacht Pathfinder owned by F. W. Morgan, Chicago, Ill. On the right outboard is the U.S. Revenue Cutter Morrill, and inboard of that is the venerable U.S.S. Michigan. The photograph is part of the Louis Thiers Collection of the Kenosha History Center. It was taken by Louis Milton Thiers (1858-1950) and created from a glass plate negative.

In addition to her regular duties, she also patrolled many regattas, including the T. J. Lipton Cup regatta off Chicago, Illinois, in August of 1904.

In 1906, her cruising grounds included the waters between Niagara Falls through Lakes Erie, St. Clair, and Huron to the Straits of Mackinac.

It seems during this period that her port side was her most photogenic.

U.S. Revenue Cutter Morrill, at Detroit with her glad rags flying, likely for July 4th between 1900 and 1910. Note her boat in the water. Detroit Publishing Collection in the Library of Congress. LC-D4-34826

USRC Morrill before WWI, circa 1907, with her bow gun covered in canvas. Note the large building in the background, dressed with a Sherwin-Williams paint ad. Detroit Publishing Collection in the Library of Congress. LC-D4-22466

USRC Morrill before WWI. Note her understated bow scroll and 6-pounder. Detroit Publishing Collection in the Library of Congress. LC-D4-9016

Morrill at the Goodrich Company dock in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Port bow view of vessel at dock near harbor entrance, with lighthouse at right in 1912. Wisconsin Maritime Museum P82-37-10-62C

Morrill, the revenue cutter Tuscarora, and eight reserve gunboats: USS Dubuque (PG-17), at the time the training ship by the Illinois Naval Militia; USS Don Juan de Austria (Wisconsin Naval Militia), USS Wolverine (Pennsylvania Naval Militia), USS Dorothea and USS Essex (Ohio Naval Militia), USS Gopher (Minnesota Naval Militia), USS Hawk (Naval Militia of New York) and USS Yantic of the Michigan Naval Militia, were the featured guests of the Chicago Yacht Club’s August 10-17, 1912 Great Naval Pageant which included 400 swabs from the training station at Lake Bluff, fireworks, and the conclusion of a cruise of 2,000 motorboats carrying 15,000 passengers from the Central Plain and inland rivers to Chicago to “rediscover” Lake Michigan.

As the club had 10 bona fide warships on hand, a mock battle was staged with large yachts, armed with saluting cannons, fleshing out the battle line.

As for the naval pageant, preparations were underway to defend Chicago against an August 10 naval attack. Under the command of the gunboat Dubuque, the attacking fleet of the Hawk, Gopher, Don Juan de Austria, and the revenue cutter Morrill from Lake Erie would be pitted against the Tuscarora, Yantic, Wolverine, Dorothea, and Essex. No part of Chicago, from Michigan Avenue to Oak Park, would be safe from the 4” guns trained on the City which could drop 4” shells with precision anywhere within the City limits. Hydroplanes traveling 40 mph were also to be used to determine whether this type of craft would be of assistance in warfare.

From 12-14 September 1912, Morrill and Dubuque patrolled the course of the speedboat races held by the Motor Club of Buffalo in the Niagara River.

Morrill and USS Dubuque (PG-17) at the Niagara motor boat races in September 1912. Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

Morrill at the opening of the Livingstone Channel in the Detroit River on October 19, 1912. Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

She also clocked in on more sobering duties. In the late summer of 1913, she found the lost 6,322-ton ore carrier SS Charles S. Price turned turtle, 13 miles northeast of Port Huron, Michigan, “taking every witness with her.”

The Kaiser to St. Helena!

On 4 August 1914, Morrill, along with other cutters, was ordered to “observe neutrality laws” after the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. This kicked into overdrive when the service, now part of the U.S. Coast Guard, was transferred to the Navy on 6 April 1917 with the country’s entry into the war.

Morrill was soon pulled from her familiar Great Lakes home in Detroit to patrol the Atlantic coast for German submarines out of Philadelphia with the 4th Naval District.

Leaving Detroit on 10 November 1917, she called at Quebec City on her way out and found herself in crowded Halifax on the afternoon of 5 December, anchoring near Dartmouth Cove to take on fuel and water.

Being jammed out of the main roadway saved her from destruction the next morning, with the cutter and her crew spending a fortnight in a very different Halifax, rendering aid and assistance.

Halifax explosion, with HMS Highflyer shown in the channel, via the Halifax Naval Museum

As detailed by the NHHC in Morrill’s DANFS entry:

Just after 0800, 6 December, the old French Line freighter Mont Blanc, carrying a full cargo of bulk explosives, was involved in a collision with the Norwegian steamship Iona in the Narrows of Halifax Harbor. A fire broke out on Mont Blanc, and at 0905, the ship and cargo exploded in a tremendous blast that shook all of Halifax.

The most reliable casualty figures list 1,635 persons killed and 9,000 injured in the tragedy. Sixteen hundred buildings were destroyed, and nearly 12,000 more within an area of 16 miles were severely damaged. Property damage was estimated at $35 million.

Morrill, not seriously damaged, turned her attention to the needs ashore. A rescue and assistance party under 2d Lt. H. G. Hemingway rendered valuable aid while the cutter stood by to tow other craft from the danger zone.

Morrill departed Halifax on 18 December. Her services had come to the attention of Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador to the United States, in a letter dated 9 January 1918, Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, noted that Morrill, “though considerably damaged by the violent explosion of munitions on another ship, was the first to render assistance to the distressed inhabitants of the stricken city.”

Morrill in Navy service, photographed during World War I. NH 45729

The cutter-turned-gunboat would remain part of the 4th Naval District throughout 1918 and well into 1919, retaining her prewar skipper, Capt.(T) George E. Wilcox, USCG.

This notably included responding to the tanker SS Herbert L Pratt, which struck a mine laid by U-151 off Cape Henlopen in June 1918.

SS Herbert L. Pratt (American tanker, 1918) under salvage after striking a mine off Cape Henlopen, southeast of Lewes, Delaware, on 3 June 1918. Note the tug alongside. This ship later served as USS Herbert L. Pratt (ID # 2339). U.S. History and Heritage Command Photograph NH 14

USS SC-71 and USS SP-544 (ex-yacht Sea Gull) tied up with another Section Patrol boat at the Cape May Naval Base, Sewells Point, New Jersey, circa 1918. The ship in the background is a Coast Guard Cutter, probably USCGC Morrill. A Curtiss HS-2L seaplane is taxiing by. NH 42452

Morrill in dry dock at Camden, New Jersey, in December 1918. Courtesy of D.M. McPherson, 1974. NH 79741

Back to a changing Coast Guard

After 21 months under Navy orders, Morrill returned to USCG duties and was reassigned to the Lakes Division on 28 August 1919.

The two-time warrior, back on her old Detroit station, resumed a quiet life of patrolling regatta, saving lives, and interdicting smuggling– the latter a task grown more common after the Volstead Act took effect in 1920 and Motown became a hotbed of bootlegging from Canada.

Morrill, 1921, Janes, showing her with two 6-pounders and assigned to Detroit

In October 1925, she was reassigned to Boston to serve as a mothership for small fast picket boats attempting to keep “Rum Row” under control just off Cape Cod. It was on the way to her new station that, while near Shelbourne, Nova Scotia, one of her whaleboats with 10 enlisted aboard overturned in the cold water while returning to the cutter at night from liberty ashore. Tragically, nine of them perished, one of the USCG’s worst peacetime losses of life. The bodies were later recovered and brought back to Boston by the cutter Tampa for proper burial.

Morrill would again suffer at the hands of the sea in November 1926 when she sliced in two the George O. Knowles Wharf in Provincetown, at the northern tip of Cape Cod, during a storm, causing $100,000 worth of damage ashore and leaving the cutter aground.

Via the Scrapbooks of Althea Boxell, Provincetown History Preservation Project.

Pulled off the shore at Provincetown, and was soon back to work. In April 1927, she came to the rescue of the grounded schooner Etta Burns, which turned out to be a rumrunner with 500 cases of booze aboard.

Morrill saved the crew– then put them in shackles.

With new 165 and 240-foot cutters on the way, Morrill was decommissioned at Boston on 19 October 1928, completing an almost 40-year career.

She was sold to the Deepwater Fishing and Exploration Corp. (Antonio De Domenico) of New York City for the princely sum of $7,100. Renamed Evangeline, it doesn’t seem she saw much commercial use as the former cutter burned to the waterline at Rockway, Long Island, on 30 July 1930.

Epilogue

Few relics of Morrill remain. The USCG chose not to name another cutter after her, despite her honorable record, including service in two wars. Her plans and logbooks are in the National Archives, although not digitized.

Morrill’s SpanAm War skipper, Horatio Davis Smith, extensively documented voyages of various cutters, including the cutter Golden Gate doing “good service” during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and transporting President Taft across the bay in 1909, and the cutter McCullough being the first to pass through the Suez Canal. He retired and later wrote an early history of the Revenue Marine Service. He passed in Massachusetts in 1918, aged 73.

Her Great War skipper, George E. Wilcox, went on to command the Coast Guard destroyer Downes out of New London– one of 31 destroyers that formed the Coast Guard Destroyer Force during the Rum War– and was head of the service’s Personnel Bureau when he passed in 1931, aged 50. He is buried at Arlington.

Several young officers served aboard our cutter who went on to make their mark on history. Besides the above-mentioned Godfrey Cardin— who led 1,400 men (fully one quarter of the mobilized service!) as the Captain of the Port of New York during the Great War, future admirals Joseph Francis Farley (a later USCG Commandant) and Detlef Frederick Argentine de Otte— a mustang who enlisted in the cutter service as a seaman in 1886 and retired in 1931 as one of just sixteen Commodores (later promoted to RADM on the retired list) in the history of the Coast Guard.

Morrill’s third lieutenant during the Mont Blanc disaster in Halifax, Henry G. Hemingway, later served as the gunnery officer aboard the USS San Diego in 1918 and survived the mining of that cruiser by the U-156. He went on to command the cutter Snohomish in 1923 during a search-and-rescue case off Port Angeles that defied belief and earned him the Gold Lifesaving Medal for his actions in saving the entire crew of the SS Nika during a gale.

Nicknamed “Soo Traffic,” the U.S. Coast Guard Vessel Traffic Service St. Marys River carries the lineage of the old River Patrol Service, which Morrill joined in 1898, and is still in operation after almost 130 years. They logged some 61,532 vessels, including ferries, tour boats, tankers, and freighters, as they transited through the St. Marys River in 2010.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) 19 February 2026: Plywood Warrior

Posted on February 19, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) 19 February 2026: Plywood Warrior

Photo by Camera Operator JO1 Joe Gawlowicz, National Archives Identifier 6465113, Agency-Assigned Identifier DNSC9108119, Local Identifier, 330-CFD-DN-SC-91-08119

Above we see the plucky Korean War-era 173-foot Acme-class ocean-going minesweeper leader USS Adroit (MSO-509) underway during mine-clearing operations in the Gulf during Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, flag flying, with Zodiacs, Otters, and paravanes ready, as Bluejackets man the .50s.

Some 35 years ago this week, the little 34-year-old Adroit would come to the urgent assistance of the top-of-the-line Aeigis cruiser USS Princeton (CG-59), which found herself in the midst of an Iraqi minefield in the worst way imaginable.

Adroit came to work– as she always had.

The Agiles & Acmes

With the Navy’s hard-earned lessons in mine warfare in WWII (more than 70 USN ships sunk by mines) and Korea (five sunk: USS Magpie, Pirate, Pledge, Sarsi and Partridge), the brass in the early 1950s decided to design and build a new class of advanced ocean-going but shallow draft minesweepers to augment and eventually replace the flotillas of 1940s-built steel-hulled 221-foot Auk-class and 184-foot Admirable class minebusters.

The new design, a handy 850-tonner, was shorter than either previous classes, running just 172 feet overall. Beamy at 35 feet, they could operate in as little as 10 feet of seawater.

Their shallow draft (10 feet in seawater) made them ideal for getting around littorals as well as going to some out-of-the-way locales that rarely see Naval vessels. USS Leader (MSO-490) and Excel (MSO 439) became the first U.S. warships ever to visit the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh when they completed the 180-mile transit up the Mekong River on 27 August 1961, a feat not repeated until 2007. USS Vital (MSO-474) ascended the Mississippi River in May 1967 to participate in the Cotton Carnival at Memphis, Tennessee.

Whereas the Auks and Admiralbles were outfitted as PCs or DEs, complete with 3″/50s, a decent AAA battery, and lots of depth charges and even Hedgehog ASW devices, the Agiles and Acmes were almost unarmed. Their design allowed for a single 40mm L60 Bofors forward and four .50 cals with a small arms locker accessible via the captain’s stateroom. Less steel and all that. Plus, it was thought that the Navy had enough DEs and DDs to not need minesweepers to clock in to bust subs, escort convoys, and shoot down planes.

A very clean Luders-built USS Agile (MSO-421) likely soon after her 1956 commissioning. Note the black canvas-topped flying bridge, which gave it a greenhouse effect, and was soon changed to white/tan. L45-02.05.02

A close-up of the above, showing her original 40mm. Most of the MSOs landed these by the 1970s.

Plans for the USS Lucid (MSO-458), Agile class, post 1969 moderization, with a piggyback .50 cal/81mm mortar replacing the 40mm mount due to the larger size of the SQQ-14 sonar, which we’ll get into later.

As one would expect, due to their role, these new minesweepers, the Agiles, were to be wooden-hulled (not steel like Auk and Admirable), with even non-ferrous steel used in their four (often cranky) Packard 760shp V-16 ID1700 diesel engines– a type also used in the new coastal sweepers (MSCs). Some of the class were later given nonmagnetic General Motors engines to replace especially troublesome Packards. Electrical power for the ship came from a Packard V-8 240kw ship’s service generator, while the mine hammers and winches used two GM 6-71s (one 100kw, the other 60kw).

To differentiate them from the AM-hull numbered Auks and Admirable, the new class was reclassified to the new MSO (Minesweeper, Ocean, Non-Magnetic) in 1955. Bronze and stainless (non-magnetic) steel fittings, with automatic degaussing, were fitted, as well as electrical insulators in internal piping, lifelines, and stays.

