Category Archives: Spanish american war

Civilize ’em with the…Hotchkiss

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Official caption: “A bullet-marked Hotchkiss gun of the American Army, at Malolos, Philippians, circa 1899.”

New York, N.Y. : Strohmeyer & Wyman, Publishers, 1899. LOC LC-DIG-stereo-1s48423 (digital file from original) LC-USZ62-80482 (b&w film copy neg.) https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/stereo.1s48423

Note the blue-uniformed U.S. Volunteers in the background.

The photo should be taken into account with this one, “Malolos, Philippines: Advancing on Malols – taking a Hotchkiss gun over a bridge destroyed by insurgents,” 1899. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/stereo.1s48355

The light 5-barreled 37mm Gatling style gun weighed only 1,045 pounds and could fire an 18.51-ounce shell out to 4,700 yards when at a 30-degree maximum elevation. All up, in its heavy configuration with an armored shield with carriage and limber, 300 shells, and all needed accessories, the weight was 4,510 pounds.

Note the loading via a 10-shell clip

They were most often seen in the P.I. with volunteer artillery units, in particular, the First Battalion of California Heavy Artillery, and the Utah Batteries.

Hotchkiss 37mm Revolving Cannon, 1st Battalion California Heavy Artillery, P.I.

Hotchkiss 37mm Revolving Cannon, 1st Battalion California Heavy Artillery, P.I.

As noted by the U.S. Army Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, which has one on display:

In 1879, Captain Edmund Rice took a Hotchkiss Cannon on the campaign on the Western Frontier; the first time a revolving cannon was taken into the field. The Army Hotchkiss Revolving Cannons were little used until the Philippine Insurrection (1899 – 1902) where they served admirably, mounted on field carriages, trains, and riverboats, and in fixed positions. The Hotchkiss would prove to be excessive in the waste of ammunition. By 1908, it was replaced by a conventional single-barreled cannon.

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024: One Unlucky Beauty

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024: One Unlucky Beauty

National Archives Record Group 19-LCM. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 102049

Above we see the beautiful U.S. steam yacht Nahma in all her pre-Great War finery. She had entertained Kaisers and Kings and had a strange yet underreported knack for damaging Italian warships in both times of peace and conflict.

Matching yachts for matching brothers

Ordered as Yard No. 300 from the Clydebank Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. Ltd., the fine Scottish-built Nahma was paid for in 1896 by one Mr. Robert W Goelet, son of Manhattan real estate tycoon Robert R. Goelet. A familiar design to the builder– one by George L. Watson of Glasgow– Nahma was a carbon copy of much more famous future presidential yacht Mayflower, ordered the year prior by Ogden Goelet, brother to Robert W.

As noted by the NYT in October 1897:

She is built entirely of steel, on the spar-deck principle, and has a clipper stem and a square stern. From the foremast to within 50 feet of the taffrail extends the promenade, or boat, deck, which has a length of 190 feet. The vessel is schooner rigged, each mast being in one length. She has a standing bowsprit, and in all respects her rig is most smart in appearance. She is painted white, with a green boot top, and, with her great array of portholes, her fine set of boats, including a steam launch, and her large funnels, ventilators, and awning supports, which are of metal tubes, she presents a handsome appearance.

She is subdivided into several water-tight compartments by seven bulkheads, all of which are cemented. Her dimensions are as follows:- Length on load water line, 275 feet; length between perpendiculars, 288.8 feet; and from over the figurehead to taffrail 320 feet; breadth 36.7 feet, with a depth molded of 17.7 feet. Her tonnage is 969.79 and 1,739.83, net and gross, respectively, and 1,844, according to the Thames yacht measurement.

The Nahma is equipped with electric lighting, heating, and ventilating devices, and a refrigerating machine. She is propelled by two triple expansion engines of 4,250 horsepower. On her trial trip she developed a sustained speed of 16¾ knots per hour. The yacht mounts two Hotchkiss quick-firing guns and carries a stand of carbines, and among her crew of seventy-two men is a gunner. She is commanded by Capt. Churchill, who was formerly in the Cunard service.

Yes, you read that right. As a 320-foot private yacht, she was built with a well-stocked small arms locker and carried a pair of 6-pounder QF 37mm Hotchkiss guns. More on this later.

Before the lights went out in Europe

She would sail briefly for the Winter 1897 season to the waters off New York and Newport, and early 1898 would see the new yacht back in Scottish waters for upgrades deemed needed by her owner. She was still in her builder’s yard when her sister, Mayflower, was purchased by the Navy from the estate of the late Ogden Goelet– who had passed aboard her at Cowes– and converted for use in the Spanish American War as a patrol yacht.

Speaking of the late Mr. Ogden, Robert W. Goelet passed away shortly after his brother, having only enjoyed his new yacht for a few months. He passed aboard her while in Nice in April 1899, and his body was returned to the States aboard her, the yacht’s flag at half mast, to be buried in Newport’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

While his widow, Mrs. Henrietta Louise (née Warren) Goelet, briefly considered the sale of the Nahma to Sir Thomas Lipton for £80,000, she elected instead to keep the vessel and made it her more or less permanent home for the next 13 years.

Mrs. Goelet kept Nahma underway, sailing from New England to Europe and back, where the elegant yacht was a staple of Cannes, Nice, Cowes, St. Petersburg, Christiania, and Kiel. Kaiser Wilhelm and his wife became regular guests aboard, calling on Mrs. Goelet on no less than seven occasions over the years. She also entertained King Edward and a legion of lesser nobility and both Mrs. Goelet and her skipper often received foreign orders and decorations in return. 

The vessel would typically just return to American waters for the late summer cup races off New York.

America’s Cup race, yacht Nahma 1901 LC-DIG-det-4a15306

America’s Cup race, yacht Nahma 1901, LOC

American-owned yacht Nahma. Commanded by Captain George Harvey of Wivenhoe with a Colne crew of 70. She could steam at 18 kts and carried quick-firing guns and searchlights for her voyaging in remote seas. A postcard, posted in Le Havre to Mrs. S Cranfield. Mersea Museum Collection BOXL_026_004_002. Used in The Northseamen, page 185

Steam yacht Nahma. A postcard was posted to Le Havre on 20 May 1912. Date: 20 May 1912. Image: John Leather Collection. Mersea Island Museum BOXL_026_004_003

Steam Yacht Nahma at anchor. Photo from J. Gelser, Alger. John Leather Collection. Mersea Museum Collection. ID BF69_006_013

Steam Yacht Nahma at Saint Malo. Postcard. John Leather Collection. Mersea Museum Collection. BF69_006_012

The New York Yacht Club’s steam yacht Nahma off Naples, 1908 by Italian artist Antonio de Simone

On one occasion, Nahma would run afoul due to her 6-pounders while passing to Constantinople.

From the NYT:

On April 27 [1903] Mrs. Goelet with a party of New York friends entered the Dardanelles on her yacht Nahma. The Nahma carries two six-pounders mounted forward and aft, “for saluting purposes.” When the sentinels on the Turkish fortresses caught the outlines of these guns under their tarpaulin coverings there was a rushing to and fro, signals flashed back and forth, and soon a shot plunged across the Nahma’s bow and the yacht hove to.

Mrs. Goelet had a dinner engagement in Constantinople for which she had already broken all speed ordinances and she did not like interference by Turkish officers with her plans.

The officers were polite, but firm. The Nahma was a warship, witness the six-pounders, and to such the passage was closed. Two days of delay followed. Mrs. Goelet demanded that Minister Leishman secure from the Sultan respect and proper reparation for her broken dinner engagement and a passage for the Nahma.

Although an extensively married man, Abdul Hamid is not without a sense of humor. At any rate, the Nahma, six-pounders and all, was allowed to steam on at the end of two days as a yacht and not as a warship. His Sultanic Majesty also conferred on Mrs. Goelet the Grand Cordon of the Turkish Order of the Chefakat, which was not much, after all, for a woman who had done what the powers have never been able to do with all their armaments.”

She also had a crack up with the Italian Navy, suffering a collision with the elderly (and quite immobile) ironclad Affondatore in Venice in May 1906, which had been largely laid up as a guard ship there for years. With the captain of the Nahma blamed by the Italian Admiralty, Mrs. Goelet quickly offered to pay for the damages stemming from the bloodless incident.

Italian ironclad “Affondatore” in her post-1888/1889 refit configuration. The Battle of Lissa veteran was semi-retired when Nahma brushed against her in Venice in 1906. She ended her days as a floating ammunition depot at Taranto in the 1920s.

Then, in August 1912, ailing with cancer, Mrs. Goelet went to Paris for treatment there and passed in the City of Lights that December. The Nahma passed to her only son, Robert Walton Goelet, who showed little interest in the vessel, although did bring legal action to keep from having to pay an exorbitant amount of tax on the ship.

Soon, the stately ship ended up in pier-side storage in Greenock, Scotland.

War!

With the U.S. entry into the Great War, and sister Mayflower still in service with the Navy since 1898, it was an easy decision that the U.S. Navy acquire the mothballed Nahma for the duration.

Picked up in early June for the patriotic sum of $1 per year, SECNAV “Cup of Joe” Daniels wrote VADM Sims that the ship would be placed at his disposal and a battery sent from the States to arm her while a crew of 130 assorted bluejackets sent across the Atlantic aboard the steamer SS New York to man her. Meanwhile, much of her original equipment was stripped and put into dockside storage in Glasgow. Her pennant was SP 771.

She was soon after equipped with two 5″/51 mounts, two 3″/50 mounts, and two machine guns– all drawn from USS Melville (AD-2), as well as a supply of depth charges (she would later pick up two Y-guns) and placed in commission under the command of LCDR Ernest Friedrick, (USNA 1903) on 27 August. Friedrick, who had sailed on the destroyers Lawrence, Stewart, and Hopkins as well as the battleship Arkansas, had earned his sea legs with the Great White Fleet and was well-respected. 

Manning a 5-inch gun on the USS Nahma. Copied from the U.S. Navy in the World War, Official pictures. Page 99. NH 124132

USS Nahma (SP-771) at sea, during World War I. Courtesy of John C. O’Connell. NH 50474

USS Nahma (SP-771) Photographed by Herman Whitaker while at anchor, circa 1917-1918. NH 42548

She would be inspected by no less a personage than King George V who had a habit of visiting American warships large and small in UK ports in 1917-18 and was no doubt familiar with Nahma.

King George V and Commander E. Friedrick of the US Navy on board the American armed yacht USS Nahma, in Liverpool, September 1917.

THE US NAVY IN BRITAIN, 1917-1918 (Q 54806) King George V and Commander E. Friedrick of the US Navy on board the American armed yacht USS Nahma, probably in Liverpool, September 1917. Copyright: � IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205287785

Then everything went bad.

The Second Italian Affair

While DANFS is short on her subsequent service, saying only:

Soon after fitting out and shakedown, Nahma reported to Gibraltar to join a group of U.S. vessels based there and serving as convoy escorts. With these ships, she escorted vessels in the Mediterranean, as well as between the U.K. and Gibraltar until the end of World War I.

Nahma was involved in a serious incident, again with the Italian fleet, just a month before the Armistice.

As described in a December 1934 article in Proceedings by LCDR Leonard Doughty:

On October 5, 1918, the Italian submarines 11-6 and 11-8, escorting the S.S. Bologna was approaching Gibraltar, coming from Bermuda. The convoy was five days late. There had been three submarines in company but one had become separated from the convoy in a fog, after sighting a supposed enemy submarine.

On the same date the U.S.S. Nahma, an armed yacht, was on patrol west of Gibraltar, and at 7:00 p.m. received a radio report of an enemy submarine in the vicinity. She proceeded toward the position given, and at 2:00 a.m., October 6, sighted a flash ahead, which resembled gunfire. At 2:30 a.m. the Bologna was sighted, followed by the two submarines.

On the Nahma, it was assumed that they were enemy submarines attacking the ship. Two shots, which did not hit, were fired at the leading submarine and the recognition signal challenge was made. After some delay, and after two more shots were fired, the correct answer was made to the challenge by the leading submarine.

The Nahma then approached the other submarine, the 11-6. As the yacht approached, men were seen running aft. They were going to hoist the colors, but on the Nahma, it was supposed that they were going to man the gun. One shot was fired, which hit the conning tower, killed two men, and wounded seven, of whom two died later. By this time the Nahma was convinced that the submarines were not enemy and stood by for the remainder of the night.

At about 5:00 A.M. the British torpedo boat 93 approached the scene and accidentally fired one shot toward the Nahma, which headed toward the flash but did not find the firing vessel. At 5:20 the T. B. 93 was observed and mistaken for another submarine, and two shots were fired at her by the Nahma before she was recognized.

In the morning, the Nahma escorted the submarines to Gibraltar.

As recalled by GM2c Lewis Clark, who was aboard that day:

On one of those submarine patrols, when we were off the coast of Spain, we spotted distant lights to starboard shortly after midnight. We steamed over to investigate and discovered a large vessel surrounded by submarines. We had no knowledge of friendly submarines in those waters, as we should have had were there any there, and it had been rumored that the Spanish were secretly supplying German submarines off the coast. It was only natural, therefore, for our captain to assume that we had come upon such an operation.

General Quarters was sounded, which meant that every man went to his battle station – I was sight center on the 3-inch gun on the quarter deck aft – full speed ahead was signaled, which, for us, was 22 knots, and the “recognition signal” was flashed from our bridge. Recognition signals were used to identify friendly craft. They were changed each midnight. We received a wrong recognition signal and reply, and the captain immediately gave the order to commence firing. We had the submarines in our gun sights when the order was given, and we were firing almost at point-blank range. Before it was discovered that the vessels were not German, we had blown the conning tower off one of the submarines, and did much damage to the others, and there were men in the water screaming for help.

It developed later that we had encountered five submarines and their mothership which the United States had given to Italy, and which were being taken by their Italian crews to Italy for service in the Mediterranean. There was hell to pay later in Gibraltar.

Friedrick was relieved and replaced by LCDR Harold Raynsford Stark of Sim’s staff, who had served briefly on sistership Mayflower, and would command the yacht over Halloween.

Sims would write the SECNAV on 17 October: 

As a result of a Board of Investigation made up of officers of our own Service and the British and Italian Services, the Commanding Officer of the Nahma will be tried by General Court Martial.

Incidents of this character have occurred a number of times during the war. As previously reported, British Patrol Vessels have frequently fired on their own submarines. In one case, covered by report submitted to the Department, a British destroyer attacked, and had every reason to believe that they had destroyed a submarine, which later proved to be a British submarine which succeeded in reaching port. During the summer, a British Auxiliary Cruiser sank a French armed sailing ship owing to a misunderstanding of an attempted recognition signal.

The Commanding Officer of the Nahma is known to be a very conscientious and capable young officer, and if any fault is to be ascribed to him it was probably due more to inexperience in this particular kind of warfare than anything else. It is considered that in view of the international character of the incident, a General Court Martial is probably the best step that could be taken.

Back in the war

Nahma, placed under the command of CDR Richard Philip McCullough, (USNA 1904), the former skipper of the armed yacht USS Cythera (SP 575), was dispatched to Constantinople with a relief crew for the armed yacht USS Scorpion (PY-3), arriving there on 16 December 1918, and would later carry RADM Mark L. Bristol to Beirut and Gibraltar and State Department consulate officers to Odessa.

As noted by DANFS:

Following the Armistice, Nahma remained in the Mediterranean for relief and quasi-diplomatic work. Operating in the Aegean and Black Seas she carried relief supplies to refugee areas; evacuated American nationals, non-combatants, the sick, and the wounded from civil war-torn areas of Russia and Turkey; and provided communications services between ports.

Nahma was decommissioned on 19 July 1919 and turned back over to Mr. Goelet’s agent in Glasgow.

Part of the lost generation

Post-war, the once immaculate yacht became a bootlegger, renamed Istar. Sold to Jeremiah Brown & Co Ltd, she made at least seven voyages (the first six profitable) from Glasgow to the waters off Long Island under the employ of the colorful Sir Brodrick C. D. A. Hartwell, “The Commodore of Rum Row,” crammed with Scotch on west-bound trips.

By 1927, with Hartwell bankrupt and squeezed out of the market, Istar had been converted for service as a shark-skinning vessel working the South African and Australian coasts but this was short-lived. Having gone aground at St Augustine Bay, Madagascar, she was salvaged and scuttled off Durban in March 1931.

Epilogue

While little remains of Nahma, her sister Mayflower served as a presidential yacht until 1929 then was ordered sold by President Hoover as an economic measure, and subsequently damaged by fire while tied up at the Philadelphia Navy Yard 24 January 1931.

USS Mayflower (PY- 1) off Swampscott, Mass., circa 1919-20. At left is a navy F-5L seaplane that had been placed at the president’s disposal by the Navy Dept. NH 46443

Nonetheless, she was still around on the East Coast when World War II came, and she was acquired by the Coast Guard as a gunboat (WPE‑183) and used in ASW patrols and training duties until decommissioned a second time in July 1946. She ended her days carrying Jewish refugees to Haifa in the late 1940s. Placed on the Israeli Navy’s list as the training ship INS Maoz (K 24), she was only scrapped in 1955.

As for Nahma’s trio of Navy skippers, LCDR Fredrick Ernest was no worse for wear. Cleared by a board of inquiry for the Italian submarine incident, he went on command of the NYC Navy Yard, the destroyer USS Preble (DD-345), the collier USS Jason (AC-12), and the training ship USS Utah (AG-16). He retired from the Navy after 30 years as a captain and, passing in San Diego in 1970 at age 88, is buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

LCDR Harold Raynsford “Betty” Stark, who commanded Nahma briefly over Halloween 1918, would become the 8th Chief of Naval Operations and supervise United States Naval Forces Europe during WWII. Retiring in 1946, he passed away in 1972 and was buried at Arlington.

Finally, her last skipper, CDR Richard Philip McCullough, retired as a rear admiral in 1932 after 27 years of service but was then recalled for WWII, serving as director of naval intelligence for the 12th District in San Francisco (1939-43) and on the planning board and intelligence panel for the Overseas branch Office of War Information (1943-45). He passed in 1960.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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Those wacky Army sea mines

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The beautiful and brand new 188-foot 1,300-ton U.S. Army Mine Planter No. 16, Col. George W. Ricker, at New Orleans’s Pauline Street Wharf, 14 May 1943. She arrived at the New Orleans Port of Embarkation from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, on 11 May 1943 from her builder, Marietta Manufacturing Co. She only served the Army for a year before the Navy picked her up and commissioned her as the Minesweep Gear and Repair Ship, USS Planter (ACM 2), in April 1944. Struck from the Naval Register on 23 December 1947, she was sold to commercial interests and was still in use as a fishing trawler into the 1970s. Official U.S. Army Photograph 298-1-43 via the WWII Museum.

Lost in the sauce when it comes to U.S. mine warfare in World War II is the Army’s sea mine planting efforts during the conflict.

Brainstormed by the Army as early as 1866 from experience gained against Confederate “torpedoes” in the Civil War, by 1876 an experimental defensive minefield was sown at Fort Mifflin in Pennsylvania. This led to an explosion (pun intended) in floating Army minefields during the Endicott Period of coastal defense.

By the Spanish-American War, at least 28 harbors and coastal chokepoints had Army-controlled electric submarine mines installed.

Mine 1919 Fort Pickens, outside of Pensacola. Typically 45 mines in seven groups were planted there between 1917-18

This only continued to grow and, after Army sea mines were transferred from the Corps of Engineers to the Artillery Corps, leading to the dedicated Coast Artillery Corps in 1907, the branch even kicked off an Army Mine Planter Service in 1918. At least 37 large planters, typically named after colonels and generals, were used by the AMPS during this period as well as twice as many “junior mine planters”, or “pup planters.”

Army-controlled submarine nets, mines, and shore batteries protected the entrance to San Francisco Bay May 1942 Ft. Cronkite. Of note, Fort Funston with its modern 16-inch guns, is not listed

By the time WWII came, the Coastal Artillery controlled 27 Harbor Defense Commands with minefields, at least five of them overseas in Hawaii, the Canal Zone, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Speaking of which, USAMP Col. George F.E. Harrison and USAJMP Neptune sowed Army minefields at Manila Harbor in 1941 to help block the Japanese advance. Both planters were sunk during the Luzon campaign, with Harrison earning a Navy battle star.

The 704-ton, 172-foot USAMP Col. George F.E. Harrison moored pierside at Ilollo, Panay, Philippine Islands, 2 February 1933. Sunk by Japanese dive bombers in May 1942, she was later raised and would serve as the Japanese Imperial Navy cable ship IJN Harushima, only to be sent to the bottom again, this time by American dive bombers, in 1945. U.S. Army Signal Corps photo # 331549, U.S. National Archives 111-SCA-Album-2986.

On 7 December 1941, the Army had approximately 5,000 controlled mines on hand for harbor defense and during the war would sow 7,320 (3,569 contact and 3,751 magnetic) domestically along with 1,847 mines ex-CONUS.

That doesn’t even count the no less than 12,000 air-dropped offensive mines laid by the USAAF in the Pacific during the war, which is a whole different story.

Operation Starvation. Loading aerial mines on a B-29 of the 468th Bomb Group, 24 January 1945. (NARA)

Via Navweaps: 

By 1945, the Army Air Force was devoting considerable resources to the mining role, with 80 to 100 B-29s based at Tinian being used to mine the home waters around Japan. These B-29s could carry seven 2,000 lbs. (907 kg). or twelve 1,000 lbs. (454 kg) mines. “Operation Starvation” started in March 1945 and continued until early August with 4,900 magnetic, 3,500 acoustic, 2,900 pressure, and 700 low-frequency mines being laid. These mines sank 294 ships outright, damaged another 137 beyond repair, and damaged a further 239 that could be repaired. In cargo tonnage, the total was 1.4 million tons lost or damaged which was about 75% of the shipping available in March 1945.

With the Army’s airborne minedropping capability going in 1947 to the newly established USAAF (which still maintains the little talked about skillset), and the disbandment of the Coastal Artillery branch soon after, when the defunct AMPS was fully zeroed out on paper on 22 January 1954– 70 years ago today– it closed the Big Green’s 88-year run with sea mines.

Propping up the popgun

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How about this great image of a U.S. Coast Guardsman in winter blues on an unidentified cutter alongside a stern 6-pounder 57mm deck gun circa 1916-1920s. Note the Portland Shipbuilding Company Spar Yard sign in the background, an outfit in Portland, Oregon that operated along the west bank of the Willamette River for 70 years.

USCG Historian’s Office 220211-G-G0000-032

The humble 6-pounder, of which the Navy had over 700 examples (of 13 types) on hand in 1901, was a common anti-torpedo boat gun designed in the 1880s originally by Hotchkiss then surpassed by competing designs by Driggs-Schroeder and Nordenfeldt.

They were a ready standby of the Spanish-American War era. 

USS Newark. Electrician 1/c Sullivan with one of the ship’s six-pounder guns, in 1898. NH 80783

It was rapidly replaced during and immediately after the Great War in U.S. Navy service on all but local patrol craft, minesweepers, and auxiliaries with something larger or more effective — typically 3″/23s or 3″50s– although some models with decent elevation attributes were retained for a while as “balloon busters” and for use as saluting guns. 

Nonetheless, the little gun endured with the Coast Guard.

A simple and light mount, typically less than 900 pounds without its shield installed, it did not penetrate the deck and required no electricity or hoists to move it or its handy 6-pound shells. Still, capable of being fired at rates of up to 20 shells per minute if the crew was well-drilled and, with a range of 8,700 yards, it could still bark.

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 become the COTP for New York City in the Great War. USCGH Photo 210210-G-G0000-1002

For a service that, in peacetime, only needed a popgun to fire shots across the bow of smugglers and poachers and to poke holes in floating derelicts that posed a hazard to navigation, the QF 6 remained a viable option, appearing on several cutters well into the start of WWII and cutters so equipped practiced against moving targets (at a range of 750 yards) at least twice a year. 