Their construction at the time was novel, with 90 percent of the completed ship– including the keel, frame, decking, and rudder– being made from laminated oak and fir “sandwiches” with the biggest piece of continuous wood being 16-foot long 7/8-inch thick oak planks.

The future U.S. Navy minesweeper Agile (MSO-421) under construction at Luders Marine Construction Co., Stamford, Connecticut, on 13 September 1954. National Archives Identifier: 6932482.

From a July 1953 Popular Mechanics article on the subject:

They were very maneuverable, due to controllable pitch propellers– one of the earliest CRP installations in the Navy– and the class leader would be appropriately named USS Agile.

They were made to carry the new AN/UQS-1 mine-locating sonar, developed and evaluated in the early 1950s by the Navy’s Mine Defense Laboratory in Panama City. This 100 kHz short-range high-definition mine location sonar featured a 1.0 ms pulse and 2.0º horizontal resolution, allowing it to detect bottom mines (most of the time) at ranges up to a few hundred yards during tests. While that sounds primitive now, it was cutting-edge for the time and would be the primary sonar of these boats throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s (some for longer than that). A SPS-53 surface search radar was on her mast.

UQS-1 mine-locating sonar panel is currently at the Museum of Man in the Sea in Panama City. Designed to locate mines, the type showed “poor resolution and could not classify mines in most waters.” Photo by Chris Eger

Thus equipped, they could mechanically sweep moored mines with Oropesa (“O” Type) gear, magnetic mines with a magnetic “Tail” supplied by three 2500 ampere mine sweeping generators, and acoustic mines by using Mk4 (V) and Mk 5 magnetic as well as Mk6 (B) acoustic hammers. Two giant new XMAP pressure sweeping caissons could be towed, a funky array that was only in use for eight years.

The 53 Agiles, at $3.5 million a pop, were built out rapidly by 1958 at 14 yards around the country (Luders, Bellingham, Boward, Burger, Martinac, Higgins, Hiltebrant, etc.) that specialized in wooden vessels– although two were built at Newport Naval Shipyard. In addition to this, 15 were built for France, four for Portugal, six for Belgium, two for Norway, one for Uruguay, four for Italy, and six for the Netherlands. The design was truly an international best-seller, and in some cases, the last hurrah for several of these small wooden boat yards.

In 1954, the U.S. still had 57 Admirables and 59 Auks on the Navy List– even after giving away dozens to allies and reclassing others to roles such as survey and torpedo research. This soon changed as the Agiles entered the fleet. By 1967, only 28 Auks and 11 Admirable remained– and they were all in the Reserve Fleet.

But what of the Acme class?

The secret to these four follow-on vessels (Acme, Adroit, Advance, and Affray) was that they were very close copies of the Agiles, listed officially as being a foot longer and 30 tons heavier. They were also fitted with (austere) flagship facilities to operate as minesweeper flotilla leaders with a commodore aboard if needed, controlling a four-ship Mine Division of 300~ men. They also had slightly longer legs, capable of carrying 50 tons of fuel rather than the 46 on the Agiles, which gave them a nominal range of 3,000nm rather than 2,400 in the earlier ships.

The four-pack was built side-by-side at Boothbay Harbor, Maine, by Frank L. Sample, Jr., Inc., between November 1954 and December 1958.

USS Affray, being built at Boothbay by Frank L. Sample, Jr., Inc. Ship was launched in 1956

The Sample yard had previously built a dozen 278-ton YMS coastal minesweepers for the Navy during WWII, as well as three 390-ton MSCs for the French in 1953, so at least they had experience.

Acme class, 1967 Janes

Furthering the wooden-hulled MSO flotilla leader concept, after the Acmes, the Navy also ordered three larger (191-foot, 963-ton) Ability class sweepers from Petersen in Wisconsin as part of the 1955 Program.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Meet Adroit

Our subject is at least the third such warship in U.S. Navy service, with the first being a 147-foot steam yacht taken up from service in 1917. Added to the Naval List as USS Adroit (SP-248), but never seeing active service as she was “found to be highly unseaworthy and of extremely short cruising range,” she was returned to her owner with a “thanks, anyway” in April 1918.

The second Adroit, and first commissioned by the Navy, was the class leader of a group of 18 173-foot PC-461-class submarine chasers that were completed, with minor modifications, as minesweepers. As such, USS Adroit (AM-82) entered service in 1942 and began operations late that year with Destroyer Squadron 12 on antisubmarine patrols off Noumea.

USS Adroit (AM-82), August 1942, at builder’s yard: Commercial Iron Works, Portland, Oregon. 19-N-36133

This WWII-era Adroit escorted convoys to Guadalcanal, Espiritu Santo and Efate, New Hebrides; Noumea, New Caledonia; Auckland, New Zealand; Tarawa, Gilbert Islands; and Manus, Admiralty Islands before her name was canceled and she was designated a sub-chaser proper, dubbed simply, PC-1586. She earned a single battle star, was decommissioned three months after VJ-Day, and was sold for scrap in 1948.

Our subject, the third USS Adroit, was laid down at Frank Sample’s on 18 November 1954, launched 20 August 1955, and commissioned 4 March 1957, one of the last of the Navy’s “plywood warriors.”

Her first skipper was LCDR Joseph G. Nemetz, USN, a WWII veteran and career officer.

18 June 1961. USS Adroit (MSO-509) underway during task force exercises. You wouldn’t know to look at her that she could only make 14 knots in a calm sea with all four diesels wide open and a clean hull! USN 1056262

Cold War service

Post shakedown and availibilty, Adroit spent nearly two decades in the active Atlantic Fleet Mine Force (MINELANT), operating in a series of excercises and training evolutions based out of Charleston while also spending stints at the disposal of the Naval School of Mine Warfare (co-located in Charleston) and the Mine Lab in Pensacola to both train eager new officers and ratings and test experimental new gear.

She likewise frequently served as the flagship for MineDiv 44 (and, after 1971, MineDiv 121) with an embarked commodore aboard.

On the small MSOs, life was different, as noted in ‘Damn the Torpedoes, Naval Mine Countermeasures, 1777-1991.”

For young officers and enlisted men in the late 1950s and early 1960s, assignment to the new MCM force provided an unusual experience in both seamanship and leadership. Command came early, and the career advancement possible with MCM ship command enticed some of the most promising graduates of the destroyer force schools into the new mine force for at least one command tour. Young lieutenants obtained command of MSCs; lieutenants and lieutenant commanders captained MSOs; ensigns served early tours as department heads; and lieutenants (junior grade) served as executive officers. Senior enlisted men who commanded MSBs and smaller vessels often advanced into the MCM officer community through such experience.

Because the establishment of minesweeping divisions, squadrons, and flotillas provided MCM billets for commanders and captains, and because of the variety of MCM vessels, shore station assignments, and missions, it was actually possible for a brief time for an officer or an enlisted man to rise within the mine force to the rank of captain.

Everything that had to be done on a big ship also had to be done on a small one, and the expanded MCM force became a hands-on training school for a whole generation of naval officers who exercised command at an early age. Officers assigned to the MSCs and MSOs from the active duty destroyer force sometimes arrived with little or no training in mine warfare and began operating immediately. Junior officers, many of them ensigns right out of school, often had good technical training from the mine warfare school but lacked basic shipboard experience. Well-trained enlisted men, both active duty and reserves, made up the core of the MCM force and usually taught their officers the essentials of minesweeping and hunting on the spot.

There were, of course, lots of exceptions to Adroit’s peacetime minework.

She made a trio of tense Sixth Fleet deployments to the Mediterranean: May-October 1958, 27 September 1961–March 1962, and 15 June–8 November 1965, often calling at some out-of-the-way ports due to her small size.

Adroit loaded ammo and helped guard ports in the Norfolk and Hampton Roads area during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

She clocked in to support the space program in 1963 (Mercury-Atlas 9 “Faith 7”) and 1972 (Apollo 17 “America/Challenger”).

Adroit’s advanced sonar proved key while searching for “lost USAF equipment” off the Bahamas in 1963, a missing general aviation aircraft off the Florida Keys in 1969, a lost LCU near Onslow Beach in 1970, a USN Kaman S2F Seasprite (BuNo. 149745) with lost aircrew aboard off Norfolk in 1975, worked with Naval Underwater Systems Command to locate and retrieve a valuable piece of underwater equipment” off the East Coast in 1976; recovered from 110 feet, a brand-new USN F-14A Tomcat (BuNo 160674) ditched off Shinnecock, New York in 1981 (without loss) and discovered thouroughly wrecked by Adroit in 160 feet, and an uncessceful search for a lost Marine CH-46 Sea Knight in the vicinity of Chesapeake Light in 1983. She made up for the latter by finding downed aircraft off the North Carolina coast in 1985. Hey, 4:5 on missing aircraft isn’t bad.

She was also involved in attempts to rescue those at peril on the sea, including roaming the Florida Strait after the mysterious disappearance of the tanker SS Marine Sulphur Queen, lost between Beaumont, Texas, and Norfolk in 1963. That ship and the 39 souls aboard are still unaccounted for. She made a similarly fruitless search for the six men aboard the motor towing vessel Marjorie McCallister, which was lost battling heavy seas approximately off Cape Lookout in 1969.

A modernization overhaul at Detyens (14 March–26 August 1969) saw her first-generation mine sonar swapped out for the new AN/SQQ-14 variable depth sonar on a hull-retractable rod. As additional space on the foc’sle was needed for installation of the SQQ-14 cabling and the sonar lift, the WWII-era 40mm Bofors bow gun was landed for good, although a gun tub was installed, allowing a M68 20mm cannon if needed, but usually just used for an extra .50 cal.

Adroit transitioned from active duty to working naval reserve training duty in 1973, shifting homeport from Charleston to the NETC in Newport, Rhode Island, and downgrading to a half (active) crew. This brought a transfer to MineRon 121, and a five-month refit at Munro in Chelsea that added a new aqueous foam (light water) firefighting system, replaced both shafts, remodeled the mess decks, and recaulked the decks. After that, she got busy running reservists to sea for their annual active duty training and other ancillary duties alternating with assorted mine countermeasures exercises with divers and EOD dets.

Sister Affray pulled a similar downshift to become an NRF minesweeper based in Portland, Maine, at the time, leaving just Acme and Advance from the class on active duty in the Pacific.

The active ships are slightly undermanned by crews of 72 to 76 officers and enlisted men, whereas the NRF reserve training ships generally had a crew of 3 officers and 36 enlisted active Navy personnel, plus 2 officers and 29 enlisted reservists. Wartime mobilisation complement was 6 officers and 80 enlisted men for the modernized MSOs.

Acme class, 1974 Janes

Meanwhile, in the Western Pacific, 10 MSOs were part of the Seventh Fleet’s Mine Countermeasures Force (Task Force 78), led by RADM Brian McCauley, during Operation End Sweep– removing mines and airdropped Mark 36 Destructors laid by the U.S. in Haiphong Harbor in North Vietnam and other waterways in the first part of 1973. Speaking of Vietnam, Adroit’s sister Acme made three tours off Southeast Asia during the conflict, earning two battle stars while Advance earned five stars.

By 1974, as the U.S. pulled back from Vietnam, the Navy had the four Acmes (two in NRF duty), had disposed of the larger Ability class MCM flotilla leaders as well as the older Admirables and Auks (the final 29 stricken in 1972 and quickly given away), and was down to just 40 Agiles, which were approaching mid-life. Of the surviving Agiles, 10 were in active commission (MSO 433, 437, 442, 443, 445, 446, 448, 449, 456, and 490), 14 were NRF’d (MSO 427-431, 438-441, 455, 464, 488, 489, 492), and 16 were decommissioned to the reserve fleet. For those keeping count, that is just 12 MSOs left active, 16 NRF’d, and 16 mothballed– 44 in all. The count continued to be whittled down, with Acme and Advance disposed of in 1977.

The only other seagoing MCM assets owned by the Navy at the time were 13 138-foot wooden-hulled Bluebird-class MSCs in the NRF program, the 5,800-ton mine launch-carrying USS Ozark (MCS-2), which had been laid up in 1970, the 15,000-ton Styrofoam-filled converted Liberty ship MSS-1 (“minesweeper, special”), which was also laid up, and two Cove-class 105-foot inshore minsweepers used for research. Five WWII landing ships, the USS Osage (LSV-3), Saugus (LSV-4), Monitor (LSV-5), Orleans Parish (LST-1069), and Epping Forest (LSD-4), which were given similar conversions as Ozark to mine countermeasures support ships and designated MCS-3 through MCS-7, respectively, were all stricken and disposed of by 1974. Plans for an improved, wooden hull MSO-523-class were shelved. MCM in the Navy once again became a backwater.

Anywho, back to our ship:

In 1980, she had a great 360-degree photoshoot, likely via helicopter off Virginia while on a summer reservist cruise.

“Atlantic Ocean…An aerial port bow quarter view of the ocean nonmagnetic minesweeper USS Adroit, MSO-509.” Note her extensive use of canvas and flash white. Photographer: PH1 T.L. Alexander, USNR-TAR. 428-GX-156-KN-29890

What a great profile! “Atlantic Ocean…A starboard side view of the ocean nonmagnetic minesweeper USS Adroit, MSO-509.” Photographer: PH1 T.L. Alexander, USNR-TAR. 428-GX-156-KN-29892

“Atlantic Ocean…A starboard stern quarter view of the ocean nonmagnetic minesweeper USS Adroit, MSO-509.” 1980. Note at least three white paravanes on her stern. Photographer: PH1 T.L. Alexander, USNR-TAR. 428-GX-156-KN-29893

21 July 1983 A port beam view of the ocean minesweeper USS Adroit (MSO 509) underway in the Anacostia River after a port visit to Washington Navy Yard. Note she has what looks like a deck gun on her fore, but it is actually the SQQ-14 sonar hoist. Don S. Montgomery, USN. DN-SC-83-11900

From the same port visit to the Washington Navy Yard, moored at Pier #3 next to the fleet tug USNS Mohawk (T-ATF-170)– just a great picture for the cars alone! Don S. Montgomery, USN (Ret.). DN-ST-83-11255

During a year-long $5.5 million overhaul at Brambleton Shipyard (21 September 1987–29 August 1988), the old Packard engines were removed and replaced with new aluminum block Waukesha diesels. New sweep gear to include a pair of PAP-104 cable-guided undersea tools was added, as was accommodation for clearance divers and two Zodiac inflatables powered by 40hp outboards. She also lost her 20mm gun tub installation. She also received a Precise Integrated Shipboard System (PINS) nav system, early GPS, and began using early remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), notably Super Sea Rover.