US Navy 6 pdr Service (left) and Target (right) ammunition via USN 1943 OP-4 Ord Manual

In the early 1940s, the large 240-foot cruising cutters Haida, Modoc, Mojave, and Tampa, as well as the smaller 165-foot Tallapoosa and Ossippee, along with the five new 327-foot Bibb (Treasury) class and 10 1920s construction 250-foot Cayuga (Lake) class cutters– some 21 ships in total– all still carried a couple of old 6-pounders in addition to their regular armament, with 55 service rounds and 110 “Navy” blanks per gun (the odd number as they were packed in 11-round wooden cases as all-up complete shells).
 

Manning a 5 gun on a Coast Guard Cutter, August 27, 1931. By 1940, the USCG had at least 19 large cutters that carried big (for the service) 5″/51s, and trained with them regularly. However, they were considered “war service” mounts only. NARA 026-g-046-014-001

This is because the more modern 3″/23s, 3″50s, and 5″/51s also carried by these ships were considered reserved for “war use” and were not to be used on normal patrols “unless circumstances of the case render such use highly advisable.” 
 
From the USCG 1938 Ordnance manual: 
 
 
In addition, the 6-pounders could be used for line throwing, more accurately and to longer distances than the standard Lyle gun (which was heavy and typically used ashore) and Trapdoor Springfields that were typically dedicated to the task, making them useful for rescues in high seas or from wrecks on reefs.

Coast Guard cutter Manning (1898-1930) preparing to shoot a tow line to a disabled schooner from her 6-pounder

USCGC Mojave. 11 May 1929. “Coast Guardsmen firing the Camden line-throwing a projectile from the 6-pounder. This line and gun are used in extremely bad weather, where the shoulder line-throwing gun is inadequate.” USCG Image. National Archives Identifier 205580631

For this, the service’s gunners mates made special “impulse” rounds, a much lighter charge that the regular Navy issue blank (which was typically used for salutes and “shots across the bow.”) The impulse round, containing 6 ounces of black powder, was sufficient to heave the line throwing projectile 300 yards or more with the gun elevated to 30 degrees. Of note, the standard Navy saluting/blank load for a 6-pounder used a 12-ounce charge of black shell powder, double the USCG impulse load. 
 

6-pounder and 3-pounder line throwing projectiles, via OP 4 (1943)

 
Using 6 pounder 57mm gun for line throwing USCG Ordnance manual 1938:
 

A reoccurring theme

Similarly, the Coast Guard continued to use the old WWII-era 5″/38 and 3″/50 guns, only retiring them in the late 1990s long after the Navy was done with them.

Last USCG 5 inch 38 being cut at RTC Yorktown 1993 or 1994

Last USCG 5 inch 38 being cut RTC Yorktown 1993 or 1994

Today the USCG is the final American user of the OTO Melera MK 75 76mm gun in U.S. service and has been since 2015.

That mount is likely to be retired in US service sometime in the 2030s when the final 270-foot Bear class cutters are put to pasture after 50 years of service.

The crew of Coast Guard Cutter Northland conducts a live firing of the MK 75 76mm weapons system while underway, on September 20, 2020, in the Atlantic Ocean. The cutter returned to its homeport of Portsmouth, Virginia, Wednesday after a 47-day patrol conducting counter-drug and migrant interdiction operations in the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. (U.S. Coast Guard courtesy photo)

One day, they will probably be the last user of the Bofors 57mm MK 110.

Army Reset, 1903 edition

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Some 120 years ago, the U.S. Army’s experience fighting in Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War, followed by overseas campaigning in the Western Pacific to pacify the Philippines, led the force to leave behind its only gently updated Frontier ways for something more modern. For example in these American Solider prints by H. Charles McBarron.

The 1898 U.S. Soldier shows the last use of the blue Army field uniform in a major U.S. war. The trend toward neutral colors had led to the adoption of a khaki tropical service uniform but few of the troops who reached Cuba were issued it. Also note the exposed cartridge Mills belt, from which hang his canvas haversack and the knife bayonet for his side-loading Krag rifle. In addition to the old “Union blue” uniform trimmed in black mohair, both the Medical Department officer and the artillery private are wearing the enameled red, white, and blue five-bastion fort badge of Headquarters, Fifth Army Corps, on their hats– an extension of the unit identification system introduced during the Civil War.

The below 1903 plate by McBarron shows the difference just a half-decade can make. Showing troops in the Philippine Islands, they are wearing khaki tropical service dress with bronze buttons. The Grab campaign hat, distinctively American, became the official head covering and was the most liked by the soldier.

In the left foreground is a first lieutenant with the gold hat cord and bronze coat of arms of the United States on his standing collar, both worn by all officers of the Army. On his coat he wears the silver shoulder bar of his rank and on his collar bronze crossed rifles indicate his arm, the infantry. The lieutenant’s breeches are laced from the calf nearly to the knee and are close fitting to go under his russet leather leggings. His waistbelt, of the same color of leather, supports his .38-caliber holstered service revolver and his saber.

The sergeant in the right foreground is in the same uniform as the lieutenant. He has an infantry blue cord on his hat and infantry blue chevrons on the sleeves of his coat despite the adoption of white as the infantry color in late 1902. Troops in or returning from the Philippines were permitted to continue using items in the old infantry blue until they were worn out and stocks were exhausted. On the sergeant’s hat can be seen the numeral and letter identifying his unit and on his collar the crossed rifles and the block letters U.S., all in bronze. In the place of the lieutenant’s leather leggings he wears khaki, canvas ones, and his belt is the blue-grey looped cartridge belt used with the .30-caliber Krag rifle.

The privates in the background are wearing the most frequently seen version of the khaki uniform without the coat—dark navy blue wool shirt, which was a holdover from pre-tropical service days. The soldier on the left is ready for field service with his blanket roll, covered by the khaki shelter half, slung over his shoulder. The soldier on the right, a sentry, carries only his rifle and wears the cartridge belt.

Of course, the Krag in 1903 was on its way out, replaced by the Mauser-based M1903 Springfield and its big M1905 bayonet, with the Mills belt to be phased out instead of the 10-pouch dual-stripper clip M1910 canvas belt that would become iconic in the Great War.

Similarly, the largely ornamental Model 1902 Army Officers’ Saber replaced the Civil War-era M1850 Staff & Field Officers Sword– resulting in the weapon no longer being suitable for campaigning– while the very capable M1911 .45 ACP would tap out the anemic Colt M1892 .38 Long revolver. 

With a few other changes, the road to the Doughboy of 1917 was clear.

Soldier with 30th DIV sniping from a trench in Belgium July 9, 1918. 

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023: Of Mustaches, Stars, and Condemned Cannons

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023: Of Mustaches, Stars, and Condemned Cannons

Photograph by J.S. Johnston, New York. Naval History and Heritage Command NH 63251

Above we see a beautiful large format photograph of the early protected cruiser, USS Newark (Cruiser No. 1, later C-1) — the first modern steel-hulled cruiser in the U.S. Fleet, in the Hudson in 1891. You can clearly see her broadside of a half dozen 6″/30 guns, the ornately adorned ram bow, the extensive array of whaleboats and gigs to include a steam launch in the water, as well as her three-masted auxiliary sailing rig. A true warship caught between the end of the canvas and iron Navy and the beginning of the one made of steel.

She would have a unique place in American naval history.

The Squadron of Evolution

The Navy’s first run of steel-hulled ships, all mounting modern rifled breech-loading naval guns, protected by at least a modicum of armor, relying on steam engineering plants as their main means of propulsion, and even lit by electric lights, started with the famed “ABCD” ships– the protected cruisers USS Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago, joined by the smaller dispatch boat USS Dolphin (later PG-24)-– all ordered from the same shipyard, John Roach & Sons of Chester, Pennsylvania.

While the ABC part of this quartet was built to fight, running 3,200 tons in the case of Atlanta and Boston and 4,500 tons for Chicago, with as much as 4 inches of armor plate and a total of eight 8-inch, 20 6-inch, and two 5-inch guns between them, Dolphin was a lot less of a bruiser. That was OK, because their demonstration unit, the so-called Squadron of Evolution, or “White Squadron” was soon augmented by three smaller 1,900-ton Palmer and Cramp-built Yorktown class gunboats including USS Bennington and USS Concord.

Although the ABCD boats and the Yorktowns were all ordered and built between 1883 and 1890, it is Newark, ordered 3 March 1885 and not delivered until 1891, that is classified by the Navy as Cruiser No. 1 as Atlanta and Boston never received “C” series hull/pennant numbers while Chicago, by a twist of fate, earned a somewhat retroactive “CA-14” only in 1920 when she was hopelessly obsolete. The follow-on protected cruisers USS Charleston, USS Baltimore, USS Philadelphia, and USS San Francisco, therefore, became C-2, C-3, C-4, and C-5 although their orders and construction roughly overlapped Newark.

The Squadron of Evolution, including Newark on the top center and right across from Atlanta. So pretty she made the poster twice! LOC 79-HPS-9-1339

The “White Squadron” or “Squadron of Evolution” was underway off the U.S. East Coast, circa 1891. Ships are, (I-R): YORKTOWN (PG-1), BOSTON (1887) CONCORD (PG-3), ATLANTA (1887), NEWARK (C-1) CHICAGO (1889) NH 47026

Anywhoo…

Meet Newark

Our subject was the first warship commissioned to honor the largest city in New Jersey (as well as towns in Delaware, New York, and Ohio).

Some 328 feet long overall (311 at the waterline) she was considered a considerable improvement on Chicago. With a displacement of just over 4,000 tons, she carried a complete protective deck that ran two inches thick amidships with three inches at the slopes as well as splinter shields for her main guns and a conning tower with three-inch armor on the sides.

USS Newark (C-1) unofficial plans, published in the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 1893. Published in the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, NH 70105.

As a sailing ship, she was rigged as a barque without royals or headgear while her main propulsion was via a set of HTE engines propelled by four coal-fired boilers, sufficient to gin up 8,500 hp and able to drive the fighting ship at a healthy 18 knots.

The immaculate USS Newark (C-1) in harbor with other warships, during the early 1890s, showing off her wide and very functional yardarms. Glass lantern slide original from the A.S. Murray Collection. NH 45473

Her ornate rounded bow, Newark shown at the New York Navy Yard, 23 March 1899. Courtesy of the Skerritt Collection, Bethlehem Steel Co. archives. NH 45475

Dynamo Room Library of Congress Photograph ID det.4a14464

USS Newark (C-1) engine room. Detroit Photographic Company, circa 1891-1912. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Lot 3000-F-10

Her primary armament was a full dozen 6″/30 Mark 3 Mod 0 breechloading guns, an upgrade from the 6″/30 Mark 1s carried by the ABCD squadron and the Yorktowns. Black powder “bag” guns, they were capable of firing 105-pound AP shells out to 18,000 yards at maximum elevation/charge, with a rate of fire of about one shell every other minute or so. 

A barefoot member of Newark’s crew poses by the breech of a 6″/30 gun, 1898. Copied from the collection of WM. D. Edwards, courtesy of Robert W. Edwards, 1974. NH 80844

USS Newark (Cruiser #1), gunners loading a 6-inch gun. Photographed by Edward H. Hart, published by Detroit Publishing Company, between 1891-1901. LC-DIG-DET-4a14471

USS Newark C-1, 6 inch gun

To zap small steam torpedo launches and small craft capable of coming in close and under her broadside’s minimum depression arc, Newark carried an array of small pieces.

This included four 57mm/40cal Hotchkiss Mk I/II 6-pounders, a quartet of 47mm/40cal 3-pounder Hotchkiss Mk Is, and two 37mm/20cal Hotchkiss Mk I revolving Gatling-style guns.

USS Newark. Electrician 1/c Sullivan with one of the ship’s six-pounder guns, in 1898. NH 80783

Newark. The ship’s Marines operating a 3-pounder gun and Gatling gun during a drill in the 1890s. Description: NH 75458

USS Newark (C-1) crew member on the forecastle, with two 37mm Hotchkiss revolving guns in 1898. Description: NH 80779

Like most naval vessels of her day, she could muster about a third of her 384-man crew who, joined with her Marine detachment, could disembark for extended landing force service ashore, equipped with rifles and field gear as a light infantry company. More on this later.

USS Newark (C-1) ship’s Marine Guard, photographed during the 1890s. Note the blue sack coats and kepis not much removed from Civil War days, and what look to be M1884 Springfield Trapdoor rifles, weapons that would remain in service even when supplanted by the Winchester M1895 Lee-Navy bolt-action repeater. For instance, six Springfield M1884 Trapdoor rifles were recovered from the wreck of the USS Maine in 1900. NH 75457

Marching order, seen here by Marines of USS Maine in 1895, would consist of Mills cartridge belts, haversacks, canteens, leg gaiters, and day packs for both the Marines and the ship’s Naval company. From the Wendell C. Neville Collection (COLL/2985) in the Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections.

USS Newark (C-1) ship’s Marines at action stations, on the poop deck, during the 1890s. Note the drummer in the center, with the ship’s wheel below. Also, note the ventilator. NH 75459

Newark, gunners with 6-inch gun and crew gathering boarding/landing gear including rifles, Mills belts, bayonets (right), and cutlasses (left) LOC LC-DIG-DET-4a14473v

Cutlass practice-1890s-aboard the early protected cruiser USS Newark (C-1). LOC photo via Shorpy colorized by Postales Navales

Then of course the ship herself was a weapon, a massive ram capable of smashing into the hull of an opponent and crashing her strengthened bow into the bulkheads of an enemy vessel.

How about that ram bow! USS Newark (C-1) In dry dock, Winter of 1898. NH 80799

And a shot of her bow from the same dry dock period, just for continuity. Note by this time her rigging had been reduced for the SpanAm war and she wears haze gray. NH 80798

Among her boats were plans for a 28-foot steam whaleboat, a 24-foot twin-masted sail cutter, two 28-foot sail cutters, a 30-foot whale gig, and two 29-foot whaleboats.

U.S. Navy protected cruiser, USS Newark (C-1), boat drill at Hampton Roads, Virginia. Detroit Photographic Company, circa 1891-1912. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Lot 3000-F-12

Another J.S. Johnston, New York image from 1891 of Newark, this time from the bow, showing her with boats alongside. NH 69195

USS Newark (C-1) hoisting in the steam launch, preparatory to going to sea, 9 August 1898. Note her dark wartime topside scheme. NH 80793

USS Newark (C-1) view on the deck, looking aft, in 1898, showing the 45-star flag and a cutter. NH 80780

Happy service

Ordered from William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia– the yard that had built Yorktown and would likewise build the cruisers Baltimore (C-3) and Philadelphia (C-4) alongside– Newark was laid down 12 June 1888, launched 19 March 1890, and commissioned on Groundhog’s Day 1891.

Her first skipper was Capt. Silas Casey Jr. (USNA 1860), a future admiral who had learned his trade during the Civil War on the blockade line aboard the famed Unadilla-class gunboats Wissahickon and Winooski. Her next eight skippers, some of whom only held command for a few months to cap a career, were all Civil War veterans– the end of an era.

This 1891 photograph via the Detroit Photographic Company shows Captain Silas Casey (USNA 1860), skipper of the cruiser USS Newark (C-1), sitting in his well-furnished stateroom with his Old English Bulldog sleeping quietly on the floor. Casey doubled down on being a dog lover as shown by his taste in art as the picture behind him is an illustration used for the “No Monkeying” brand of cigars, which depicts two bulldogs playing poker with a monkey. LOC LC-USZ62-71185 https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003656056/

Newark from her starboard bow, showing the size of her fighting tops. Halftone photo, published in “Uncle Sam’s Navy.” NH 45474

The next half-decade, until she entered ordinary for a well-deserved refit in March 1896, saw Newark showing the flag in West Indies ports then ranging to South Africa and Europe, often serving as an admiral’s flagship, and taking part in numerous international naval activities such as the 400th Anniversary of Columbus’ sailing which included port calls in Genoa (the explorer’s birthplace), towing a replica of the humble caravel Nina across the Atlantic from Spain, and attending the myriad of naval reviews in Hampton Roads and New York in 1893.

This left several great images of our cruiser.

USS Newark (C-1) photographed in 1892 at Genoa with a beautiful view of her 6″/30s and boat davits. Courtesy of Arrigo Barilli. NH 45476

USS Newark at Barcelona, 1892

Torpedo Boat USS Cushing TB-1 New York USS Newark C-1 USS Chicago

USS Newark, Detriot Photo 020641

Period photographers likewise captured some great shots of her crew that stand as absolute time capsules for the era, saved in a scrapbook from the vessel collected by William D. Edwards and via the Detroit Postcard company.

USS Newark (Cruiser # 1) Two African American members of the cruiser’s crew, 1898. The man on the left is wearing a steward’s uniform. Copied from the scrapbook of William D. Edwards, courtesy of Robert W. Edwards, 1974. NH 80782

USS Newark (C-1) Officer and crew member pose by the wheelhouse, in 1898. Copied from the scrapbook of William D. Edwards, Courtesy of Robert W. Edwards, 1974. NH 80845

USS Newark (C-1) crew members by a searchlight, in 1898. Copied from the collection of William D. Edwards, courtesy of Robert W. Edwards, 1974. NH 80843

U.S. Navy protected cruiser, USS Newark (C-1), shown: quarter-deck. Note the old Tars. Detroit Photographic Company, circa 1891-1912. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Lot 3000-F-9

U.S. Navy protected cruiser, USS Newark (C-1), shown: berthing deck. Detroit Photographic Company, circa 1891-1912. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Lot 3000-F-4

USS Newark bridge LOC LC-D4-20065

USS Newark Petty Officers Mess LC-D4-20070

War!

Following an extensive 14-month overhaul, Newark recommissioned on 23 May 1898, just weeks after the U.S. declaration of war on Spain. When she emerged, she looked much more like a 20th Century warship rather than one of the 19th, having removed her original mainmast as well as her sails and rigging to leave two short military masts topped with searchlights, and donned a heavy coat of gray paint. She was swathed in splinter nets and landed much of her ornate woodwork from below decks. 

USS Newark (C-1) view on deck, 9 August 1898, showing splinter netting rigged and a 6″/30 mount. Note that this was just after the Spanish-American war, when the cruiser was made very much ready for combat. NH 80778

USS Newark (C-1) in port, Antonio Harbor, Jamaica, 11 October 1898. Note she is in her gray warpaint with a much-reduced rigging and just two military masts. NH 80792

Her wartime skipper was Capt. Albert Smith Barker (USNA 1861), who had served in the Civil War aboard the old USS Mississippi and held command of the early battleship USS Oregon and, leaving his position on the Army-Navy Board eagerly accepted command of Newark. Her new navigator, late of the armored cruiser USS New York, was LT William F. Halsey Sr.– yes, that Halsey’s old man.

Sailing on 13 June for Key West and then Cuba, she joined the blockade on 30 June and served intermittently as the flagship of Commodore John Crittenden Watson, Commander, Eastern Fleet. Cruising in Cuban waters throughout the summer, Newark bombarded the port of Manzanillo on 12 August and on the following day accepted its surrender.

Carrying part of the First Marine Battalion with its commander, Col. Robert W. Huntington, aboard, Barker noted the sadness displayed by the Marine colonel at the sight of the white flags over Manzanillo on 13 August, saying, “As part of the contemplated plan of operations was the landing of some or all of the marines of Colonel Huntington’s command. This officer’s regret at the loss of an opportunity to win additional distinction for his corps and himself was only equaled by his careful study of the necessities of the case and his zealous entrance into the spirit of the enterprise.”

After the Battle of Santiago, she participated in the final destruction of Admiral Cervera’s fleet, bombarding the burned Spanish hulks.

USS Newark (C-1) coaling from a schooner, 1898. Though deteriorated, this photo shows an activity that was a frequent, and very dirty, reality of Spanish-American War naval operations. Copied from the collection of William D. Edwards, by courtesy of Robert W. Edwards, 1974.NH 80841

A hunting party from USS NEWARK (C-1) in the ruins of a Spanish building on Windward Point, entrance to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 3 September 1898– it looks like they are armed with M1895 Lee Navy rifles. NH 80791

With the war over, Newark was needed on the other side of the globe where the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, was ablaze.

After a short trip back to New York, Newark steamed through the Straits of Magellan to San Francisco then across the Pacific for the Philippines arriving in Cavite on 25 November 1899. By the end of the year, her landing forces were moving ashore, receiving the surrender of insurrectionists in the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, and Bataan.

Philippine Insurrection, 1899. The garrison of Aparri from the USS Newark after the Surrender. McCalla collection, presented to Library by Captain D.W. Knox, USN. (Ret) 1926. NH 123421.

Boxing the Boxers

Having had little rest since she was recommissioned in May 1898 that took her from Santiago to Bataan, the year 1900 found our cruiser and her seasoned crew still in haze gray on Asiatic Station. She pulled up anchor on 20 May while at Yokohama, bound for China to help land reinforcements to relieve the international legations under siege by the anti-foreign/anti-Christian forces of the “Society of the Righteous Harmonious Fists,” at Peking.

Just two days later, she was in the midst of the mess, arriving at the port of Tientsin and then moving against Taku and Chefoo.

Over the next 11 weeks, Newark and her crew and Marine detachment would be involved in a series of actions, battles, and sieges ranging from running dispatches and medical supplies through bandit territory to outright heavy fighting against the Chinese Imperial Army.

A joint naval force was assembled from eight European navies and placed under the command of VADM Edward Hobart Seymour, Royal Navy, with Newark’s Captain Bowman H. McCalla as the second in command. In all, the 2,100-strong force (including 112 Americans, mostly from Newark) went down in history as the Seymour Relief Expedition, which tried but failed to relieve Peking and had to withdraw back to Tientsin by train, with Peking relieved later in the summer by the successful Gaselee Expedition.

Among Newark’s crew at the time was a young midshipman, Joseph Knefler Taussig, who would go on to become a WWII Vice Admiral– one of a very few individuals who served in the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II, famously clashing with FDR. Taussig would be in good company, as, included among the British contingent were young Royal Navy officers Capt. John Jellicoe and LT David Beatty.

The cadet was seriously wounded in the leg during the Expedition. He wasn’t the only one. During the battle for the Hsiku Arsenal, Capt. McCalla, along with 25 of his force, was wounded and five were killed.

Seymour Expedition, May 1900. Officers of USS Newark (C-1) on board a ship, ascending the Pei Ho River en route to Tientsin. Present are (left-right): Midshipman C.E. Courtney, Ensign D.W. Wurtzbaugh, Captain N.H. Hall (USMC), Naval Aviation Cadet J.K. Taussig, Assistant Surgeon T.M. Lippitt, and Machinist Daniel Mullan. The McCalla Collection. Courtesy of Captain D.W. Knox. NH 45347

Those who did make it to the Legation Quarter in Peking on 31 May amounted to roughly a light company under Marine Capt. John “Handsome Jack” Myers, who, along with 20 Marines from the battleship USS Oregon also counted a force from USS Newark made up of Capt. Newt Hall and 23 Marines, five Sailors, and U.S. Navy Assistant Surgeon T.M. Lippett.

They arrived with five days rations, an M1895 Colt “potato-digger” machine gun removed from Newark along with 8,000 rounds of ammo for it, and 20,000 rounds for their Navy-Lee rifles. Leaving their kit on their ships, they only had the clothes on their back and the contents of their pockets.

Then began the famed “55 Days in Peking” that lasted from 20 June to 14 August before the Gaselee Expedition arrived and the Boxers were defeated.

One of the bluejackets from Newark during the Peking Siege was Gunner’s Mate First Class Joseph Andrew Mitchell. Born in Philadelphia in 1876, Mitchell grew up tinkering with the flotsam of the Revolutionary and Civil War and was something of a cannon fan, hence his occupation. It was to come in handy when the outnumbered Legation garrison was facing off with upwards of 20,000 besieging Boxers.

As told in an article via the Sextant:

Mitchell and the U.S. legation’s secretary Herbert Squiers had an idea: build a piece of artillery using the cylinder of a pump as the cannon barrel. They began to experiment, but then, on 7 July, a stroke of luck changed their plans. Chinese Christian refugees sheltering in the Legation Quarter discovered a cannon barrel reportedly lying in a junk shop, likely a relic from the Anglo-French expedition during the Second Opium War. Firsthand accounts record that the barrel was rifled and forged from either bronze or steel, but what Mitchell received was a “mass of rust and dirt.” He scraped and cleaned the barrel to give it “a creditable appearance,” one worthy of serving as the centerpiece for his improvised gun.