23 July 1988. A starboard bow view of the ocean minesweeper USS Adroit (MSO 509) undergoing overhaul at the Norfolk Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Corporation’s Brambleton branch. Don S. Montgomery, USN (Ret.) DN-ST-88-08273

By this time, the Lehman/Reagan 600 Ship Navy ™ had included two new classes of mine warfare ships, the 14 224-foot fiberglass-encased wood-laminate Avenger-class MCMs featuring the advanced third-gen AN/SQQ-32 mine sonar (tied to AN/UYK-44 computers to classify and detect mines), augmented by a dozen all-fiberglass 188-foot Osprey-class coastal mine hunters (MHCs). However, the Navy had to make do with the old MSOs for a bit longer until the new ships arrived in force.

By this time, the entire Navy MCM force only had 20 modernized Korean War-era MSOs (18 Agiles, 2 Acmes) spread across both the active and the reserve fleet, 21 RH-53D helicopters, and 7 57-foot MSBs.

The first MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters began arriving in late 1986, and USS Avenger— the first new oceangoing American minesweeper since 1958– was commissioned in 1987. Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 14 (HM-14), founded in 1978, only received its first MH-53 Sea Dragon E-model on 9 April 1989.

We finally got real mines to sweep (kinda)

The Gulf Tanker War between Saddam’s Iraq and fundamentalist Iran led to Operation Earnest Will, the first overseas deployment of U.S. mine countermeasures forces since the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Shipping out for the Persian Gulf MCMGRUCO between November 1987 and March 1989 were six Agiles: USS Conquest (MSO-488), Enhance (MSO-437), Esteem (MSO-438), Fearless (MSO-442), Inflict (MSO-456), and Illusive (MSO-448).

While Adroit remained stateside– still in her modernization and post-delivery workup period– she was used to train Silver and Gold Crews replacement crews for duty in the Persian Gulf. While a caretaker crew remained on board, the Silver crew departed in February 1988 to take over the forward-deployed near-sister Fortify (MSO-446), while that ship’s Blue Crew returned from their deployment on board Inflict (MSO-456).

Within the first 18 months of Persian Gulf minesweeping operations, the MSOs accounted for over 50 Iranian-laid Great War-designed Russian M08 moored mines, cleared three major minefields, and checked swept convoy racks throughout the Gulf. Iranian minelaying was also given a setback in the adjacent and very kinetic Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988 after the mining of the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts, paving the way for the MSOs to head back home.

War, for real

When Saddam ran over the Kuwaiti border and claimed the country as a lost province in August 1990, the resulting Desert Shield operation kicked off in overdrive, and the Navy knew it would need some serious MCM muscle.

While the Iranians had used elderly Russian contact mines during the Tanker War which were easily tracked and defeated, the Iraqis had some very modern mines including the potbellied LUGM-145 contact mine, the new Soviet-designed UDM magnetic influence mine, the Sigeel-400, the Korean War-era Soviet KMD500 magnetic influence bottom mine with its keel-breaking 700-pound warhead, and the sneaky little Italian Manta MN-103 acoustic bottom mine.

Whereas the Earnest Will MSOs had taken months to get to the theatre back in 1987-88 (three MSOs were towed 10,000 miles by the salvage ship USS Grapple for eight weeks!), the newly commissoned USS Avenger (MCM-1) and three MSOs, our Adroit along with Agile half-sisters Impervious (MSO-449), and Leader (MSO-490), were immediately sealifted to the Persian Gulf aboad the Dutch heavy lift ship SS Super Servant III.

More than 20 Navy EOD teams were also deployed along with the MH-53E Sea Dragons of HM-14, forming USMCMG, joining Allied minesweepers from Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, and Kuwait.

14 August 1990. “A tug positions the ocean minesweeper USS Adroit (MSO-509) over the submerged deck of the Dutch heavy lift ship SS Super Servant III. The SS Super Servant III will transport Adroit and other minesweepers to the Persian Gulf in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.” JO2 Oscar Sosa. DN-ST-90-11501

5 October 1990. Baharain. “The mine countermeasures ship USS Avenger (MCM-1), the ocean minesweeper USS Adroit (MSO-509), and other vessels are positioned on the partially submerged deck of the Dutch heavy lift ship SS Super Servant III before offloading in support of Operation Desert Shield.” Photo by CDR John Charles Roach. DN-SC-91-02584

“Inflation of Zodiac. USS Adroit and USS Avenger wait on the deck of the Dutch ship Superservant to be floated off and begin minesweeping operations. The crew in the lightweight zodiac will knock out bilge blocks and props supporting the minesweepers as they are refloated.” Painting, Watercolor on Paper; by CDR John Charles Roach; 1991; Framed Dimensions 30H X 39W. NHHC Accession #: 91-049-O.

December 1990. Deployed to the Gulf. Note her Zodiac and blacked out hull numbers. “A starboard beam view of the ocean minesweeper USS Adroit (MSO-509) underway. The Adroit and three other U.S. Navy minesweepers have been deployed to the Gulf in support of Operation Desert Shield.” PH2 Burge. DN-ST-91-03129

In January 1991, Adroit’s initial Blue crew was rotated stateside, replaced by a Silver crew from the Exploit, led by LCDR William Flemming Barns (NROTC ’75).

Beginning its task of sweeping five lines of mines east of the Kuwaiti coastline– containing some 1,270 of the devices– when Desert Storm kicked off, it was slow going for all involved. Some 35 years ago this week, the USMCMG flag, the old USS Tripoli (LPH-10), struck a LUGM, blowing a 16-by-25-foot hole in her hull and losing a third of her fuel in the process. Just three hours later, the cruiser Princeton hit another mine, this time a dreaded Manta, which almost ripped her fantail from her hull.

Impervious, Leader, and Avenger searched for additional mines in the area while Adroit carefully led the salvage tug USS Beaufort (ATS-2) through the uncharted mines toward Princeton, which took her in tow, Adroit steaming at the “Point” marking mines with flares in the dark.

As detailed by Captain E. B. Hontz, Princeton’s skipper, in a July 1991 Proceedings piece:

As the day wore on, I was concerned about drifting around in the minefield. So I made the decision to have Beaufort take us in tow since our maneuverability with one shaft at three, four, five, or even six knots was not good. Once underway, we moved slowly west with Adroit leading, searching for mines.”

The crew remained at general quarters as a precaution should we take another mine strike. [The] Beaufort continued to twist and turn, pulling us around the mines located by the Naval Reserve ship Adroit and marked by flares. Throughout the night, Adroit continued to lay flares. Near early morning, having run out of flares, she began marking the mines with chem-lights tied together. The teamwork of the Adroit and Beaufort was superb.

I felt the life of my ship and my men were in the hands of this small minesweeper’s commanding officer and his crew. I directed the Adroit to stay with us. I trusted him, and I didn’t want to let him go until I was clear of the danger area. [The] Princeton was … out of the war.

“Adroit Marks the Way for Princeton,” With the use of hand flares, USS Adroit (MSO-509) marks possible mines in an effort to extract the already damaged USS Princeton (GG-59) from a minefield. USS Beaufort (ATS-2) stands by to assist. Painting, Oil on Canvas Board; by CDR John Charles Roach; 1991; Framed Dimensions 26H X 34W NHHC Accession #: 92-007-X

“The Little Heroes. The mine sweepers Impervious (MSO-449) and Adroit (MSO-509) make all preparations for getting underway. Shortly, these little ships will play a very important role in the northern Gulf by leading out Princeton (CG-59) and Tripoli (LPH-10), badly damaged by exploding mines.” Painting, Watercolor on Paper; by CDR John Charles Roach; 1991; Framed Dimensions 30H X 39W. NHHC Accession #: 92-007-S.

1 April 1991. Crewmen on the deck of the ocean minesweeper USS Adroit (MSO-509) stand by during mine-clearing operations following the cease-fire that ended Operation Desert Storm. Note the extensive mine stencils around her pilot house. and .50 cals at the ready. PH2 Rudy D. Pahoyo. DN-SN-93-01468

1 April 1991. A port view of the ocean minesweeper USS Adroit (MSO-509) conducting mine-clearing operations following the cease-fire that ended Operation Desert Storm. The USS Leader (MSO-490) and an MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter are in the background. PH2 Rudy D. Pahoyo. DN-SN-93-01466

The Americans, joined by allies from around the world, continued to sweep mines and UXO across the Gulf and five Kuwaiti ports through the end of May 1991.

Their mission accomplished, Adroit, Impervious, and Leader returned on board SS Super Servant IV to Norfolk on 14 November 1991.

14 November 1991. Norfolk. The ocean minesweepers USS Impervious (MSO-449), foreground, and USS Adroit (MSO-509) and USS Leader (MSO-490), right, sit aboard the Dutch heavy lift ship SS Super Servant IV as its deck is submerged to permit minesweepers to be unloaded. The minesweepers have returned to Norfolk after being deployed for 14 months in the Persian Gulf region in support of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. PHAN Christopher L. Ryan. DN-ST-92-04869

14 November 1991. Norfolk. The ocean minesweeper USS Adroit (MSO-509) ties up at the pier after being unloaded from the Dutch heavy lift Super Servant 4, which carried the Adroit and two other ocean minesweepers, the USS Impervious (MSO-449) and USS Leader (MSO-490), to Norfolk from the Persian Gulf region, where the minesweepers were deployed for 14 months in support of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Note the more than 50 mine stencils on her wheelhouse, a Manta ray mine stencil further aft, and at least three visible machine gun mounts and shields (sans guns). PHAN Christopher L. Ryan. DN-ST-92-04871

Decommissioned 12 December 1991– just months after guiding Princeton— Adroit was laid up at Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility, Portsmouth, and struck from the Navy Register on 8 May 1992. Affray held on for another year. The last four Agiles in U.S. service were decommissioned three years later.

Sold for scrap on 15 August 1994 by DRMO to Wilmington Resources, Inc. of Wilmington, North Carolina, for $44,950, she was removed from the Reserve Fleet three days later, and her scrapping was completed by the following May. By 2000, her last remaining sister, Affray, had been scrapped as well.

Adroit had an amazing 26 skippers during her storied 34 years on active duty.

Epilogue

Adroit’s deck logs from the 1950s-70s are largely digitized and available online via the NARA.

The Navy MSO Association (“Wooden Ships, Iron Men”) was once very vibrant, but it seems their website went offline circa 2020. The Association of Minemen (AOM) is likewise dormant. The Mine Warfare Association (MINWARA), formed in 1995, continues its legacy. albeit with fewer and fewer MSO-era mine warriors these days.

The only MSO preserved in the U.S., the Agile-class USS Lucid (MSO-458) at the Stockton Maritime Museum, also has parts salvaged from ex-USS Implicit, and ex-Pluck (MSO-464). Please visit her if you get the chance.

Lucid today

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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Warship Wednesday (on a Friday) 13 February 2026: The Russian Cruiser that Accounted for Three German ones

Posted on February 13, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday (on a Friday) 13 February 2026: The Russian Cruiser that Accounted for Three German ones

(Sorry for the two-day delay, boys. This was a long one!)

Above we see the fine 1st rank protected cruiser Bogatyr of the Imperial Russian Navy, in her circa 1904-05 dark green war paint, as she rests in Zolotoy Rog (Golden Horn Bay) with a burgeoning young Vladivostok sprawling in the distance.

Constructed and later dismantled in Germany, she made the Japanese admiralty howl (briefly) in 1904, then, somehow, survived that maelstrom to exact three pounds of flesh from the Kaiserliche Marine in the Great War.

The Great 1900s Russian Cruiser Rush

After that fearsome bear Tsar Alexander III passed unexpectedly in 1894 and left his woefully unprepared son, Nicky, with the autocratic throne of Holy Mother Russia, things got a bit weird. While both Alexander (who had successfully commanded a 70,000-strong force in the combat against the Ottomans in 1877-78) and his son (who had risen to the rank of colonel and commanded a cavalry squadron on summer maneuvers) were trained army officers, as Tsar, Nicky pursued a curious naval policy, one that aimed to make Russia a great power on the sea rather than a regional power capable of besting, say, the Turks or Sweden, the country’s traditional foes. The weak new Tsar was muscled into this way of thinking by a trio of professional naval officers in his family, his older uncles Alexei and Sergei Alexandrovich, and cousin “Sandro” Mikhailovich, all “big fleet” advocates.

This was abetted in no small part by Nicky’s cousin, Willy, the German Kaiser, who not only whispered about great naval power but also pointed the young Tsar’s eye away from Europe and to the Pacific, where a British-allied Japan was growing ever more powerful.

Not able to weaken its fleets in the Black Sea (against the Turks), or the Baltic (against Sweden, or, say, maybe, Germany as Russia was officially an ally of France after 1892), this required a whole new force for the Pacific. The distinct possibility of having to defend Russian overseas shipping from the British while also dispatching raiders to disrupt Britannia’s own merchant traffic was also a problem that needed solving, at least until the two countries buried the hatchet in the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907.

All this meant modern new battleships and cruisers, destroyers and gunboats. And lots of them.

The first modern protected cruiser in Russian service was the circa 1895 French (FCM)-built Svetlana (3,682t, 331 ft oal, 21 kts, 6 x 6″/45 guns, up to 4″ of armor), followed by the three larger domestically-built Pallada/Diana- class ships (6,687t, 416 ft oal, 19 kts, 8 x 6″/45 guns, up to 6″ of armor), and two very similar ships: the American (Cramp)-built Varyag (6,500t, 425 ft oal, 23 kts, 12 x 6″/45 guns, up to 6″ of armor), and the German (Germaniawerft)-built Askold (5,900t, 434 ft oal, 23.8 kts, 12 x 6″/45 guns, up to 6″ of armor), which were built abroad simoultanously.