At first, the barrel was mounted to a heavy pole. When this proved unsatisfactory, the gun carriage was taken from the Italian’s 1-pounder, and the barrel was secured to the carriage with rope. Now, ammunition was needed. The Russian allies had arrived in Beijing with a chest of 3-inch shells but forgotten their gun in the city of Tianjin. When the siege began, they had thrown their shells down a well to prevent them from falling into Chinese hands. The disposed shells were hauled up, but found to be too large for the narrow barrel. Mitchell solved this problem by first removing the shells from their casings, then ramming them into the barrel. Thus, the “International Gun” was born, made of material from Russia and Italy and primarily manned by an American gunner, Joseph Mitchell. Members of the international guard also knew the weapon as “Betsey” or “the Empress Dowager.”

The “International Gun” and its crew. Gunner’s Mate Joseph Mitchell stands second from the right holding a modified Russian shell. (Photograph by Reverend Charles A. Killie. Billie Love Historical Collection and Special Collections, University of Bristol Library, http://www.hpcbristol.net/visual/bl-n033.)

GM1 Joseph Mitchell Boxer depicted during the Rebellion firing “Old International”

‘The International Gun’, an improvised cannon used during the siege of the Legation Quarter, Peking (Photograph by Reverend Charles A. Killie. Billie Love Historical Collection and Special Collections, University of Bristol Library, https://hpcbristol.net/visual/NA05-04)

Mitchell and his crew somehow kept the International Gun and its improvised shells working, moving the artillery piece from location to location within the Legation to make it seem like the garrison had more than just a single pop gun at their disposal.

Of the 56 Sailors and Marines from Oregon and Newark, seven were killed and 10 seriously wounded during the siege, including Mitchell who was shot in the arm on the last day of the action.

Of the 22 Marine and 33 Navy recipients of the Medal of Honor for the Boxer Rebellion, a whopping 35 (12 USMC and 22 USN) came from men assigned to USS Newark, including Mitchell. Keep in mind that 11 Navy ships (Brooklyn, Monocacy, Nashville, New Orleans, Newark, Solace, and Wheeling) served in Chinese waters during the Rebellion long enough for their personnel to be authorized the China Relief Expedition Medal.

It was a melting pot amalgamation of bluejackets to be sure.

Among Newark’s crew who earned the MoH were German-born Coxswain Karl Thomas, Seaman Hans Anton Hansen and Chief Machinist Carl Emil Petersen; Norwegian Gunner’s Mate Third Class Martin Torinus Torgerson, Finnish-born Seaman Axel Westermark, London-born Seaman William Seach, Sons of Eire to include Belfast-born Seaman Samuel McAllister and Landsman Joseph Killackey of County Cork, and one Boatswain’s Mate First Class Edward G. Allen who, despite his Anglicized name, had a birthplace was listed as Amsterdam, Holland in 1859, making him 41 at the time of the expedition, its “old man.”

Other Newark crewmembers with Boxer Rebellion MoHs:

  • Chief Boatswain’s Mate Joseph Clancy (age 37)
  • Chief Carpenter’s Mate William Francis Hamberger (later LCDR)
  • Oiler Frank Elmer Smith
  • Coxswain Francis Thomas Ryan
  • Coxswain John McCloy
  • Coxswain Jay P. Williams
  • Boatswain’s Mate First Class William Edward Holyoke
  • Machinist First Class Burke Hanford
  • Gunner’s Mate Second Class John Purness Chatham
  • Hospital Apprentice Robert Henry Stanley
  • Landsman James a Smith
  • Seaman George Harry Rose (later LCDR)

Then of course were Newark’s Marines who earned the MoH:

  • Gunnery Sergeant Peter Stewart
  • CPL Reuben Jasper Phillips
  • CPL Edwin Nelson Appleton (later Captain)
  • PVT William F. Zion
  • PVT France Silva
  • PVT Harry Westley Orndoff
  • PVT Henry William Heisch (formerly of Latendorf, Germany)
  • PVT Louis Rene Gaiennie
  • PVT Daniel Joseph Daly (the only enlisted Marine to have won the Medal of Honor twice, for two separate acts of gallantry)
  • PVT William Louis Carr
  • PVT James Burnes
  • Drummer John Alphonsus Murphy (aged 18)

A collection of images of some of Newark’s Marines and Sailors who earned the MoH in the Boxer Rebellion, along with “Handsome Jack” Myers (bottom right), who was played in the 1963 “55 Days at Peking” film by Charlton Heston. On the bottom left is Daly, who picked up his second MoH in Haiti in 1915

The controversial Capt. Newt Hamill Hall, head of Newark’s Marine detachment at Peking. One of only 20 men in history to earn the Marine Corps Brevet Medal, he went on to retire as a colonel and passed in 1939, aged 66. Source: Military Order of the Dragon, 1900-1911 (1912).

Back from the East

Newark sailed for home in mid-April 1901, via Hong Kong, Ceylon, and the Suez, arriving at Boston in July 1901. There, she would be modernized, landing her SpanAm War-era “bag” 6″/30 Mark 3 guns for a dozen new 6″/40 Mark 4s that used fixed shells and had easily twice the rate of fire.

She would put her gleaming white paint scheme back on for at least a half-decade and once again show the flag around the West Indies and off the coast of South America, then clock in as a training ship for the Naval Academy.

USS Newark (C-1) at the review of the North Atlantic Fleet, 1905. Note her newly installed longer 6″/40 caliber Mark 4s, which don’t have shields. Photo by The Burr McIntosh Studio. Courtesy of The Naval Historical Foundation, Rodgers Collection. NH 91219

Venezuela circa 1904. American fleet at La Guaira. The Gunboat/Cruiser at the far left is of the Denver Class (C-14/19) The other two ships, nearest center and farthest out, are two of the three Montgomery Class Gunboats/Cruisers (C-9/11). All three ships have different scroll work on their bows and based on that the nearest is the Montgomery (C-9). The other is the Detroit (C-10). The two 2-stackers on the left are Raleigh (C-8) and Cincinnati (C-7); the 2-stacker farthest away from the camera is the Newark (C-7), and the single-stacker is the Texas. In front of the Texas is the armored cruiser New York (ACR-2) (3 stacks). At right is the armored cruiser Brooklyn (ACR-3) (also with three stacks).

She spent a year on loan (May 1907-May 1908) to the New York Naval Militia and would be the floating home to the organization’s 1st Battalion.

Another good view of her 6″/40 caliber Mark 4s. “New Home Naval Reserve 1st Battalion~USS Newark Cruiser”~Enrique Muller postcard 1904

Then, returning to active service, she was used as a station ship at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay until 1912.

By that time, although she was just 21 years old, the concept of an 18-knot cruiser on the cusp of the Great War was ludicrous and she was marked for decommissioning.

Stricken from the Navy List in June 1913 she served as a Public Health Service quarantine hulk at Providence, Rhode Island, and temporarily as a naval hospital annex there until 1926 when she was disposed of, sold for her value as scrap on 7 September, some 97 years ago this week.

Epilogue

Across her career from February 1891 to June 1912, Newark had 21 skippers, all Annapolis men. No less than seven went on to wear admiral’s stars.

Some of her Mark 4 6″/30s, removed in 1913, were no doubt used to arm merchant ships against U-boats in the Great War.

Newark is well remembered in period artwork from her era, some of it breathtaking.

“Peace” painting by Walter L. Dean, published in “Harper ‘s Weekly”‘ circa 1893. It shows the “White Squadron” in Boston Harbor, during the early 1890s. The ship in the center is the USS Chicago. USS Newark is at left and USS Atlanta is at right. This painting is now in the U.S. Capitol. NH 95137

“U.S.S. Newark, off Santiago Bay, Cuba, 1898, Spanish American War, “1900, Watercolor and gouache on paper. Artist: Worden Wood (American, 1880–1943). Yale University collection. Accession 1941.228

USS Miantonomah and USS Newark at target practice. Watercolor by Fred S. Cozzens, 1892. Lithographed by Armstrong & Co. Copied from “Our Navy- Its Growth and Achievements,” copyright 1897. NH 337

Lithograph of USS Newark with her canvas aloft and electric running lights glowing, 1890.

GM1 Mitchell, who later retired from the Navy as a lieutenant, passed in 1925 and is buried at St. Paul’s Catholic Cemetery in Portsmouth, Virginia.

His work at Peking was commemorated in the DC war comic, “Our Fighting Forces” # 135, Feb. 1972, by Norman Maurer.

As for Mitchell’s International Gun (also known as ‘Old Betsy’, ‘Boxer Bill’, ‘Old Crock’ and the ‘Empress Dowager’), used during the siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking, the cannon was carefully escorted back to the States after the rebellion and has been in storage at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum for decades.

The International Gun barrel is in storage at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum. 230614-N-NH164-005

An icon of “Devil Dog” history right up there with Chesty Puller, Sergent Major Dan Daly’s Medals of Honor, including the one earned at Peking while a part of Newark’s Marine det, are in the National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico.

Daly is also attributed with saying, “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” during the Battle of Belleau Wood in WWI.

For more about the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps in the Boxer Rebellion, please check out Emily Abdow’s new work, “The Boxer Rebellion: Bluejackets and Marines in China, 1900–1901,” at the NHHC in PDF format.

As for the name “Newark” despite the Navy’s best efforts, it just hasn’t been done justice ever since.

During the Great War, a commercial tug by the name was taken into service for the duration for work as a minesweeper patrol craft (S. P. 266) and retained her peacetime moniker. A planned Cleveland-class light cruiser (CL-88) was canceled in 1940 while a second of the same class that was to carry the name (CL-100) was converted during construction to the Independence-class light aircraft carrier USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). Finally, another planned USS Newark (CL-108), a Fargo-class light cruiser was canceled on 12 August 1945 when 67.8 percent completed.

The hulk of what was to be the USS Newark (CL-108) was launched on 14 December 1945, without a name but with her hull number stenciled in, for use in underwater explosion tests, then sold on 2 April 1949 for scrapping.

Today, with the final Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers in active service slated to decommission sometime in 2027, and no more “C” hull numbers inbound, the line started with Newark in 1888 is set to close after a glorious 139 years.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

125 Years Ago: The Spanish American War Halts

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Spain declared war on the United States on 23 April 1898– after a pretty intolerable ultimatum from Washington that included a call for 125,000 volunteers and orders for a naval blockade of Cuba– and the U.S. Congress eagerly reciprocated and voted to go to war against Spain two days later.

“The man behind the gun will settle this war,” Puck cover, published by Keppler & Schwarzmann, 1898 July 13. LOC LC-DIG-ppmsca-28717

The future Secretary of State John Hay described the ensuing conflict as a “splendid little war” and for good reason, as it was a fairly lopsided string of victories (with Spanish wins at Tayacoba, Manzanillo, and Mani-Mani forgotten to history) and, after much bloodletting, a cease-fire was announced on 12 August, closing the very modern ten-week war fought across the Caribbean and the Pacific.

While the Navy folded several captured Spanish ships into the U.S. fleet— some of which remained in service until the 1950s!— other more enduring relics and monuments dot the country.

One gun, an M1860 Trubia 6.3-inch MLR that sat at the U.S. Naval Magazine at Subic until it closed in 1992, was subsequently removed by Seabees and brought to Gulfport, then donated to the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby in 2006, where it remains today. 

The circa 1862 M1860 Trubia gun, formerly a gate guard at the U.S. Navy Magazine, Subic Bay, now at Camp Shelby.

How it looked back prior to 1992

Nowhere has more SpanAm War markers and monuments than Arlington.

These include the USS Maine Mast Memorial (Section 24), the Spanish-American War Memorial (Section 22), the Spanish-American War Nurses Memorial (Section 21), the Rough Riders Monument (Section 22), and the Buffalo Soldiers Memorial (Section 22) as well as hundreds of graves of servicemembers who served during the conflict.

Warship Wednesday, July 12, 2023: Mr. Gallatin’s Shallow Water Angel

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 12, 2023: Mr. Gallatin’s Shallow Water Angel

Halftone photo from “War in Cuba,” 1898. Official U.S. Navy Photograph. NH 191

Above we see the fine Harlan & Hollingsworth-built schooner-rigged steam yacht Almy, with her summer of 1898 warpaint on, as the gunboat USS Eagle during the Spanish-American War. Late of the New York Yacht Club and rushed into naval service, she won what would turn out to be an unexpected victory over the much larger and better-armed Compañía Trasatlántica Española (CTE) steamer Santo Domingo some 125 years ago today.

Fine lines and good bones

In addition to making steam engines and railcars, Wilmington’s Harlan & Hollingsworth were one of the earliest iron shipbuilders. Constructing 347 hulls between 1844 and 1904 when they were acquired by Bethlehem Steel, besides their bread and butter fare like barges, ferries, and tugs, they also won a few Navy contracts (the monitors USS Patapsco, Napa, Saugus, and Amphitrite; the sloop USS Ranger, destroyers USS Hopkins and Hull, and torpedo boat USS Stringham).

Starting in the 1870s, they began a string of more than 30 fine hermaphrodite steam yachts including Dr. William Seward Webb’s Elfrida, William Astor’s Nourmahal, H W Putnam’s Ariadne, W. K. Vanderbilt’s Alva, Cass Canfield’s magnificent Sea Fox, Florida shipping magnate H. M. Flagler’s Alicia, and William DuPont’s Au Revoir.

Another of these yachts was contracted from H&H by New York attorney Frederick Gallatin. A resident of 650 Fifth Avenue (now a 36-story office tower adjacent to Rockefeller Center), he was a grandson of early Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin and from old Hamptons money. Married to Almy Goelet Gerry (daughter of Tammany Hall “Commodore” Elbridge Thomas Gerry, with the title coming as head of the NYC Yacht Club) it was only logical that Gallatin would order a yacht from H&H named for Almy.

Hull No. 256 was 177 feet long overall with a 24-foot beam, she had a nice stiletto-like 7.5:1 length-to-beam ratio and had a draft of just 7 feet with a 14-foot depth of hold. Powered by a single-ended cylindrical boiler pushing a T.3 Cy (18″,23″ & 42-33″) steam engine with a nominal 101 NHP (850ihp) venting through a single stack, she had an auxiliary two-mast sail rig and was good for a stately 12 knots although on her trials she made 15.5 knots. Coal stowage was 85 tons.

View of the engine room, of USS Eagle, built as yacht Almy, at Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. 31 August 1916. Note the builder’s plaque on the bulkhead and disassembled engine parts on the deck. NH 54333

Steel-hulled with a 364 GRT displacement, she carried electrical lighting in every compartment as well as topside and was reportedly very well-appointed. Her normal crew, as a yacht, was four officers and 20 mariners.

Delivered to Gallatin in August 1890– just in time to catch the end of “the season”– the New York Times mentioned Almy in its yachting news columns more than a dozen times in the next eight years including one mention in 1895 of an epic blue fishing trip to Plum Gut where “he landed some of the finest fish captured this season.”

Typically, Gallatin would ply her during the summer and, every October, send her back down to winter at the builder’s yard where she would be drydocked and freshly painted every spring, ready to do it all again.

Then came war

As part of the general rush to avenge the lost USS Maine on 15 February, the scions of the NY Yacht Club soon offered up their yachts to be converted to fast dispatch boats and scouts. Ultimately, the Navy bought no less than 28 large yachts, including 13 that topped 400 tons, in addition to almost 70 other auxiliaries for support duties to the fleet.

Several yachts took part in fights with Spanish forces including three, USS Gloucester, Hist, and Vixen, which were present during the Battle of Santiago. Among the former NYYC H&H-built yachts that went to the Navy for the war with Spain were Flagler’s Alicia (renamed USS Hornet after purchase for $117,500) and Dr. Webb’s Elfrida (which was taken in service as USS Elfrida for $50,000).

The 28 yachts converted to armed auxiliaries in 1898. Via The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, click to big up.

While negotiations continued with a Navy purchasing agent, Gallatin allowed Almy to go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 26 March to begin her conversion to an armed picket ship. Eventually, he let Almy go for $110,000 on 2 April 1898 and the Navy renamed her USS Eagle, the fourth such vessel to carry that name.

Given a coat of dark paint and armed with a quartet of 6-pounder 57mm deck guns (two forward, two aft) and two Colt machine guns forward of the deck house, her early admission to BNY allowed her to be commissioned three days later under the command of LT William Henry Hudson Southerland (USNA 1872).

Other changes from her civilian life, as detailed by The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, included:

  • Magazines for supplying ammunition to the above battery were built under berth deck, just forward of the fireroom bulkhead, with ammunition cranes to the hatches, directly over.
  • Steel plating 7/8 inch thick and 8 feet wide was worked on outside of the vessel for the length of the engine and boiler space.
  • Her foremast was cut down and made a signal mast, while the mainmast and fittings were entirely removed.
  • The ornate dining room was cleaned out and fitted up as crew space while extensive wood and brass works were removed.
  • The vessel was drydocked, cleaned, and painted throughout. All plumbing, drainage system, and auxiliaries were overhauled and put in order. The entire exterior of the vessel, including spars and metal deck fittings, was thickly painted a “lead color.”

She carried 75 men to war, drawn largely from the Naval Militia, when she left New York on 17 April headed for duty with the North Atlantic Squadron on blockade and dispatch duty in Cuban waters. She was at sea when war was declared on 25 April.

By 28 April, Eagle, along with the gunboat USS Nashville and the Montgomery-class unprotected cruiser USS Marblehead, established a blockade off Cienfuegos. The next morning, Nashville seized the Spanish steamer Argonauta which had Col. Corijo of the Third Cavalry Regiment (Regimiento de Caballería “Montesa” N.º 3) and 19 men of its headquarters troop aboard. This sparked a 25-minute naval gunfire duel between Eagle and Montgomery versus three Spanish torpedo boats coming out of the river to contest the affair under cover from a shore battery.

Southerland reported to RADM William T. Sampson that Eagle fired 59 rounds of No.4 shell in the engagement and suffered no casualties, although, ” Two of the enemies shot passed close over this vessel, another close astern, and another within a few feet of the bowsprit.”

On 29 June, Eagle shelled the Spanish battery at Rio Honda, showing that, while her little six-pounders were small, they could still breathe fire.

On 5 July, while Eagle was on the blockading route in the vicinity of the Isle of Pines, she sighted the provision-laden Spanish schooner Gallito five miles to the South and immediately gave chase.

As detailed by James Otis in “The Boys of ’98”:

The schooner ran in until about a quarter of a mile from the shore, when she dropped her anchor, and those aboard slipped over her side and swam ashore. Ensign J. H. Roys and a crew of eight men from the Eagle were sent in a small boat to board the schooner. They found her deserted, and while examining her were fired upon by her crew from the beach. Several rifle shots went through the schooner’s sails, but no one was injured. The Eagle drew closer in and sent half a dozen shots toward the beach from her 6-pounders, whereupon the Spaniards disappeared. The Gallito was taken into Key West.

A week later, on 12 July, Eagle came across her biggest prize yet. The Govan-built iron-hulled CTE screw steamer Santo Domingo, some 344 feet in length. Formerly the D. Currie & Co’s Dublin Castle (which carried British troops during the Zulu War), she had been sold in 1883 to Spanish interests and by 1886 was sailing for CTE on a regular Havana to New York service.

Santo Domingo

Otis describes the event:

The auxiliary gunboat Eagle sighted the Spanish steamer Santo Domingo, fifty-five hundred tons, aground near the Cuban coast, off Cape Francis, and opened fire with her 6-pounders, sending seventy shots at her, nearly all of which took effect.

While this was going on, another steamer came out of the bay and took off the officers and crew of the Santo Domingo. When the men from the Eagle boarded the latter, they found that she carried two 5-inch and two 12-pounder guns, the latter being loaded and her magazines open. The steamer had been drawing twenty-four feet of water and had gone aground in twenty feet.

The men from the Eagle decided that the steamer could not be floated, and she was set on fire after fifty head of cattle, which were on board, had been shot.

The Santo Domingo carried a large cargo of grain, corn, etc. While the steamer was burning, the vessel which had previously taken off the crew emerged from the bay and tried to get off some of the cargo, but failed. The Spanish steamer burned for three days and was totally destroyed.

It made big news back home.

On 30 July, Eagle supported the gunboat USS Bancroft with the seizure (twice) of a small Spanish schooner in Sigunea Bay. I say twice because, once taken by two rifle-armed sailors from Bancroft’s steam launch and tied near the wreckage of Santo Domingo devoid of crew, the Spanish promptly sailed out in two small boats to reclaim her, an event that ended with Eagle and Bancroft, by this time joined by the gunboat USS Maple, in a chase and possession of all three small enemy vessels.

Hostilities ceased on 13 August, capping the 16-week conflict. 

Continued peacetime service

Post-war, Eagle was painted white, two of her four 6-pounders landed, and she was retained for survey work, a role she was suited for with her extremely shallow 7-foot draft. She then spent much of the next two decades working to compile new charts and corrected existing ones for the waters surrounding Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti– all central to American interests. In this task, she typically had a team of civilian engineers and surveyors aboard.

USS Eagle (1898) at anchor off Norfolk, VA. Jan. 19, 1899. UA 461.33 Henry Bundy Collection

As detailed by DANFS:

Troubled conditions throughout the Caribbean often interrupted Eagle’s surveying duty and she gave varied service in protecting American interests.

She patrolled off Haiti in January and February 1908 and again in November and December and off Nicaragua in December 1909.

In June 1912 she transported Marines to Santiago de Cuba and Siboney to protect American lives and property during a rebellion in Cuba and continued to investigate conditions and serve as base ship for the Marines until 1914.

She also had gunboat duty with a cruiser squadron during the Haiti operation of July 1915 to March 1916 and was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for her creditable performance of widely varied duty. 

She then headed back home for a much-needed dry docking and overhaul.

In dry dock at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. in September 1916. Note bt this time she had her second mast reinstalled. NH 54334

Then came another war

Eagle as she appeared in early 1917. NH 64949

Once America entered the Great War, Eagle returned to Cuban waters as part of the American Patrol Detachment, Atlantic Fleet, and throughout 1917 and 1918 was continually on patrol off Cuba and the southern coast of the U.S. This was while the Ford-built “Eagle boats” were being cranked out in Detroit.

Eagle in Havana Harbor, Cuba, October 1917 NH 54335

At one point, Eagle was detailed to protect an American-owned sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in early 1917, and did so by putting ashore a modest landing force including hauling one of the ship’s 6-pounders and machine guns ashore– half her armament. It was thought the mill would be an easy target for a German U-boat. A machinist’s mate among the crew, John G. Krieger, had a small portable camera and captured a great array of snapshots during this period.

Men from the Eagle with a mail bag and flag, at Manati, Cuba, in 1917, when the ship’s crew was protecting a local sugar mill. Note the sailors’ crackerjacks are whites that have been “tanned” via the use of coffee grounds. The officer is Ensign Hubert Esterly Paddock, who was with Eagle as Surveying Officer. The donor comments that Paddock surveyed with a motorboat and took regular watches at sea. Of note, Paddock would go on to command the destroyer tender USS Dobbin (AD 3) in WWII and retire post-war, passing in 1980, one of the last U.S. Navy officers left from the Great War. Photographed by John G. Krieger. NH 64955

Mounted Guard furnished by USS Eagle to protect a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba in 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Note the motley uniforms and M1903 Springfields. The officer is the ship’s XO, LT (JG) Jerome A. Lee, a skilled electrician who had served on Arctic expeditions before his time on Eagle and would continue to serve through WWII. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64957

Ford Automobile armed with a Colt M1895 “potato digger” machine gun complete with AAA shoulder rests, staffed by members of the Eagle’s crew, who were guarding a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64958

Eagle crew members with machine gun-equipped “Gas Car” railway work wagon, assigned to the protection of a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in 1917. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger and donated by him in 1966-67. NH 64959

A six-pounder gun mounted in a tower at Manati, Cuba, in 1917 by Eagle’s crew. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64960

Her 1916-17 skipper, LT Henry Kent Hewitt (USNA 1906), seen ashore on service in Cuba with Eagle’s landing party and on the bridge of his gunboat. He would go on to earn a Navy Cross commanding the destroyer USS Cummings escorting Atlantic convoys in 1918 and command the amphibious landing forces for the Torch, Husky, and Dragoon Landings in WWII. After chairing a post-war Pearl Harbor investigation, he would retire as a full admiral. The Spruance class destroyer USS Hewitt (DD-966) was named in his honor, christened at Pascagoula by his daughters. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64953/64952

The entire landing party, about 40 strong– half the crew– posed for Krieger. NH 64956

Eagle in the Ozama River, Santo Domingo, in July 1917. U.S. Navy Coal Barges Nos. 300 and 301 are in the foreground. NH 64948

Post-war, with that Navy no longer needing a 30-year-old converted yacht with a pair of 6-pounders, Eagle was detached from her southern climes and ordered to Portsmouth Navy Yard in April 1919 to pay off, being decommissioned there on 23 May 1919.