Russian cruiser Askold in Vladivostok

Our subject was originally a stand-alone design similar in size but slightly larger (6,645 tons, 439 feet oal) than the Varyag and Askold, while being roughly the same speed and still carrying a similar armament and armor scheme. This made her a rough equivalent to the British cruiser HMS Highflyer and the French Chateaureneau.

Meet Bogatyr

Our subject is at least the third such warship in service to the Tsar, going back to the first steam frigate built in the Russian Empire in 1836, to carry the name “Bogatyr,” which roughly translates to “hero,” common to early Russian epics.

1898 oil painting titled Bogatyrs by Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov

Steam frigate Bogatyr by Russian maritime artist Vladimir Emyshev

The second Bogatyr was a circa 1860 spar frigate and class leader of three sisters (Varyag, Vityaz, and Askold— these names seem to keep repeating themselves!) that was key in early Russian power projection outside of Europe

Russian warships at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1877. On the left is the frigate Svetlana (launched 1858), on the right is the steam frigate Bogatyr (launched 1860). NH 60753

Our third Bogatyr, like Askold, was ordered on 5 August 1898 from Germany, but this time not from Germaniawerft. Instead, she was ordered to a design from Vulcan Stettin and laid down as Yard No. 427 on 22 December 1899.

Whereas Askold ran a very distinctive five, thin funnels, and Varyag had four, Bogatyr emulated the Pallada and Svetlana classes with three thick pipes.

Her thickest armor, some 5.5 inches, was protecting her casemate, while she still had 5 inches over her main battery turrets, as well as 3 inches in her casemates and deck. Her shell hoists and other vital systems recived at least two inches.

She shipped 765 tons of armor and had 16 watertight bulkheads. A total of 1.83 million steel rivets were used in her construction. Four Siemens dynamos provided electrical power.

She carried 16 triangular three-drum Bellville-type Normand-Sigaudy boilers in three boiler rooms in a 4-6-6 layout, pushing two VTE engines, which gave Bogatyr 19,500 shp- enough for 23 knots.

Her two VTE engines were aligned one per shaft, each ending in a 15-foot, 3-bladed prop. Carrying 1,220 tons of coal, she could steam 4,900 miles at 10 knots on a clean hull with good pipes.

Her main battery was a dozen 6″/45 Pattern 1892 French Canet guns (made under license by Obukhov and installed in Russia), with four in two twin turrets, one fore and one aft, and the other eight in broadside casemates or shielded single mounts. Her magazines carried 2,160 6-inch shells.

The Russians loved these guns and built over 500 of them, putting them on just about every cruiser and battleship they built between 1897 and 1917, then continuing to use them in coastal defense as late as the 1960s.

Bogatyr’s secondary battery was a dozen 3″/50 Pattern 1892 Canet/Obukhov deck guns with 3,600 shells to feed them, while a tertiary battery of eight QF 3-pounder (47mm) Hotchkiss and two 1-pounder 5-barreled Hotchkiss Gatling guns provided torpedo boat defense.

Note her deck structure and staggered guns

This plan shows her gun firing arcs and 16-boom torpedo net arrangement

Speaking of torpedoes, Bogatyr had five small 15-inch tubes (1 bow, 2 beam, 2 stern) and carried 12 fish in her magazines. She also had storage below deck for 35 small defensive mines.

Her complement of 17 officers, 6 officials (medical, JAG, etc.), and 551 enlisted men could provide a company-sized landing force for duty ashore, for which she carried enough Mosin rifles and marching gear to outfit, as well as two Maxim heavy machine guns and two light 37mm Baranovsky landing guns on wheeled carriages.

She carried 10 boats, including two 40-foot steam pinnacles that could carry a 37mm landing gun if needed, a 20-oared longboat, a 14-oared workboat, two 6-oared boats, and four whaleboats.

Launches on Bogatyr while ship seen arriving at Sevastopol on 18 February 1909. Also note one of her shielded 6″/45 guns on a sponson forward, with another casemated aft.

Bogatyr launched on 17 January 1901 and spent the next 18 months fitting out.

Note her ram bow, forward torpedo tube, and Orthodox priest ready to bless the new cruiser

Bogatyr launched, clean

Bogatyr installing 6-inch turret house shields

Her first skipper, appointed 15 February 1899, was Capt. 1st Rank Alexander Fedorovich Stemman, a career officer who joined the Naval cadet corps in 1871, sailed the world on the old frigate Svetlana, fought against the Turks in 1877 on the Danube, sailed the Pacific on the spar frigate Duke of Edinburgh, commanded the destroyer Krechet, the mine cruiser Gaydamak, and the coastal defense battleship (monitor) Lava before heading to Germany to join Bogatyr’s plankowners.

In June 1902, on speed trials in the Gulf of Danzig, Bogatyr touched 23.9 knots, and at the end of July was toured at Stettin by the Kaiser himself.

Delivered to the Russian Navy in August 1902, she was immediately dispatched to the Pacific Squadron.

Bogatyr early in her career in white colonial livery. Note her ornate Tsarist eagle figurehead. NH 60718

She looked very similar in profile to the Vulcan-built Japanese armored cruiser Yakumo, which also had three funnels and two masts, and a gun arrangement of two two-gun turrets and the rest in broadside. Yakumo was gently larger, at 9,000 tons, and carried a mix of 16 8- and 6-inch guns compared to Bogatyr’s 12 6-inchers, but you get the idea.

It could be argued that the Japanese Yakumo, built 1897-1900, seen above, was the design prototype of the Bogatyr. Both ships were built in the same German yard, with Yakumo beginning construction a little over a year before the Russian ship.

The Russian Admiralty was so taken with the design that it ordered four more or less exact copies of Bogatyr in 1900-02 from four domestic yards, two in the Baltic and two in the Black Sea: Vityaz from Galernyy Is, St. Petersburg; Oleg from the New Admiralty Yard, St. Petersburg; Kagul from the Admiralty Yard in Nikolayev (Mykolaiv) Ukraine; and Ochakov from the Lazarev Admiralty Yard in Sevastopol.

Of these, Vityaz was destroyed by fire on the stocks by fire in June 1901, but the other three started arriving in the fleet in the 1904-05 time frame.

The hull of the unfinished cruiser Vityaz after a fire. June 1901. St Petersburg

Bogatyr’s page in the 1904 Janes, with her three finished sisters.

A “rocky” war with Japan

Units of the Russian fleet at Anchor at Vladivostok, September 1903. From left to right: Sevastopol (front, battleship, 1895-1904); Gromoboi (rear, armored cruiser, 1899-1917); Rossia (armored cruiser, 1899-1922); Persviet (battleship, 1898-1922); Bogatyr (protected cruiser, 1901-1922); Boyarin (cruiser, 1901-1904), center; Angara (transport, 1898-1923, 3 funnels, black hull); (Polotava (battleship; 1894-1923); Petropavlovsk (Russian battleship, 1894-1904); the small one-funnel black-hulled vessel in the center foreground is unidentified. Original print with McCully report MSS.-AR branch. NH 91178

Assigned to the RADM Karl Petrovich Jessen’s Vladivostok-based Separate Cruiser Detachment along with the larger armored cruisers Rossia, Gromoboi, and Rurik, and the auxiliary cruiser Lena, Bogatyr avoided the slow death of the bulk of the Russian Pacific Squadron trapped in Port Arthur when the Japanese attacked without warning in February 1904.

Vladivostok Independent Cruiser Squadron moored together at Vladivostok, 1903: Lena, Gromboi, Rurik, Bogatyr, and Rossia

In this, she earned her dark green war paint.

Russian cruiser Bogatyr Bain News Service LOC LC-B2-3196-9

Jessen’s roaming cruisers went to work haunting the Korean Strait and the waters around Japan over the next several months, sinking 10 transports and 12 schooners, as well as capturing five other merchants. This effort diverted six Japanese armored cruisers to chase them down, weakening Adm. Togo’s force off Port Arthur.

Bogatyr was with the squadron for their first kill, on 12 February, sinking the 1,800-ton merchant ship Nakanoura Maru just off the Tsugaru Strait.

1904 Japanese illustration “Sinking of the Nakanoura Maru.”

She was also there when the 220-ton Japanese coaster Haginoura Maru was sunk in the Sea of Japan off Korea on 25 April, followed by the 4,000-ton armed transport Kinshu Maru the next day.

The Kinshu Maru incident was particularly noteworthy in Japanese martial lore as, by legend, the ship’s crew surrendered and were taken off while the company of guardsmen aboard refused such dishonor, choosing instead to fire at the Russian cruisers with their rifles as the transport was sunk via torpedo. Some 51 waterlogged soldiers and sailors were later picked up by the Japanese schooner Chihaya and landed at Kobe on 30 April.

Last scene aboard the Japanese transport Kinshu Maru, depicting an Imperial Japanese Army infantryman aboard the Japanese transport Kinshu Maru firing rifles at Imperial Russian Navy cruisers that are sinking Kinshu Maru in the Sea of Japan off Gensan, Korea on 26 April 1904. Via The Russo-Japanese War, Kinkodo Publishing Co., 1904, illustration between p. 250 and p. 251.

She would be our subject’s last combat of her first war.

While creeping around in the fog on the morning of 15 May 1904, Bogatyr’s bow struck rocks at Cape Bryus in Amur Bay, sustaining considerable damage.

After being almost written off, she was finally freed on 18 June and, patched, was towed into Vladivostok for repairs.

Bogatyr remained under repair throughout the Russo-Japanese War while her skipper, Capt. Stemman was reassigned to the Vladivostok fortress. He never commanded another ship and retired from the Navy in 1911 after 40 years in uniform. He was made a VADM on the retired list for his past service. He passed in 1914, aged 58.

Bogatyr iced in at Vladivostok over the 1905-06 winter

Bogatyr’s sister Oleg likewise escaped an early demise during the conflict, eluding Togo’s bruisers at Tsushima long enough to be interned under U.S. guns in the Philippines.

A shell-riddled Oleg in Manila, 1905

Meanwhile, sister Ochakov, left in Europe with a skeleton crew, mutinied in 1905 in conjunction with the battleship Potemkin and, after a delusory shootout with ships and coastal batteries loyal to the government, suffered 52 large caliber hits and was left to burn. Rebuilt over four years, Ochakov was renamed Kagul to escape the revolutionary stain. For some unknown reason, the existing Kagul, another one of Bogatyr’s Russian-built sisters, was renamed Pamiat’ Merkuria (Memory of Mercury), at the same time, I guess, to muddy the waters as if Ochakov had never existed.

Interbellum

Once the war with Japan was over, the old Russian Pacific Squadrons (both of them) had ceased to exist, with the few hulls left afloat and in Russian custody reorganized into the rump destroyer-heavy Siberian Military Flotilla, with the more capable ships transferred back to the Baltic to make up losses there. This saw Bogatyr transfer to Kronstadt.

She became a stepping stone for several upwardly mobile professional officers, with her next five skippers (Bostrem, Vasilkovsky, Girs, Petrov-Chernyshin, and Vorozheikin) all later pinning on admiral’s stars. As a side note, Vasilkovsky was later shot by the Cheka during the Red Terror of Sevastopol in 1918, while Girs was drowned in the Gulf of Finland by the Petrograd Cheka at roughly the same time.

Still, they were no doubt happy during this quiet time in the ship’s history, and I’d bet that at the time never saw it coming.

Bogatyr arriving at Sevastopol on 18 February 1909, Romanian Elisabeta in the background

Bogatyr arriving at Sevastopol on 18 February 1909

Russian cruisers Aurora, Diana, and Bogatyr in the Baltic, 1909

Between the wars, Bogatyr participated in a series of training cruises back and forth from the Baltic to the Black Sea via the Mediterranean.

It was while in the company of the cruiser Admiral Makarov and battleships Tsarevich and Slava that news of the December 1908 Messina earthquake broke. RADM Litvinov immediately sent ships to join the international response to the disaster. Sailors from Bogatyr were among the first to come to the aid of the inhabitants of Messina buried under the rubble. In total, Russian sailors rescued about 1,000 people from the ruins.

Russian Midshipmen’s Training Detachment and USS Connecticut (Battleship # 18) off Messina to provide earthquake relief, 9 January 1909. Connecticut, in the right background with a white hull, was then in the Mediterranean during the final stages of the Great White Fleet World cruise. The Russian ships, in the center wearing grey paint, are (from right to left): armored cruiser Admiral Makarov, battleship Slava, battleship Tsararevich, and (probably) cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg. Collection of Lieutenant Commander Richard Wainwright, 1928. NH 1570

Bogatyr by Bourgault, circa 1910.

In 1911, Bogatyr picked up a Telefunken radio system. In the same overhaul, she landed her two Hotchkiss 37mm Gatling guns and two of her torpedo tubes.

Her seventh skipper, Capt. 1st Rank Evgeny Ivanovich Krinitsky assumed command in August 1912. The captain of the destroyer Silny, which distinguished herself in the defense of Port Arthur in 1904, was a solid naval hero who earned the St. George cross for the war. Wounded and only slightly recovered during his stint as a POW in Japan, he was further wounded by a mutinous sailor’s bayonet during the 1906 uprising in Kronstadt. He came to Bogatyr after command of the old minelaying cruiser Ladoga.

Bogatyr was on hand in the Baltic when French President Raymond Poincaré visited with Nicky on the eve of the Great War.

Protected Cruiser Bogatyr welcoming the French President to Kronstadt aboard the newest French Dreadnought, France, 20 July 1914

War (Again)

Part of the Russian Baltic Fleet’s 2nd Cruiser Squadron when the war began, Bogatyr, with naval hero Krinitsky still in command, was urgently dispatched on 13 August 1914, along with the cruiser Pallada, to Odenholm Island off the northern coast of modern Estonia. There, on a rock since the night before, was pinned the grounded German light cruiser SMS Magdeburg, with the destroyer V-26 busily taking off her 370-man crew.

The Magdeburg is aground. The Odenholm Island lighthouse is visible in the background. Bundesarchiv_Bild_134-B2501

Bogatyr and Rossia interrupted the scuttling, with V-26 fleeing and Magdeburg’s remaining crew setting off a scuttling charge that broke her back after an exchange of gunfire. Bogatyr captured three officers, including Capt. (ZS) Richard Habenicht, three mechanical engineers, and 51 sailors from the destroyed German cruiser, and, much more importantly, recovered a waterlogged bag full of code books and important ship’s papers from the shallows around the ship. A second signal book and a rough draft of a radiogram reporting the clash were found in Magdeburg’s radio room and proved especially useful for cryptologists in London, Paris, and Petrograd for the rest of the war.