Epilogue

Disarmed and sold by the Navy on 3 January 1920, the former pride of the NYC Yacht Club soon appeared as the tramp coaster Reina Victoria owned by one M.F. Kafailovich, sailing out of Santiago de Cuba.

She was listed in Lloyds as such from 1921 to 1927 and then disappeared.

Her final fate is not known.

As far as relics from Eagle, I can’t find any that exist other than the pennant and ensign of the Santo Domingo which were installed among the 600 banners installed in the United States Navy Trophy Flag Collection in 1913.

Gallatin? His dear Almy passed in 1917 and their $7 million estate was subsequently divided among their six adult children. After this, he withdrew to the Hotel Plaza where he passed in 1927, aged 86. His NYT obit memorialized him by saying “he was well known as a yachtsman.”

Eagle’s Span-Am War skipper, LT William Henry Hudson Southerland, would go on to serve as hydrographer of the Navy from 1901 to 1904, commanding the gunboat USS Yankee as well as the battleship New Jersey (BB-16), taking part in the Great White Fleet’s circumnavigation. Appointed rear admiral in 1910, he later became commander of the Pacific Fleet and was the final Civil War naval veteran (he was a 12-year-old powder monkey in 1865 before becoming a naval apprentice and attending Annapolis) still in active service.

Captain William H. H. Southerland, USN. A circa 1907 photograph was taken at the time he served as Commanding Officer of New Jersey (BB-16). NH 45029

RADM Southerland retired in early 1914 after 49 years of service, just missing the Great War, and passed in 1933. The Allen M. Sumner– class destroyer USS Southerland (DD-743) was named in his honor.

Curiously, other than a WWII Q-ship, USS Eagle (AM-132), which was quickly renamed USS Captor during her construction, the Navy has not elected to use further use the name USS Eagle.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Snapshots from the battle, 125 Years Ago

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The naval Battle of Santiago/Combate en Santiago de Cuba, on 3 July 1898, pitting the five battleships, two armored cruisers, and two armed yachts of Commodore Winfield Scott Schley and RADM William T. Sampson against the bottled-up Spanish fleet of Almirante Pascual Cervera y Topete– the latter with a much smaller force of just four armored cruisers and two destroyers– would normally just be remembered in maritime art such as this:

Battle of Santiago, Cuba, July 3, 1898. Painting by Dr. Alfonso Saenz, a Spanish Naval Surgeon and Naval Artist. Signed and dated by the artist, 1899. Courtesy of Army-Navy Club of Washington. Via the National Archives.

And this.

Battle of Santiago, 3 July 1898. Caption: “The last Spanish Torpedo Boat leaving Santiago Harbor,” during the battle. Colored Lithograph published in “Deeds of Valor,” Vol. II, p34, by the Perrien-Keydel Co., Detroit, 1907. NH 79912-KN

Battle of Santiago July 1898 Texas Maria Teresa Cristobal Colon Oqundo Oregon SpanAm War by Henry Reuterdahl

However, the widespread availability of inexpensive personal cameras meant there were a number of snapshots captured during the battle itself– one of the first sea clashes so documented.

This was especially true among the tech-savvy young Annapolis cadets rushed to service aboard the battleships USS Oregon and USS Iowa.

Naval Cadet and future Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (center) and Captain Charles Edgar Clark (right) on board USS Oregon (Battleship # 3) during the action. Photograph by Hart. Copied from the Journal of Naval Cadet R.R. Miller, USN, 1898. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 1757

Naval Cadets Luther M. Overstreet and Henry Norman Jenson aboard the USS Oregon (BB-3). Caption: At Santiago, July 3, 1898, during the Spanish-American War. From Journal of Naval Cadet C.R. Miller, USN, 1898. NH 2191

Captain Charles Edgar Clark, Cadet Luther Martin Overstreet, Haight (Sailor otherwise unidentified), and Cadet Mark St. Clair Ellis. Caption: Aboard the USS Oregon (BB-3) after the Battle of Santiago, Cuba, July 1898. Spanish-American War. From Journal of Naval Cadet C.R. Miller, USN, 1898. NH 2195

Spanish-American War, 1898. Lieutenant Commander J.K. Cogswell wig-wagging to Battleship “Your Shots Are Falling Short” during the Battle of Santiago, Cuba, July 3, 1898, aboard the USS Oregon (BB-3). From Journal of Naval Cadet C.R. Miller, USN. 1898. NH 2197

Spanish-American War, 1898. Captain Francis William Dickins and Lieutenant Austin Rockwell Davis (later KIA in the Boxer Rebellion), United States Marine Corps, on deck during the Battle of Santiago, in July 1898. From Journal of Naval Cadet C.R. Miller, USN, 1898. NH 2198

Battle of Santiago, 3 July 1898. Lieutenant (later Admiral) Edward W. Eberle on board USS Oregon (BB-3), during a lull in the battle. Photograph from the journal of Naval Cadet C.R. Miller, USN. NH 2186

Crew of the USS Oregon (BB-3) Caption: Cheering the hauling down of the colors of the “Cristobol Colon” (a Spanish auxiliary armored cruise) during the Battle of Santiago, 3 July 1898. NH 1110

Battle of Santiago, 3 July 1898.Watching the battle from the deck of USS Iowa (Battleship # 4). Note the volume of dense gun smoke around the ship in the left center. Copied from the Journal of Naval Cadet Cyrus R. Miller. NH 1132

Of course, the American joviality was largely due to the fact they only suffered one death and one wounded as casualties in the sea battle and more than carried the day. A naval layup, so to speak.

On the other side, where some 1,800 Spaniards died, the response was probably less enthusiastic.

Warship Wednesday, May 3, 2023: Where Dewey and Halsey Intersect

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, May 3, 2023: Where Dewey and Halsey Intersect

Via the estate of Lieutenant C.J. Dutreaux, U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. WHI.2014.21

Above we see the splinter-riddled and abandoned Spanish Navy Velasco-class unprotected cruiser (crucero desprotegido) Don Juan de Austria as she appeared some 105 years ago this week, her hull on the bottom of Manila Bay, the first week of May 1898. Lost on the same day with two of her sisters of the “Escuadra Negra,” she would go on to serve a further two decades, albeit under a different flag.

The Velasco class

Built in three Spanish yards (La Carraca, Cartagena, and Ferrol) as well as at the Thames Iron Works in Blackwall, these very slight cruisers were meant for overseas colonial service and diplomatic representation in Spain’s far-flung global territories, not for combat against the armored fleets of modern states. Ridiculously small vessels by any measure, they ran just 210 feet overall with a 1,100-ton displacement. However, they could float in just two fathoms, which was important for their taskings.

Beautiful three-masted iron-hulled barque-rigged steamers with a bowsprit, they carried a quartet of British Humphrys cylindrical boilers to feed on a pair of horizontal compound steam engines that could turn a centerline screw for speeds up to 15 knots, although they typically only made about 12-13 in practice.

The eight-ship class included Velasco, Gravina, Cristóbal Colón, Isabel II, Don Antonio de Ulloa, Don Juan de Austria, and Infanta Isabel, all traditional Spanish naval heroes and regal names.

Only the first two, Velasco and Gravina, carried their maximum armament of a trio of British-made Armstrong M1881 BL 6-inch guns and two smaller 70mm/12cal Gonzalez Hontorias.

Cruiser Gravinia, Spanish Velasco class. The period illustration shows her sailing rig

The six follow-on vessels would carry a more homogeneous four-gun battery of 4.74-inch/35 cal M1883 Hontorias in single shielded mounts amidships, augmented by four five-barreled 37mm Hotchkiss anti-torpedo boat gatling guns, another quartet of 3-pounder Nordenfelts, and two 14.2 inch Schwartzkopff torpedo tubes along the beam.

Period line drawing of Conde de Venadito, note the two broadside sponsons supporting her 4.7-inch guns

The four 12-cm. B. L. Hontoria M1883s on the last six cruisers of the class had a range of 10,500 meters but were slow to reload. Here, is a blistered example seen on the Spanish Cruiser Isla de Cuba.

Our subject, named for the 16th-century Bavarian-born illegitimate son of King Charles I of Spain who went on to become a noted general and diplomat, was laid down at the Arsenal del Cartagena in 1883 and completed in 1889.

Constructed and delivered between 1879 and 1891, they saw much overseas service, with sister Infanta Isabel— the first metal-hulled warship built in Spain– especially notable for her appearance in American waters during the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World.

Infanta Isabel in New York. (1893), Note the great view of her guns and masts

Infanta Isabel at the International Columbian Naval Review in New York in April 1893. Description: Courtesy of Ted Stone, 1981.NH 92029

Infanta Isabel in New York 1893

Spanish Velasco-class Unprotected Cruiser Infanta Isabel towing Nao Santa María out of Havana April 1893

Another, Conde de Venadito, would later transport the remains of Christopher Columbus from Havana to Seville at around the same time.

Cruisers Sánchez Barcaíztegui and Conde de Venadito, Havana, 1895

Spanish Cruiser of the Infanta Isabel Class photographed in U.S. waters, likely either Conde de Venadito or Infanta Isabel, with the river steamer Angler in the background, circa the 1880s or 1890s. NH 46866

As noted by the above images, the class typically carried a gleaming white scheme, which led to sisters assigned to the Philippines who carried more practical, black-painted hulled derided as “the Black Squadron.”

Sadly, they would also prove extremely unlucky to their crews. The English-built Gravina would be wrecked in a typhoon while in Philippines waters in 1884 just three years after she was completed. Meanwhile, the Carraca-constructed Cristóbal Colón ran aground in the Los Colorados shoal near Mantua Pinar del Río Cuba in 1895 then was destroyed by a hurricane before she could be pulled free.

Some saw extensive combat.

For instance, Conde de Venadito provided naval gunfire support during the Margallo War against the Rif in Morocco in 1893. Ulloa was continually active against Philippine insurgents in Mindanao in 1891 then again in 1896-97 in the Tagalog Revolt. Similarly, Velasco would unleash her guns on insurgents in Manila in 1896 and in Bacoor, Vinacayan, Cavite, Viejo, and Noveleta the following year.

Others fought Cuban rebels and those trying to smuggle munitions to them from time to time prior to 1898.

This brings us to…

The Crucible of the Spanish-American War

While fine for service as station ships in remote colonial backwaters, a floating sign to the locals that Spain’s enduring empire still had a modicum of prestige remaining, they just couldn’t slug it out with other modern warships of any size. Of the eight Velascos, two had been lost in pre-war accidents. Conde de Venadito, Isabel II, and Infanta Isabella were in Cuba, with the latter laid up in need of a refit.

Meanwhile, Velasco, Don Antonio de Ulloa, and our Don Juan de Austria were in the Philippines where they had been for a decade.

Their fight in the Battle of Manila on 1 May 1898 was brief.

Don Juan de Austria was the first Spanish ship in Admiral Don Patricio Montojo’s battleline to spot Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron, at 0445.

Battle of Manila Bay, May 1, 1898. With Manila, Philippines, in the top center, and the Spanish fleet in the upper right, the U.S. Navy ships listed descending on the left to bottom are: Colliers; USS McCullough; USS Petrel; USS Concord; USS Boston; USS Raleigh; USS Baltimore; and USS Olympia – signaling “Remember the Maine.” Color lithograph by Rand McNally. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Placed adjacent to the old Aragon-class wooden cruiser Castilla (c1869, 3342t, 4×5.9-inch guns, 2×4.7-inch guns) to give that ship some protection, by 0630 both vessels were taking hits and were increasingly disabled by American shells (at least 13 large caliber hits on Don Juan de Austria alone) that also killed or wounded several men. By 0830, both were abandoned.