With the Russian fleet taking the wise step to seal the Eastern Baltic shut with mines, Bogatyr received rails and chutes to carry as many as 100 M08 mines on deck.

One of her fields was credited with extensively damaging the German light cruiser SMS Augsburg off Bornholm on the night of 24–25 January 1915, and she struck a mine, knocking her out of the war for four months.

For these actions, Krinitsky received his second St. George in as many wars and was promoted to rear admiral, replaced in January 1915 by Capt. Dmitry Nikolaevich Verderevsky, former skipper of the cruiser Admiral Makarov.

Soon after the Baltic thaw, Bogatyr and her sister Oleg, working with the 8-inch gunned armored cruiser Bayan, participated in the Battle of Aland Islands on 2 July 1915, during which they drove the German light minelaying cruiser SMS Albatross onto the beach in neutral Swedish waters just off Ostergarn. Riddled with six 8-inch shells from Bayan and 20 6-inchers from Bogatyr and Oleg, Albatross was a loss, but the Russians were deprived of their trophy.

Oil painting by J Hägg. “Albatross under fire” Swedish Marinmuseum B1397

German minelayer SMS Albatross beached

Nonetheless, Bogatyr had accounted for her third German cruiser in less than a year. Her skipper, Verderevsky, earned a St. George of his own.

With the writing on the wall for mine warfare in the Baltic, Bogatyr was laid up in late 1915 for a further conversion in which she was fitted to carry as many as 150 mines. To allow for the extra space and weight, her dozen 6″/45 Canet guns, 12 3″/50s, and 8 Hotchkiss 3-pounders were replaced with an all-up battery of 16 5.1″/55 Pattern 1913 (B-7) Vickers-Obukhov guns. Likewise, her final torpedo tubes were removed.

Bogatyr was photographed fairly late in the ship’s career, at an unidentified location. From the P.A. Warneck Collection, 1981; Courtesy of B. V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida. NH 92160

After quiet service laying minefields and conducting coastal operations, Verderevsky left the ship in December 1916 to assume a rear admiral’s post over a submarine squadron at Revel, while he handed the cruiser over to Capt. Koptev Sergei Dmitrievich, who was cashiered shortly after the Revolution and would die of pneumonia in 1920, aged just 39.

Speaking of Revolutions, one of Bogatyr’s sailors, a 25-year-old boatswain’s mate by the name of Aleksandr Kondratyevich “Ales” Gurlo, took part in both of them, leading a detachment from the ship in the siege and later storming of the Winter Palace in November 1917. Continuing to fight for the Reds against Kolchak in Siberia, post-war, he became something of a poet, publishing five collections by the late 1920s.

Under a Red Star

After the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Germans and their allies on 15 December 1917, leading to the formal Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, Russia’s Great War was over, replaced by a civil war that would drag on until 1924.

What this meant for the Russian Baltic Fleet was that the ships based in the frozen ports of the Baltic states and Finland, which the Germans meant to occupy, needed to be saved from capture and pulled back to Red Kronstadt. This great retreat, conducted between 16 February 1918 and 20 April 1918, was dubbed the “Ice Cruise” by the Russians and involved successfully moving 236 ships and vessels, including six battleships, five cruisers (our Bogatyr included), 59 destroyers, and 12 submarines.

Painting of the icebreaker Jermak opening a way to other ships on the Ice Voyage, seen as the chrysalis moment for the Red Navy. The fleet withdrew six battleships, 5 cruisers, 59 destroyers and torpedo boats, 12 submarines

Ensign Beno Eduardovich von Gebhard, a mysterious figure, was Bogatyr’s elected skipper during the Ice Cruise. He was dispatched shortly after for reasons lost to history.

The Red commander of the Baltic Fleet that pulled off the Ice Cruise against all odds with no coal, near mutinous crews ruled by committee, and few remaining engineers, was Capt. Alexey Mikhailovich Shchastny. Just after the fleet was solidified in Kronstadt, Shchastny was executed under orders of Trotsky for the “treason” of saving the Baltic Fleet. No heroes from the officer class were allowed.

In November 1918, Bogatyr and her sister Oleg participated in the aborted invasion of Estonia by the Red Army, at a time when most of the rest of the fleet’s sailors were rushed to the front to fight the Whites on four different fronts.

By this time, a British cruiser-destroyer force under RADM Sir Walter Cowan was operating in the Eastern Baltic. While Bogatyr never scrapped with the British, Oleg was torpedoed and sunk on the night of 17 June 1919 in a daring CMB raid on Kronstadt.

Lt Augustus Agar, in the tiny 40-foot HM CMB4, attacked and sank the Russian Cruiser Oleg in Kronstadt whilst working for British Intelligence under MI6, earning him the Victoria Cross. HM Coastal Motor Boat 4 remains today on display at the IWM.

Bogatyr’s last listed skipper was Red LT Vladimir Andreevich Kukel, who left the ship with her crew at the end of June 1919 for the Volga-Caspian Military Flotilla, to fight Wrangel’s Whites in the South. Once the party was through with Kukel and there was no more fighting to be done, he was arrested and shot, then posthumously “rehabilitated” in 1958.

Bogatyr’s page in the 1921 Janes

By the time Kronstadt was in turn the subject of a revolt against the Bolsheviks in March 1921, leaving hundreds dead and 8,000 sailors fleeing to Finland on foot over the ice once the Red Army moved in, Bogatyr had long before been abandoned and neglected. She was disarmed, towed away, and scrapped in 1922– by a German firm– while the wreck of her sister Oleg, sunk in the Kronstadt shallows, was slowly broken up by local means well into the 1930s.

Another of Bogatyr’s sisters, Kagul (the ex-revolutionary Ochakov), was captured by advancing German troops in the Black Sea in March 1918, then captured by British and French troops post-Armistice. Transferred to the Whites, she was renamed General Kornilov after their fallen leader and, when the Whites evacuated Crimea in November 1920, was sailed into exile in Bizerte and interned by the French government, who broke her up in 1933.

Bogatyr class cruiser General Kornilov, ex-Kagul, ex-Ochakov, photographed at Bizerte, where the ship spent 1920 to 1932 as a unit of the White Russian “Wrangel-Fleet.” From the P.A. Warneck Collection, 1981; Courtesy of B. V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida. Catalog #: NH 92158

Ironically, the head of the White Russian exile Naval Corps in Bizerte during that era was (former) RADM Vorozheikin, who had commanded Bogatyr in 1911. Old Vorozheikin died there in Tunisia in the late 1930s, reportedly spending his last years maintaining the salvaged ships’ libraries of the scrapped exile fleet.

Epilogue

Of Bogatyr’s most significant Great War Tsarist-era skippers, the Russo-Japanese War hero Krinitsky– who was her commander during the capture of the Magdeburg— was dismissed from the service he gave everything to in 1918, then spent the rest of his life living quietly under the Bolshevik regime as an electrician at a printing machine factory, passing in 1930.

The second, Verderevsky, who commanded her in the Ahland Islands against Albatross, was (briefly) the commander of the Baltic Fleet in early 1917, then Kerensky’s naval minister, arrested by the Bolsheviks (including, ironically, a detachment of sailors from Bogatyr) in the Winter Palace along with other members of the Provisional Government during the “10 Days that Shook the World.” He lived in exile in the West until 1947, and post-WWII warmed to the Moscow government, receiving Soviet citizenship just before he passed in France at age 73.

Bogatyr’s final sister, Pamiat Merkuria, had exchanged fire with the Germans and Ottomans in the Black Sea during WWI on at least 10 separate occasions. When the Revolution and Civil War era came, she was stripped of her armament and armor, used to build war trains, while her crew had been scattered.

Sabotaged and vandalized by successive waves of interventionist foreign armies, Whites, and Reds, she was rebuilt with salvaged guns and parts from Oleg and, in 1923, recommissioned as the slow and under-armed training cruiser/minelayer Komintern.

Soviet Bogatyr class cruiser Komintern ex Pamiat Merkuria shelling Romanian positions near Odesa, Sept 1941

Nonetheless, she got in several licks against the Germans in 1941-42, then was sunk in shallow water by Luftwaffe air attacks; her guns were salvaged and moved ashore to keep fighting.

Afterall, it was in her blood.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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MCM Torch Passed in the Arabian Gulf (Again)

Posted on February 9, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

The four recently decommissioned 224-foot U.S. Navy Avenger-class Mine Countermeasures ships — the former USS Devastator, USS Dextrous, USS Gladiator, and USS Sentry — have departed Bahrain aboard the 65,000-ton Norwegian-flagged merchant heavy-lift vessel Seaway Hawk, marking their final voyage through the Arabian Gulf.

Seaway Hawk was escorted by USS Canberra (LCS 30), one of the three-pack of newly MCM-optimized Independence-class ships– the others being USS Santa Barbara (LCS 32) and Tulsa (LCS 16)-– that are currently forward-deployed to Bahrain, replacing the legacy Avenger-class ships that have served in Task Force 55 for over 30 years.

This isn’t the first time 5th Fleet MCM has passed the torch in the region with generational changes. Several circa-1950s wooden-hulled 120-foot Aggressive-class ocean minesweepers, including the USS Adroit (MSO-509) —subject of an upcoming Warship Wednesday —the USS Impervious (MSO-449), and the Leader (MSO-490), were deployed to the Persian Gulf beginning in 1990, notably supporting Operations Earnest Will, Desert Shield, and Desert Storm.

Before that, the old ‘phib USS Okinawa (LPH-3) had operated Navy RH-53D Sea Stallion minesweeping helicopters in the Gulf during Operation Ernest Will, and six small minesweeping boats (4 x 57-foot MSBs and 2x 36-foot MSLs) of Mine Group Two, Mine Division 125, had arrived in the region on USS St. Louis (LKA-116) and USS Raleigh (LPD-1) in the summer of 1987.

Mine Division 125 personnel watch as a yard crane lifts the minesweeping boat MSB 16 from the Cooper River. The boat will be placed on a skid for loading into the well deck of the amphibious transport dock USS Raleigh (LPD 1). August 1, 1987. MSGT Dave Casey, USAF. 330-CFD-DF-ST-88-03132

These brownwater boats were later augmented by the Aggressive class bluewater boats USS Fearless (MSO-442), Inflict (MSO-456), and Illusive (MSO-448), towed by USS Grapple (ARS-53) to the region. The epic nearly 10,000-mile journey began on 6 September 1987 and lasted roughly eight weeks, arriving in the Gulf of Oman on 2 November 1987. Upon arrival, the Inflict discovered and destroyed the first underwater contact mines in the northern Persian Gulf countered by an American minesweeper since the Korean War.

The salvage ship USS Grapple (ARS 53) tows the ocean minesweepers USS Inflict (MSO 456), USS Fearless (MSO 442), and USS Illusive (MSO 448) to the Persian Gulf to support US Navy escort operations. September 1, 1987 PH2 C. Duvall. 330-CFD-DN-ST-88-01143

The ocean minesweeper USS INFLICIT (MSO 456) heads towards the Persian Gulf to support US Navy escort operations, 9/1/1987

Greyhound Sardines

Posted on January 23, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

A cluster of Great War-era Wickes (Lumberton) class four-piper flush deck destroyers seen out of commission, in mothballs at San Diego, 4 April 1939. The converted fast minelayers USS Montgomery (DM-17) and USS Gamble (DM-15) are present in the foreground, although they still wear their original greyhound hull numbers (DD-121 and DD-123, respectively), but are ornamented with the Mine Force “meatball” insignia on the bow.

Those masts are close enough that Tarzan could swing from one to the other and never touch the deck!

Reactivated to join Mine Division Two in time for Pearl Harbor, Montgomery would be irreparably damaged by a mine in Ngulu Lagoon, Caroline Islands, 17 October 1944, with the death of four of her crew, knocking her out of the war. She was stricken and sold for scrap in 1946.

Likewise, Gamble was also knocked out by Japanese bombs in February 1945 while off Iwo Jima and never repaired.

Between just these two unsung “tin cans,” they earned 11 battle stars in the Pacific, the only way that small boys can: the hard way.

Warship Wednesday, 7 January 2026: Wilbur’s Beachcombing

Posted on January 7, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday 7 January 2026: Wilbur’s Beachcombing

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-432570

Above we see the modified Flower (Honesty) class frigate Prasae of the Royal Thai Navy aground behind enemy lines on the Korean east coast, some 75 years ago this week, in January 1951. Several U.N. personnel are standing on the beach near a boat, surveying the near-hopeless situation. An LCVP is also stranded just inshore of the frigate. Note ice on the shore and on the seaward side of the ship.

The hard-luck frigate may have been a loss, but all 111 of her survivors were all successfully plucked off the snow-covered beach by one intrepid “silver eagle” aviator and his primitive eggbeater.

Albeit slowly.

Amid a blizzard.

And under near constant enemy fire.

Meet Betony & Sind

Our subject started life as the Royal Navy’s Flower-class corvette HMS Betony (K274), ordered 8 December 1941– the day of the first Japanese attacks on British Hong Kong and other possessions in the Pacific, kicking off a whole new war.

Laid down 26 September 1942 at Alexander Hall and Sons in Aberdeen as Yard No. 687, the future Betony launched on 22 April 1943 and commissioned on 31 August 1943.

Her inaugural commander was the long-serving Lt. Nicholas Bryan John Stapleton, RD, RNR– who formerly was skipper of the Flower-class sister HMS Amaranthus (K 17), and before that the ASW whaler HMT Southern Pride (K 249).

HMS Betony (K274) underway, likely in British Home waters, circa 1943. IWM FL 2011

WWII Service

Our vessel suffered her first loss, with Act/Petty Officer Hubert M. Jones, P/SSX 20752, of her company listed as “died of wounds” on 28 November 1943 without further elaboration.

She was soon on convoy runs, tagging along with OS.59/ KMS.33 out of Liverpool for two weeks before 1943 was out.

After further workups in Scotland and a deployment to the Eastern Fleet at Trincomalee in early 1944, Stapleton handed command of the new Betony over to T/Lt. Percy Ellis Croisdale Pickles, RNVR, on 20 October 1944. While in the Indian Ocean, she performed escort duties for a dozen slow convoys on the CJ (Calcutta to Colombo) and BM/MB (Bombay to Colombo) runs between February and October 1944.

HMS Betony (K274) broadside view

She was loaned to the Royal Indian Navy in January 1945 and assigned to the hardscrabble Burma Coast Escort Force, operating alongside sistership corvettes HMIS Assam, HMS Meadowsweet, and HMS Tulip; the River-class frigates HMS Taff, Shiel, Lossie, Deveron, Test, and Nadder; and the old Town-class destroyers HMS Sennent (ex-USCGC Champlain) and Lulworth (ex-USCGC Chelan) out of Colombo.

When the war was all but over, Betony was officially commissioned on 24 August 1945 into the RIN as HMIS Sind, keeping her same pennant number (K274). Her only “Indian” skipper was T/A/Lt.Cdr. Leonard George Prowse, RINVR, formerly commander of the armed yacht HMS Rion (FY 024), who assumed command in March 1945.

With the corvette suffering from engine troubles, she was nominated for disposal and paid off on 17 May 1946

Bangkok Bound

Thailand had a winding path during WWII. Having fought in 1940-41 with the Vichy French over Cambodia (some things never change!), the country claimed neutrality until a near-bloodless “invasion” by Japan in December 1941, after which it entered into an outright military alliance that only ended post-VJ Day. Ceding territories its troops had seized in Burma and Malaya back to Britain and in Cambodia back to France under an American-brokered agreement in 1946, the country became the 55th nation to join the UN in December 1946 and swung more or less to the West.

This opened the country to military aid, which included receiving two surplus former RIN corvettes from Britain– ex-HMS Burnet/HMIS Gondwana (K 348) and our ex-HMS Betony/HMIS Sind on 15 May 1947. They were given a short refit and recommissioned into the Thai fleet as the frigates HTMS Bangpakong and HTMS Prasae, respectively.

HMTS Prasae

The British also transferred the humble 1,000-ton Algerine-class minesweeper HMS Minstrel (J 445), which became HTMS Phosamton (MSC-451).

The turnover ceremony was held in the naval dockyard of Singapore.

Although third-hand, the two surplus corvettes/frigates and the minesweeper were much appreciated and joined a Thai fleet that included the quaint but decrepit Thonburi-class coastal defense ship HTMS Sri Ayudhya (2,350-tons, 253 ft oal, 15 knots, 4×8″/50s, 4×3″/50s) whose sister had been sunk by the French in 1940, the 1,400-ton Japanese-built sloop HTMS Maeklong (which doubled as the royal yacht and naval cadet training ship), seven remaining pre-war Italian-built 300-ton Trad-class torpedo boats, the two old Armstrong-built Rattanakosindra-class gunboats (800 tons, 174 feet, 2×6″, 12 knots), four long-laid-up Japanese-built Matchanu-class costal submarines, and a handful of old coasters, dispatch, and survey vessels.

Later in 1947, the U.S. transferred three surplus PC-461-class 173-foot subchasers: HTMS Sarasin (ex USS PC-495), HTMS Thayanchon (ex USS PC-575), and HTMS Khamronsin (USS PC-609); and two LSM-1 class landing craft (ex USS LSM-333 and 338), further modernizing the Thai fleet, which by 1950 numbered 1,100 officers and 10,000 ratings.

Things were looking up.

Korea

In the wake of the Korean War in June 1950, Thailand was the first Asian nation (besides the exiled KMT on Taiwan, which is a whole ‘nother story) to offer ground troops to the UN Force. Before the end of the war, the anti-Chinese Prime Minister (former Field Marshal) Plaek Pibulsonggram wholeheartedly contributed over 11,700 ground troops (soon reequipped with U.S. uniforms and small arms), 40,000 tons of rice, and both of the country’s new frigates to the effort.

A newly formed unit of picked men, the 21st Infantry Regiment, Queen’s Guard (Thahan Suea Rachini), was drawn from across the Army.

Thai troops of the 21st Regiment embarking for Korea, October 1950. Note their French-style helmets, U.S.-marked haversacks, and Japanese-made Showa-period Mausers. Ultimately, more than 10,000 Thai troops would serve in the Korean War alongside U.S. forces, fighting notably at the Battle of Pork Chop Hill. (Photo: UN News Archives)

The two frigates, each with a picked crew of 110 officers and men, were made ready by early October 1950, and they would escort the first battalion of the Thai Army to Korea, with the latter carried on the old Japanese-built transport coaster HTMS Sichang, and the chartered merchant ship Hertamersk.

Prasae’s skipper was Prince (CDR) Uthaichalermlab Wutthichai, 35, who had learned his trade in England and had pinned on his lieutenant bars in 1938 before serving in WWII, and earning the Tritaphon Mongkut Thai among other decorations. Prince Wutthichai, the senior officer afloat, became the commodore of the little Thai squadron headed to Korea.

Some 307 Thai Navy personnel and ~1,200 troops left Thailand’s Khlong Toei port aboard the four ships on 22 October 1950, headed north. They arrived in Pusan on 7 November.

The U.S.-reequipped 21st Infantry, which soon earned the nickname the “Little Tigers,” served alongside the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and would see hard combat in the Third Battle for Seoul and at Pork Chop Hill.

Once attached to the UN Forces on 10 November, the two Thai frigates were given a short overhaul in Japan, which included updated sonar and radar suites, then tasked for a month under CTF-95 as guard ships for the entrance to the naval roads at Sasebo, Japan, with Prasae on the morning shift and Bangpakong overnight.

Then came a more kinetic assignment.

In early January 1951, Prasae and Bangpakong were under Task Force 77 orders on the gun line off the east coast of Korea near the 38th parallel, providing fire support missions to troops ashore with their single 4-inch BL Mk.IXs, steaming with a destroyer force including USS Wallace L. Lind (DD-703) as part of the East Coast Blockading and Patrol Task Group (TG 95.2).

The first shelling operation on North Korea’s east coast by the Thai Navy began on 3 January, firing along the coast between latitudes 38 and 39 degrees North, between the cities of Changjon and Yangyang. On 5-6 January, shelling of railway stations, transportation routes, and military structures in the Chodo area was carried out.

Then came a blizzard that was so severe that it grounded carrier and most fixed wing sorties between 6 and 11 January and filled central Korea with snow showers, haze, smoke, low clouds, 30 knot winds, and fog, dropping visibility to zero and bottoming out thermometers, Prasae drifted into the shallows on the cape of Kisamun-dan in Hyeonbuk-myeon, Yangyang, Gangwon, North Korea. She was hard aground, at a 60-degree angle to the shoreline, just 200 yards offshore.

She was also in enemy held-territory some 16 klicks north of the 38th Parallel.

Stranded Thai frigate Prasae, January 1951 80-G-432568

The Lewis S. Parks Papers in the Harry S. Truman Library contain dozens of Navy images of the rescue operation, digitized (low rez) in the National Archives. They were taken in most cases by U.S. Navy LT William DuCoing, presumably of the USS Manchester, who “witnessed several enemy soldiers killed while on this beach.”

During a blizzard night, the Thailand Corvette Prasae grounded on North Korea’s eastern coast in enemy territory about 200 yards offshore, NARA 350892732

A group of unidentified Thai sailors makes a close inspection of the ship HMTS Prasae after it grounded on the Korean coast during a United Nations operation. NARA 350898508

During a blizzard night, the Thailand Corvette Prasae grounded on North Korea’s eastern coast in enemy territory about 200 yards offshore. The sailor in the foreground is unidentified. Jan. 6, 1951. NARA 350892736

A view of the coast of Korea, where the Thailand ship HMTS Prasae was grounded during a blizzard. NARA 350898520

Snow covers a beach in Korea during the evacuation of Thai troops from the grounded HMTS Prasae in enemy territory. NARA 350892752

The alert went out, and Task Force 77 sprang into action to save the stranded Thai warship and her crew.

The salvage operation included the old Gleaves-class destroyer/minesweeper USS Endicott (DMS-35), which tried to send in LCVPs to recover marooned Thai sailors, joined by Prasae’s sister Bangpakong, whose small boats attempted to approach the beach without success due to fierce surf and rollers.

Endicott’s sisters USS Thompson (DMS-38), Carmick (DMS-33), and Doyle (DMS-34) moved in to assist and clear lanes for mines. De-beaching lines were attempted by Comstock (LSD-19) and Bolster (ARS-38), which also proved unsuccessful.

A U.S. Navy salvage crew aboard the Thailand Corvette HMTS Prasae, which ran aground in enemy territory on the coast of Korea. Left to right, HMC E.P. Wacham, USN; Lieutenant Junior Grade M.D. Taylor, USN; and RM2 C.K. Hayard, USN. Note, only three names were listed. 80-G-426187

Endicott rescued three Thai sailors after they were washed overboard from one of the pulling boats, but unfortunately, a fourth one drowned. Endicott’s doctor and chief corpsman also went ashore to care for casualties until they could be evacuated.

With carrier aircraft grounded due to the poor flying conditions, fire support to keep interloping Chicom and Nork troops at bay was provided by the Cleveland-class light cruiser USS Manchester (CL-83) and her companion destroyers USS English (DD-696), Borie (DD-704), Hank (DD-702), and Forrest Royal (DD-872).

Truman got a White House briefing on Prasae at least ten times during this period as part of his daily situation reports on the war.

The USS Manchester guards the grounded HMTS Prasae with destroyers and other ships while rescue efforts take place in enemy territory on shore. NARA 350892746

Two unidentified U.S. sailors unwrap blankets brought to stranded sailors from Thailand. In the background, their ship, the HMTS Prasae, can be seen where she grounded on the Korean coast during a blizzard. The Prasae was part of a United Nations operation when she ran aground. Gunfire from the USS Manchester protected the stranded sailors and rescuers from enemy troops. NARA 350898492

Early attempts at using helicopters in the rescue proved fatal.

As noted by NHHC:

On 8 January, a Sikorsky H03S1 of Helicopter Utility Squadron TWO (HU-2) embarked on the carrier USS Valley Forge, maneuvered near Prasae when a rogue wave caused the ship to roll. The helicopter’s rotors hit the mast, causing the mast to collapse and the helicopter to crash in flames, which then ignited 20mm shells, causing more damage to the ship. The crew put the fire out in under 30 minutes. Somewhat miraculously, the helicopter pilot, Lieutenant (junior grade) John W. Thornton, his aircrewman, and a salvage officer all survived the crash, but another Thai sailor drowned.

Manchester was lucky enough to have a replacement Sikorsky HO3S-1 (H-5/S-51) helicopter (“UP27” BuNo 122715) detached from Helicopter Utility Squadron 1 (HU-1) aboard USS Philippine Sea.

Nicknamed Clementine, she was piloted by the one and only Chief Aviation Structural Mechanic, ADC (Aviation Pilot), Duane Wilbur Thorin (NSN: 3165995). An enlisted pilot who joined the Navy in 1939 at age 19 and earned his silver NAP wings after finishing flight training in 1943. The blonde-haired Thorin– eighth son of Swedish emigrants to Nebraska– moved into rotary-wing billets after the war. He had already earned something of a swashbuckling reputation, shuttling out on one-man missions to rescue downed fliers in his contraption, typically while clad in his trademark non-regulation green headgear.

Clementine wasn’t much, with her 450hp R-985 Wasp Junior only enabling her to lift about 900 pounds of useful cargo (pilot included) off the ground on a full tank of gas in good weather, but she was on hand and had enough range to shuttle back and forth from Prasae to Manchester.

A Sikorsky HO3S-1 (H-5) helicopter lands on the deck of the USS Manchester, with the cruiser’s 6- and 5-inch guns bristling in an undated photograph in good weather. The helicopter is BuNo 124345 (MSN 51204), which survived the war. NARA 350898476

USS Manchester (CL-83) Sikorski HO3S helicopter, UP20 of squadron HU-1, lands on the cruiser’s after deck after a gunfire spotting mission off the Korean coast, March 1953. Note: Manchester’s wooden decking with aircraft tie-down strips and hangar cover tracks; 6″/47 triple gun turrets; 5″/38 and 3″/50 twin gun mounts. NH 92578

With the likelihood that the grounded ship could be pulled off while under fire dropping to zero, and hypothermia setting in with the survivors who were running out of supplies and battling below-zero temperatures overnight, the order went to Clementine to pull them off, typically just two or three men at a time.

On inbound flights to Prasae, Thorin and Clementine dropped off a small medical team under Doc Myers, and a security team under LT Taylor to help guard and mark the LZ for future flights. At one point, they exchanged long-distance shots with a four-man enemy patrol just over the dunes.

They also brought blankets and some hot chow.