A U.S. Navy boarding party from the gunboat USS Petrel went aboard later that day and set her upper works on fire.

Halftone reproduction of an artwork by E.T. Smith, 1901, depicting a boat party from USS Petrel setting fire to Spanish gunboats near the battle’s end. The party was under the direction of Chief Carpenter’s Mate Franz A. Itrich, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for this operation. Copied from Deeds of Valor, Vol.II, page 354, published by the Perrien-Keydel Co., Detroit, Michigan, 1907. Photo #: NH 79948

Wreck of the Spanish cruiser Castilla off Cavite, shortly after the battle. In the background are (left-to-right): the cruisers USS Olympia, USS Baltimore, USS Raleigh, and two merchant ships. Copied from the USS Baltimore album, page 27. NH 101344

Sister Don Antonio de Ulloa got an even tougher beating, receiving 33 hits (four 8-inch, three 6-inch, one of 5-inch, and the rest of 3- and 6-pounder). Her commander, Capt. José de Iturralde, was killed as were half of her 130-man crew. In a pyrrhic victory, one of her 3-pounder Hotchkiss rifles was credited with firing the last shot at Dewey’s fleet in the battle.

Wreck of Spanish cruiser Don Antonio de Ulloa NHHC WHI.2014

Later that day, Velasco, laid up pending repairs and without her guns installed, was destroyed while anchored in the company of the gunboat General Lezo in the Spanish yard at Cavite.

Wreck of Spanish cruiser Velasco at Cavite, May 1898. NHHC WHI.2014.24

Meanwhile, sisters Infanta Isabella and Conde del Venadito, in poor condition in Cuban waters, survived the war (largely because they did not fight) with the latter hulked soon after her return to Spain. Isabel II, who fought in the battles of San Juan and survived, was likewise scrapped just a few years later.

By 1907, only Infanta Isabella remained in Spanish service from the eight-ship class.

Infanta Isabella’s 1914 entry in Jane’s. She had been rebuilt between 1910 and 11, removing her tubes, old machinery, and guns and replacing them with a single Skoda 70 mm gun and 10 Nordenfelt 57 mm guns. Once she returned to Spain, she continued extensive overseas service in the Canary Islands, the Gold Coast, and Guinean possessions, soldiering on until 1926, a full 39-year career, benefiting from parts from the stripped Conde del Venadito and scrapped Isabel II.

But the battered Don Juan de Austria would sail again.

U.S. Service

Salvaged and repaired in nearby Hong Kong, our Spanish cruiser was commissioned into American Navy as USS Don Juan de Austria on 11 April 1900. Re-rated as a gunboat due to her small size and low speed, she was rearmed with American ordnance to include two 4-inch mounts, eight rapid-fire 6-pounders, and two rapid-fire 1-pounders. Her waterlogged Spanish machinery was replaced with four straight-away cylindrical boilers, and one 941ihp horizontal compound engine, allowing her to make 12 knots.

In this respect, she mirrored another raised Spanish cruiser, the second-class protected cruiser USS Isla de Luzon, which was also one of Admiral Montojo’s warships lost in Manila Bay. A third Spanish cruiser, the Alfonso XII-class Reina Mercedes, sunk as a blockship in the entrance channel of the harbor at Santiago de Cuba, was also raised and put into U.S. Navy service under her old name, becoming USS Reina Mercedes despite the fact she could not even sail under her own power and would serve her second career wholly as a receiving/barracks/prison ship. In each case, the old Spanish Navy names were carefully retained to highlight the fact they were war trophies.

More mobile than USS Reina Mercedes, which earned the unofficial title of the “Fastest Ship in the Navy,” USS Don Juan de Austria did manage to get around quite a bit once her name was added to the Navy List. Her first American skipper was CDR Thomas C. McLean, USN, fresh off his job as commanding officer of the torpedo station at Newport, Rhode Island.

Officers of USS Don Juan de Austria. Photograph taken while at Canton, China, circa September 1900. Note her newly installed USN quarterdeck board. The officers listed are numbered as follows: 1. Lieutenant Junior Grade John D. Barber, Asst. Paymaster, USN; 2. Naval Cadet Allen Buchanan, USN; 3. Lieutenant John L. Purcell, USN; 4. Ensign William L. Littlefield, USN; 5. Naval Cadet Ralph E. Pope, USN; 6. Lieutenant Henry B. Price, USN; 7. Commander Thomas C. McLean, USN, CO; 8. Lieutenant Harold A. Haas, Asst. Surgeon, USN; and 9. Lieutenant Armistead Rust, USN. NH 104885

She soon spent the next three years alternating between standing station off China to protect American interests there, and action in the Philippines where the U.S. was fighting a tough insurgency throughout the archipelago. 

USS Don Juan de Austria in Chinese waters circa 1900. Note she now has a white hull, two much-reduced masts, and extensive awnings. NH 54544

Per DANFS:

She was employed in the Philippines in general duties in connection with taking possession of the newly acquired territory, supporting Army operations against the insurgent native forces, transporting troops and stores, blockading insurgent supply routes, and seizing and searching various towns to ensure American control.

USS Don Juan de Austria photographed in the Philippine Islands, circa 1900. Inset shows one of the ship’s boats. Courtesy of Captain R. E. Pope, USN (Ret.) NH 54546

In this, her crew could be nearly halved to send as many as 75 bluejackets ashore as an armed landing force. 

Her crew would even take into custody one of the insurgency’s leaders.

Aguinaldo, a cousin of Emilio, Guiando, Captured by the Don Juan De Austria 1900. NH 120409

She departed Hong Kong on 16 December 1903 for the United States, sailing by way of Singapore, Ceylon, India, the Suez Canal, and Mediterranean ports to arrive at Portsmouth Navy Yard on 21 April 1904, where she was placed in ordinary for 18 months’ worth of repairs and refit. This saw her small 4- and 1-pounders removed, and another four 4-inch mounts added, giving her a total of six. Four Colt machine guns were also added.

In December 1905, a young Midshipman by the name of William Frederick Halsey, Jr. (USNA 1904) was transferred to the USS Don Juan de Austria. Promoted to ensign while aboard her the following February, Mr. Halsey served as the gunboat’s watch and division officer for the next two years.

USS Don Juan de Austria, the scene in the wardroom with officers reading circa 1906. Tinted postcard photo. Courtesy of Captain Ralph C. McCoy, 1974. NH 82781-KN

USS Don Juan de Austria, a group photo of the ship’s officers and crew, circa 1907. The officer at the extreme lower right is Ensign William F. Halsey. Note the breechblock of the 4-inch gun to the left. Courtesy of the U. S. Naval Academy Museum NH 54547

Assigned to the Third Squadron, Atlantic Fleet, USS Don Juan de Austria with Halsey aboard would spend most of 1906 off the Dominican Republic “to protect American interests,” clearly swapping being a colonial Spanish cruiser to one on the same mission for the White House.

However, with a new series of much more capable small cruisers joining the fleet, such as the 4,600-ton scout cruiser USS Chester (CL-1)-– which packed eight 5- and 6-inch guns, carried a couple inches of armor protection, and could make 26 knots– Don Juan de Austria was no longer needed for overseas service. With that, she was placed out of commission at the Portsmouth Navy Yard on 7 March 1907. As for Halsey, he joined the brand new USS Kansas at her commissioning five weeks later and made the World Cruise of the Great White Fleet in that battleship.

Nonetheless, the Navy still needed functional warships for state naval militias to drill upon in the days prior to the formation of the USNR, and USS Don Juan de Austria soon shipped by way of the St. Lawrence River to Detroit, where she was loaned to the Michigan Naval Militia.

Likewise, the former Spanish cruiser USS Isla de Luzon, was also loaned at this time to the Illinois Naval Militia, stationed at Chicago, meaning both of these one-time Armada vessels were deployed to the Great Lakes in the decade before 1917.

Our little cruiser became a regular around Detroit and Windsor.

Don Juan de Austria (on the right) is seen looking upriver from the Belle Isle Bridge in Detroit, Michigan during the Parke Davis Excursion. Sometime between July 1907 and April 1917. Library of Congress photo LC-D4-39089

USS Don Juan de Austria, pre WWI postcard, likely while in Naval Militia service. Courtesy of D.M. McPherson, 1976 NH 84404

USS Don Juan de Austria postcard photo, taken while serving as Michigan Naval Militia Training Ship in the Detroit River, circa 1910. Courtesy of Kenneth Hanson, 1977. NH 86031

USS Don Juan de Austria, photographed during the Perry centennial Naval parade, 1913, possibly at Erie, Pennsylvania. She was a training ship of the Michigan Naval Militia at the time. Courtesy of Rear Admiral Denys W. Knoll USN ret., Erie Pennsylvania. NH 75676

Great War recall

USS Don Juan de Austria, 1914 Janes. Compare this to Infanta Isabella’s entry from the same volume above. Note by this time her armament had morphed to two 4″/40 rapid fire mounts, eight 6-pounder rapid fire mounts, two 1-pounder rapid fire mounts and she would later also carry two temporary 3-pounders.

Once the U.S. entered WWI in April 1917, USS Don Juan de Austria would soon leave her familiar birth in Detroit and sail for Newport, where she became a patrol asset for use off of New England.

USS Don Juan de Austria, ship’s Officers, and Crew pose on board, circa 1917-1918. Photographed by C.E. Waterman, Newport, Rhode Island. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2008. NH 105498

Under the command of a USNRF lieutenant, by August 1918 she was escorting slow convoys to Bermuda and a group of submarines back to Newport. Among her final missions was, in April 1919, to escort the ships carrying the 26th Infantry “Yankee Division,” formed from New England National Guard units, back from “Over There” and German occupation duty back home to Boston.

USS Don Juan de Austria in the foreground leading USS America (ID # 3006) up Boston Harbor, Massachusetts, on 5 April 1919, the 26th INF Div aboard. The transport is the former 22,000-ton German Hamburg-America liner SS Amerika, seized by the Navy at Boston in April 1917 where she had been interned for three years. NH 54586

Similarly, Isla de Luzon was used as a recruit training ship in Chicago until September 1918 when she arrived at Narragansett Bay for assignment to the Naval Torpedo Station. There, armed with torpedo tubes for the first time since 1898, she would pull duty with the Seamen Gunner’s Class through the end of the year and remain a yard craft for the Station until disposed of in mid-1919.

USS Don Juan de Austria was decommissioned at Portsmouth on 18 June 1919 and sold on 16 October 1919 to one Mr. Andrew Olsen. She lingered until 1926 when mention of her arose as “abandoned.” I have no further information on her final disposition although it is marginally conceivable, she may have been converted to a tramp steamer.

Epilogue

Few items remain from the Velascos besides a handful of removed Spanish guns that have been on display, typically in small American towns, since 1898.

Also saved is the Hotchkiss rifle captured from the Spanish cruiser Don Antonio De Ulloa which fired the last shot at Dewey’s fleet, preserved at the National Museum of the U.S. Navy.

They endure in period maritime art. 

Spanish Armada’s Training Squad before the Spanish-American War of 1898, although the represented ships never sailed together. Oil on canvas painted and signed with initials A.A. by Antonio Antón e Iboleón, around 1897. From left the Battleship Pelayo with insignia, followed by the cruisers Cristóbal Colón, Infanta María Teresa, and Alfonso XIII; to the right, the cruiser Carlos V with insignia, Oquendo and Vizcaya. On the starboard side of the Pelayo sails the Torpedo-gunboat Destructor, and two Terror-class torpedo boats sail on the bows of the Carlos V.

USS Don Juan de Austria almost outlasted her sisters, the Cadiz-built Infanta Isabel, which was only stricken by the Spanish in 1926, and Count of Venadito, which, hulked in 1902, was sunk as a target by the battleship Jaime I and the cruisers Libertad, Almirante Cervera, and Miguel de Cervantes in 1936.

A fitting end to the class.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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