An aerial view of the frigate from Thailand, the HMTS Prasae, that ran aground off the western coast of North Korea during a snowstorm. The image was taken from the rescue helicopter sent from the USS Manchester. Original caption: HMTS Prasae as seen from Manchester copter. UN ships are firing air bursts. NARA 350898532

A crewman from the grounded Thailand ship HMTS Prasae stands guard as the helicopter from the USS Manchester shuttles the stranded sailors to safety. NARA 350898468

A helicopter from the USS Philippine Sea, piloted by Chief Aviation Pilot D. W. Thorin, lands on the snowy beach to effect the rescue of the crew of the Thailand ship HMTS Prasae. The Prasae, which was part of a United Nations operation, grounded during a snowstorm. The rescue team was surrounded by enemy troops during the operation, but was protected by gunfire from the USS Manchester. Jan.6, 1951. NARA 350898472

Under enemy fire, unidentified troops and crew members from the USS Manchester use their ship’s helicopter to rescue crew from the HMTS Prasae, which ran aground off the coast of Korea during a blizzard. Lieutenant Taylor is in the foreground, guarding the helicopter with a (likely borrowed) M50 Madsen SMG. 350892804

Dr. Meyers of the USS Manchester attends to the wounded on the shore after the Thailand Corvette HMTS Prasae ran aground off the North Korean coast during a blizzard. All others are unidentified. NARA 350892744

Under enemy fire, unidentified troops and crew members from the run aground HMTS Prasae take shelter on the beach while they await rescue from the USS Manchester helicopter. NARA 350892780

Under enemy fire, unidentified troops and crew members from the run aground HMTS Prasae take shelter on the beach while they await rescue from the USS Manchester helicopter. NARA 350892784

Under enemy fire, troops and crew members from the run aground HMTS Prasae take shelter on the beach while they await rescue from the USS Manchester helicopter. NARA 350892762

APC (NAP) Thorin prepares to take off in his helicopter with another load of survivors from the Thailand corvette, the HMTS Prasae, which ran aground during a blinding snowstorm off the coast of Korea. Other members of the helicopter stand guard as the rescue was conducted behind enemy lines. Men guarding the rescue operation are armed with M-3 submachine guns. NH 97164

During personnel evacuations on a beach in Korea, two enemy shell bursts are visible. The USS Manchester aided in the evacuation of stranded Thai sailors from the HMTS Prasae that ran aground during a blizzard. NARA 350892750

The USS Manchester’s helicopter, nicknamed the Clementine, lands on the snow-covered beach at Kisamun Dan, Korea. A rescue mission was launched after the HMTS Prasae, a Thai Corvette, ran aground on Korea’s Eastern Coast during a blizzard. The HMTS Prasae is in the foreground. NARA 350892788

Thai sailors are stranded on the western coast of Korea after their ship, the HMTS Prasae, ran aground during a snowstorm. At a snow-covered beach, the United States Navy helicopter UP 27 arrives to rescue the sailors. NARA 350898526

An unidentified Thai sailor from the HMTS Prasae boards the rescue helicopter. The helicopter, which had been borrowed from the USS Philippine Sea after the USS Manchester’s helicopter crashed, was piloted by Chief (Aviation Pilot) D. W. Thorin, who can be seen inside the helicopter facing the camera. NARA 350898512

Meanwhile, CDR Wutthichai, the stricken ship’s skipper, directed his navigators and gunners to destroy anything that could be useful to the enemy, doused the ship with oil and placed gunpowder in various locations, and then left the ship last.

Wutthichai was likewise the final man that Clementine pulled from the beach.

The USS Manchester’s helicopter, nicknamed the Clementine, lands on the snow-covered beach at Kisamun Dan, Korea. A rescue mission was launched after the HTMS Prasae, a Thai Corvette, ran aground on Korea’s Eastern Coast during a blizzard. Original caption: With the temperature at 12 degrees below zero, the last of Commander Wutthichai’s crew are evacuated. NARA 350892786

Over the three days between 11 and 13 January, Chief Thorin and Clementine pulled 126 men from Prasae in 40 sorties, 111 Thai and 15 USN, bringing them all safely to Manchester’s little wooden helo deck.

Seventeen of the 111 evacuees from the Thailand corvette, HMTS Prasae, wear U.S. Navy-issued dungarees while aboard the USS Manchester. NARA 350892830

Of Prasae’s crew, two were killed in the grounding and drawn-out rescue under fire: Petty Officer 2nd Class Chan Muang-am and Petty Officer 2nd Class Phuan Phonsayam, both later posthumously promoted to CPO. Twenty-seven of her crew were injured, with a mixture of frostbite and shrapnel as the cause of wounds.

The unmanned and wrecked hulk of Prasae was destroyed by naval gunfire from USS English on 13 January, via 50 rounds of 5-inch common.

Those not hospitalized in Japan were soon shipped aboard Bangpakong.

Survivors of the stricken Thailand corvette HTMS Prasae board the Thailand corvette HMTS Bang Pakong, off the coast of Korea. Photograph released January 17, 1951. 80-G-426769

As for her sister Bangpakong (ex-Burnet, ex-Gondwana), she remained in Korean service until February 1952 and in Thai service until stricken in 1984.

Epilogue

With the Thai government still eager to contribute to the effort in Korea, the U.S. Navy quickly sold them two laid-up Tacoma-class patrol frigates, late of the Soviet Red Banner Pacific Fleet via Lend-Lease, the USS Glendale (PF-36) and USS Gallup (PF-47), for the princely sum of $861,940.

Transferred in October 1951 at Yokosuka, Glendale became the Thai Navy ship Tachin. Gallup became the Thai Navy ship Prasae. Along with them came five more PC-461s, two LCIs, and three surplus SC-1627-class 119-foot subchasers, these smaller vessels slated for immediate service in Thai coastal waters while the frigates remained deployed.

USS Glendale (PF-36) and USS Gallup (PF-47) fly the flags of Thailand during transfer ceremonies at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, 29 October 1951. Both ships are still wearing their U.S. Navy numbers. NH 97102

Following a workup in Japanese waters, the new Prasae and Tachin departed Sasebo on 12 January 1952 in company with sistership USS Bisbee (PF 46) on their first escort mission since their purchase by and addition to the Thailand Navy.

The new pair of frigates served for the duration of the Korean War and well into the tense shift into peace, rotating crews with fresh ones shipped in from Thailand at least twice. Both departed South Korea for their first trip home on 22 January 1956, nearly three years after the shooting had stopped! Some 2,485 Thai naval personnel served in Korean waters, with 1,679 of them receiving UN service medals. Two Thai naval personnel were also awarded U.S. Bronze stars.

In the course of Thailand’s involvement in the Korean War, the country suffered 1,273 casualties, comprising 129 killed in action (including two Navy), 1,139 wounded, and 5 missing. The country maintained a company-sized infantry force in the ROK to watch the DMZ until July 1972. They continue to contribute two officers and 13 enlisted to the more or less permanent UNC Military Armistice Commission-Secretariat (UNCMAC-S) in South Korea today.

Speaking of South Korea today, with the border shifting slightly to the line of contact in place when the armistice was signed, the cape that Praese was grounded on has been part of the ROK since 1953, and these days is often referred to as “38th Parallel Beach,” a popular surfing spot (in the summer).

Prince Wutthichai, Praese’s final skipper, returned home with his crew in March 1951, married Princess Vimolchat, and had two children. Decorated with the Order of the White Elephant in 1953, he passed just five years later, aged 43. There seems to be a story there.

Chief Thorin fully earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for his rescue efforts on the grounded Prasae, then added a Gold Star to his DFC in November 1951 while flying from the cramped deck of the cruiser USS Toledo (CA-133) to successfully pluck a downed pilot trapped some 60 miles behind the enemy’s lines. He added a second Gold Star to his DFC in January 1952 while operating from USS Rochester (CV-124) for picking up two downed pilots just offshore of Hungnam– while under small arms fire from the edge of the beach– in two separate trips.

Just six months after the rescue of Prasae’s crew, Clementine, the helicopter used so successfully, UP 27 (BuNo. 122715), went missing on a rescue mission near Kosong, Korea, with her pilot killed and crewman taken prisoner. Luckily, Chief Thorin was not at the controls that day.

Thorin’s luck ran out in February 1952 when flying a whirlybird from Rochester on a mission to rescue an injured and critically ill Skyraider pilot off Valley Forge— LT(j.g) Harry Ettenger of VC-35– who was down behind enemy lines and being harbored by anti-Communist North Korean partisans. The mission, over known enemy anti-aircraft positions near Kojo, Korea, was almost successful, but at the last minute, Thorin’s helicopter crashed due to mechanical problems. Taken prisoner along with Ettenger, he was a resident of POW Camp 2 until his release during Operation Big Switch on 2 September 1953. He earned a Silver Star for the mission (recommended for the Navy Cross), adding to his three DFCs.

Thorin made over 130 rescues in hostile territory during the Korean War, not counting those from Prasae.

Thorin retired from the Navy in 1959 as a lieutenant and passed “feet dry” in 2002, aged 82. He is buried at Chambers Cemetery, Holt County, Nebraska, Block 1, Lot 35.

Thorin was used as the basis for CPO (NAP) Mike Forney, the enlisted CSAR pilot in The Bridges at Toko-Ri by Pulitzer Prize winner James Michener. Icon Mickey Rooney portrayed him in the movie adaptation, which was filmed in Technicolor in 1954 aboard the USS Oriskany (CV-34). Real UP-coded H-5s were used, and Rooney portrayed his based-on-a-real-story character well, albeit with a green tophat and scarf rather than Thorin’s more understated green ballcap.

That’s Hollywood for you.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday 19 November 2025: Pride of the Scouting Group

Posted on November 19, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday 19 November 2025: Pride of the Scouting Group

Photographed by A. Renard of Kiel, Germany, via the Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 45198

Above we see the Roon-class armored cruiser (panzerkreuzer) SMS Yorck of the Kaiserliche Marine, passing under the famous Levensauer Hochbrücke along the Kiel Canal prior to the Great War.

She was commissioned 120 years ago this week and, a beautiful ship, had a short but tragic peacetime career and even shorter and more tragic wartime service without ever firing a shot in anger.

The Roons

In the 1890s, the German Imperial Navy moved to field several armored cruisers, initially rebuilding old (circa 1870s) ironclads with newer and more modern guns and updated engineering plants.

Then came the majestic 11,500-ton SMS Fürst Bismarck, the country’s first purpose-built armored cruiser, laid down in 1896. Built for 18 million gold marks, Fürst Bismarck was capable of 18.7 knots and carrying a main battery of four 9.4″/40s and a secondary of 12 5.9″/40s, while clad in up to 7.9 inches of armor plate. Bismarck was followed in 1898 by the smaller (and cheaper, at 16 million marks) SMS Prinz Heinrich (9,800t, 2×9.4″/40, 10x5.9-inch SK L/40s, 20 knots, 5.9-inch armor).

Then came the twin SMS Prinz Adalbert in 1900 and Friedrich Carl in 1901, which were basically a three-funneled improvement of the preceding Prinz Heinrich, while carrying a different main armament (four 8.27-inch SK L/40 C/01s rather than 2×9.4″/40s) and thinner but better armor with the secondary armament (10×5.9″/40s) housed in a central armored citadel amidships and a 21 knot speed on a 18,500shp plant.

Jane’s 1914 entry for the armored cruisers SMS Prinz Adalbert and Friedrich Carl.

Continuing that vein, the 1902-03 Naval Program ordered a pair of essentially improved Prinz Adalbert-class cruisers, dubbed initially Ersatz (more or less “replacement”) Kaiser and Ersatz Deutschland as they were replacing the old ironclad/armored cruiser conversions on the German Navy List. The differences between the new cruisers and their Adalbert-class half-sisters came in the fact that they had four funnels rather than three, with 16 boilers rather than 14 on a more powerful 20,000 shp plant.

Ersatz Kaiser/Ersatz Deutschland, future SMS Roon/SMS Yorck, concept Brassey’s Naval Annual 1906

Armament was largely the same primary (four 8.27″40s with 380 rounds) and secondary batteries (ten 5.9″/40s with 1,600 rounds), while the tertiary battery was slightly larger (14 24-pounders with 2,100 rounds vs 12 24-pounders with 1,800 rounds). Four 17.7-inch torpedo tubes were fitted below the waterline– one each in the bow and stern, and one on each side approximately at the level of the forward twin turrets– with 11 torpedoes in the magazine.

The two new cruisers, Ersatz Kaiser and Ersatz Deutschland, entered the fleet as SMS Roon and SMS Yorck, constructed eight months apart at Kaiserliche Werft, Kiel, and Blohm & Voss, Hamburg, respectively.

Jane’s 1914 entry for the armored cruisers SMS Roon and Yorck.

Brassy’s line drawing on SMS Roon and Yorck.

A 1917 ONI publication on the armament and armor of Roon.

For reference, the Germans liked the design of Roon and Yorck so much that they ordered another pair of armored cruisers in 1904 to an improved design, the larger (and 25 percent more expensive, at 20-million marks each) Scharnhorst and Gneisenau of later Maximillian Von Spee fame.

Jane’s 1914 entry for the armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. These were just bigger Roon-class cruisers with more speed and range but roughly the same armament and armor.

Following Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the Germans in 1906 ordered their last armored cruiser, the huge 15,000-ton 12x 8.4″/45 gunned SMS Blücher (which cost 28.5 million marks), then shifted gears to battlecruisers with the 21,000-ton 11-inch gunned SMS Von der Tann (36.5 million marks) in 1907.

With that…

Meet Yorck

Our subject carries the name of Johann David Ludwig Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, a Prussian feldmarschall and statesman of the early 19th century.

An ardent patriot, Yorck resented Prussia’s subservience to Napoleon and, in 1812, defied the orders of Wilhelm Friedrich III by initially refusing to join the French emperor’s great invasion of Russia. With Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, Yorck seized the opportunity for liberation and negotiated a separate peace treaty (the Convention of Tauroggen) for his Corps with Russian General Ivan Ivanovich Dibich-Zabalkansky over the Christmas holiday of 1812 without the consent of their respective monarchs. He went on to fight Napoleon for the next three years and retired from the Prussian Army in 1821, passing nine years later.

Yorck, a thorn in Napoleon’s side, later became a favorite icon of the newly unified Germany.

Laid down as Ersatz Deutschland (Baunummer 167) at the Blohm & Voss in Hamburg on 25 April 1903, the hull of the future SMS Yorck was launched into the water on a warm 14 May 1904, christened by Josephine Yorck von Wartenburg, the 45-year-old granddaughter of the famous field marshal. Speaking of field marshals, the 71-year-old Gen. Wilhelm Gustav Karl Bernhard von Hahnke, then the Oberkommando in den Marken over state functions, read the dedication to the new cruiser.

Yorck, launched. Note her ram bow

Yorck, despite being laid down eight months later, managed to be completed six months earlier than her sister Roon, commissioning on 21 November 1905, while the class leader entered service on 5 April 1906.

Yorck’s construction costs were 16,241,000 goldmarks, while Roon came in at a comparatively cheaper 15,345,000 goldmarks. Still, they both came in cheaper than the previous twins, the 16.4 million mark Prinz Adalbert and the 15.7 million mark Friedrich Carl. Roon is listed as costing £875,733 (£660,469 hull and machinery, £195,695 guns, £19,569 torpedo armament) in a British journal.

She and her sister joined the fleet’s reconnaissance force (Aufklärungsstreitkräfte), with Yorck taking over the task of flagship from Friedrich Carl. The flagship role would remain with Yorck until May 1908, then again from March 1909 to April 1910, and intermittently in 1912 and 1913. Whenever she wasn’t the direct flagship, she typically carried the recon force’s second or third commander and staff.

Yorck Mai 1910 Hansestadt Bremisches Amt Bremerhaven, Bild-Nr. S1 F 22-1

She spent the next several years in a series of fleet maneuvers and squadron cruises into the Atlantic, ranging as far as Spain and Norway.

Roon and Yorck with the Aufklärungsstreitkräfte in Puddefjorden, Bergen, Norway, between 1907 and 1911.

She not only looked good but could shoot as well. Yorck won the Emperor’s Shooting Prize (Kaiser Preis) for large cruisers in both 1908 and 1910.

Meanwhile, sister Roon, unburdened by flagship roles, even managed a sortie to escort ships to the far east and attend the 1907 Jamestown Exhibition naval parade in New York City along with the protected cruiser SMS Kaiserin Augusta.

SMS Roon 1907 Jamestown Exhibition, NYC. LOC ggbain 28287

S.178

While practicing counter-torpedo boat operations on the night of 4 March 1913, just northeast of Heligoland, Yorck inadvertently rammed the low-lying and fast-moving S.178, driving the 800-ton ship under the waves, and sending 69 men with her to the bottom. Just 15 survivors were saved through the combined efforts of fellow torpedo boat S.177, Yorck, and the battleship SMS Oldenburg.

The 242-foot S.138-class torpedoboot S.178 was cut in half by Yorck in March 1913 but was salvaged (during which one of the salvage vessels, Unterlebe, capsized in heavy seas, carrying another seven men to the bottom). Her two pieces reconstructed, she survived the Great War and was surrendered to the British, who scrapped her in Dordrecht in 1922.

Doldrums

As the Kaiser built out his shiny new High Seas Fleet and a fresh batch of battlecruisers joined it, the still young but smaller, weaker, and slower armored cruisers were put to pasture to free up their crews for reassignment. Prinz Heinrich was laid up from 1906 to 1908 and then put into limited service as a training ship. Likewise, in 1909, Friedrich Carl was withdrawn from front-line service and re-tasked as a torpedo training ship. Prinz Adalbert became a gunnery school and test ship in 1912.

Roon was laid up in September 1911 after just five years of service, while Yorck soon followed her sister and was laid up on 21 May 1913, having completed less than eight years of service. It probably didn’t help that the high-profile ramming of S.178 had occurred just ten weeks prior. Most of Yorck’s crew, including the skipper, transferred to the newly completed battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz.

Yup, that Seydlitz.

SMS-Seydlitz seeing what hell looks like at Jutland, by Carl Becker

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were only on active service in 1914 due to their overseas assignment with the East Asian Squadron, while Blucher was, well, a proto if under-gunned battlecruiser. If you ask me, it’s likely that on a long enough timeline, the Germans would have replaced von Spee’s armored cruisers with battlecruisers in the same way that the Moltke-class BC SMS Goeben was stationed in the Mediterranean from 1912 onward.

Anyhow…

War!

Yorck, photographed in 1914. Courtesy of Master Sergeant Donald L.R. Shake, USAF, 1981. NH 92713

When the lights went out across Europe in August 1914, Yorck and Roon were pulled out of reserve and rushed back into service, both attached to the III. Aufklärungsgruppe, with Roon, made the group flag.

The squadron initially operated in the Baltic Sea, then later shifted to the North Sea.

On 2 November, the 3rd Scouting Group helped cover the first offensive operation of the High Seas Fleet– the bombardment by the battlecruisers of the 1st Scouting Group of Yarmouth, the first attack on British soil in 250 years. While no casualties were suffered on either side and the Germans retired in good order, Yorck would upend that empty victory.

While wrapped in fog in the inner Jade estuary on the morning of 4 November, Yorck’s skipper, KzS Waldemar Pieper– a skilled professional officer who had signed up in 1887 as a cadet and had commanded both the armored cruisers Prinz Adalbert and Blucher before the war– had reason to believe his ship’s water supply was contaminated and ordered her to weigh anchor and proceed to Wilhelmshaven without pilots. The pilot had refused to take over the conn due to the poor visibility and the considerable risk of German defensive minefields, which were known but subject to tidal drifting.

At 0410, Yorck struck a mine, then turned away to escape the field and hit a second one, soon capsizing and turning turtle, entombing fully half of her crew. If not for the efforts of the old Siegfried-class coastal defense ship (küstenpanzerschiffen) SMS Hagen rushing out to her rescue despite the mines, the other half (the chagrined Pieper among them) would surely have succumbed to hypothermia.

SMS Yorck mined near Wilhelmshaven, on return from Yarmouth, 4th November 1914. The ship is on her side. Reichs Marine Sammlung Collection, IWM (Q 48420)

The German armored cruiser SMS Friedrich Carl was sunk by a pair of Russian mines in the Baltic Sea almost a year to the day later, in November 1915

Yorck and Friedrich Carl were in the club of over a dozen cruisers claimed by mine warfare between 1904 and 1942, including the British cruisers HMS Cassandra, Amphion, Hampshire, and Neptune; the Japanese cruisers Miyako, Saien, and Takasago; the Italian cruisers Carlo Alberto Racchia, Carlo Mirabello, and Cesare Rossarol; the Russian cruisers Boyarin, Peresvet, and Ladgoda; USS San Diego (ACR-6), the French cruiser Kléber, and the Ottoman cruiser Mecidiye.

Yorck’s sister Roon was decommissioned in Kiel on 4 February 1916 and, after being disarmed and used as a training hulk for U-boat crews, was slated for conversion to a seaplane carrier.

Roon’s planned seaplane carrier conversion which never completed. Found at Kiel after the war in poor condition, she was scrapped by 1921. Drawing by Dr Dan Saranga, Blueprints.com

Epilogue

Lost in shallow water with some elements of her wrecked hull at the time just 10 feet below the surface, between 1926 and stretching to 1983, Yorck was slowly blasted and salvaged, then later broken up in place on the seabed as a navigational hazard, finally being dredged under to effectively bury what remained.

These days, about the only relics of Yorck that endure are period postcards.

The Germans may have tried to recycle the name of our cruiser in the lead ship of the nascent Ersatz (replacement) Yorck-class of battlecruisers, whose two sisters would have, at least initially, been named Ersatz Gneisenau and Ersatz Scharnhorst. Big 38,000-ton beasts with a planned 90,000shp on tap from a suite that included 32 boilers and four geared steam turbines, the Ersatz Yorcks were a sort of Super Mackensen type that would have made 27 knots while still carrying eight 15″/45 guns (as opposed to SMS Mackensen’s eight 13.8″/45s) and as much as 10 inches of armor plate. Ersatz Yorck had her keel laid at AG Vulcan in Hamburg in July 1916, but with production resources pivoting to U-boats, she never stood a chance and was eventually abandoned and broken up on the ways after the war. Her design did reportedly prove a starting point for the Kriegsmarine’s later Scharnhorst-class battleships, however.

Drawing of proposed Ersatz Yorck-class (1916), the German Imperial Navy’s final battlecruiser design, which never saw the water.

Our Yorck’s captain’s cabin was an important stepping stone for several future German admirals.

Her first skipper, KzS Leo Jacobson, by 1918 was a vice admiral and the fortress commander of Wilhelmshaven.

Her second commander, KzS Arthur Tapken, went on to head the Navy’s intelligence section, led a scouting squadron early in the Great War from the bridge of the battlecruiser SMS Von der Tann, and ended the war as a vice admiral and the fortress commander of Kiel.

Her fourth commander, KzS Ludwig von Reuter, went on to be the ignoble final commander of the High Seas Fleet, interned at Scapa Flow, and would order it to scuttle in June 1919.

KzS Max Köthner, Yorck’s fifth skipper, was director of the torpedo department at the shipyard in Wilhelmshaven, retiring in 1919 as a rear admiral.

Our cruiser’s sixth skipper, KzS Moritz von Egidy, famously commanded the Swiss-cheesed battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz at Jutland and ended the war as commandant of the Mürwik Naval Academy.

As for her seventh and final skipper, Waldemar Pieper was court-martialed in Wilhelmshaven for the sinking of the Yorck and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress for disobeying orders and negligence. However, requested by name by Admiral Wilhelm Souchon as an artillery expert, he was paroled and seconded in February 1915 to Ottoman Turkey on probation, where he later distinguished himself to such an extent that Kaiser Willy commuted his sentence in December 1915. An Ottoman Pasha and major general, by 1916, he was the head inspector of the Turkish ordnance plants (Türk Silah Dairesi ve fabrikalari komutani) clustered around Constantinople, with 700 German experts supervising 14,000 local munitions workers. He returned to Germany in July 1917 to serve in the weapons bureau, and Pieper was later retired as a rear admiral (Konteradmiral) in 1919. He passed in early 1945, aged 73.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Sun Shines on the Commissioning of the final Indy LCS

Posted on November 17, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

The brand-spanking-new Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Pierre (LCS 38) was brought to life in a ceremony held in Panama City over the weekend in shorts and flip-flop weather, “Under the Bright Florida Sky.”

This came while the landlocked namesake city of Pierre, South Dakota, was basking at a high temperature of 45 degrees.

We’ve posted numerous images of Pierre over the past year during her fitting out at Austal in Mobile, where she was the last of 19 Indies built. Fincantieri is still building the last LCS, the 16th Freedom-class variant, USS Cleveland (LCS-31).

The fact that Pierre was commissioned at PC is telling, as the Indies are seemingly tasked as fast minesweepers, and NSWC Panama City is the Navy Research, Development, Test & Evaluation Laboratory dedicated to mine warfare. In fact, it was established in 1945 as the U.S. Navy Mine Countermeasures Station.

Three Indies– the USS Canberra (LCS 30), Santa Barbara (LCS 32), and Tulsa (LCS 16)— are currently forward-deployed to Bahrain with new MCM mission modules, replacing the legacy Avenger-class ships that have served in Task Force 55 for over 30 years

The current Pierre is the second warship to carry the name, after a 173-foot patrol boat, PC-1141, which served from 1943-58. Hopefully, the new one bests the previous namesake’s 15-year record of service.

Minehunting in style

Posted on November 6, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

The first City-class mine countermeasures vessel in active service has arrived on station, with the Belgian mine hunter Oostende (M940) pulling into Zeebrugge earlier this week.

The soon-to-be-donated Tripartite class mine hunter Lobelia (M921) met her at sea and escorted her home.

The 1980s vintage Tripartites are being replaced in Belgian, French, and Dutch service with the City-class vessels, which, as you can see above, are a huge upgrade.

The 2,800-ton, 270-foot City class carries a BAE Bofors 40mm Mk4 DP mount forward and two FN Herstal Sea deFNder remote mounts with FN M3R .50 cal heavy machine guns (one on the starboard bridge wing and the other overlooking the port stern). There are also four multipurpose mounts for GPMGs, LRADs, and water cannons for more constabulary sort of work.

The aviation deck is designed to carry and operate a pair of 500-pound UMS Skeldar V-200 rotary UAVs, also enabling vertical replenishment, personnel insertion/extraction, and HIFR via manned helicopters.

The boats carried include a 40-foot waterjet-propelled Exail Inspector 125 sonar-equipped USV mine buster and two 23-foot RHIBs.

The Skelar UAVs and Exhail Inspector USVs are depicted in use below:

In addition to a 33-man crew, they can carry another 30 transients, including divers and security teams/marines.

Compare this to the 600-ton/169-foot Tripartites, which still rely mainly on on-board sonar and surveys to dispatch clearance divers. Their armament is a 20mm gun and four MGs.

The Belgians had 10 Tripartites and have since passed seven of them on to Pakistan, France, Ukraine, and Bulgaria, with the final three set to be donated to Bulgaria in the coming months.

The Dutch had 15 Tripartites but have passed on all but the final three to Latvia, Pakistan, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. They plan to move the last trio to Bulgaria by 2028.

France had 10 original Tripartites and has decommissioned and disposed of five, with six remaining.

The plan is to replace them all with City-class vessels, with all three countries ordering six ships each.

Wouldn’t it have been great if the 14 retired/retiring 40-year-old U.S. Navy Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships had been replaced with a dedicated design more akin to this and less, well, LCS?

Pour 12 out for the ever-maligned yet everlasting Kingstons

Posted on October 16, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Over the past several years, I have made no bones about my admiration for the 12 humble yet effective Kingston-class Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels (MCDV) of the Royal Canadian Navy.

Kingston-class MCDVs HMCS Glace Bay (MM 701) and HMCS Shawinigan (MM 704)

For the bottom line of $750 million (in 1995 Canadian dollars), Ottawa bought 12 ships, including design, construction, outfitting, equipment (85 percent of Canadian origin), and 22 sets of remote training equipment for inland reserve centers.

These 181-foot ships were designed to commercial standards and intended “to conduct coastal patrols, minesweeping, law enforcement, pollution surveillance and response as well as search and rescue duties,” able to pinch-hit between these wildly diverse assignments via modular mission payloads in the same way that the littoral combat ships would later try.

Canadian Kingston-class coastal defence vessel HMCS Saskatoon MM 709 note 40mm gun forward MCDV

Manned with hybrid reserve/active crews in a model similar to the U.S. Navy’s NRF frigate program, their availability suffered, much like the Navy’s now-canceled NRF frigate program. This usually consisted of two active rates– one engineering, one electrical– and 30 or so drilling reservists per hull. Designed to operate with a crew of 24 for coastal surveillance missions with accommodation for up to 37 for mine warfare or training, the complement was housed in staterooms with no more than three souls per compartment.

With 12 ships, six were maintained on each coast in squadrons, with one or two “alert” ships fully manned and/or deployed at a time, and one or two in extended maintenance/overhaul.

Intended to have a 15-year service life, these 970-ton ships have almost doubled that. These shoestring surface combatants were pushed into spaces and places no one could have foreseen, and they have pulled off a lot– often overseas, despite their official “type” and original intention.

Northern Lights shimmer above HMCS GLACE BAY during Operation NANOOK 2020 on August 18, 2020. CPL DAVID VELDMAN, CAF PHOTO

However, all good things come to an end, and the Kingstons are slated for a long-overdue retirement this year.

The class in retrospect:

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Category Archives: mine warfare

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Warship Wednesday 19 November 2025: Pride of the Scouting Group

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S.178

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