Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday July 15, 2015: The Great War’s Granite State
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Here we see the Connecticut-class battleship, USS New Hampshire (BB-25) at age 12 in the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal. At this point of her life the young girl had already been in two real live shooting wars, had sunk a friendly battleship, and had but three years to live.
As part of the international naval race, the Connecticut-class was the top of the line in your U.S. predreadnought ships of the line. A century ago, the Connecticuts were the best and most intensely beautiful warships in the US Navy.
Connecticut herself was such an important ship that a crowd of some 30,000 civilians as well as most of the entire active battle fleet of the Atlantic Squadron was present for her commissioning in 1906. As a 15,000-ton ship with 11-inches of armor belt and carrying four 12-inch guns, she was a hoss.
USS Connecticut with a bone in her mouth on trials, 1906
Of course, the commissioning of the all-big-gun HMS Dreadnought the very same year, with her 10×12-inch guns, 21-knot top speed, and up to 12-inches of armor in a 21,000-ton package, the Connecticut was already sadly and badly obsolete.
That didn’t stop the Navy from finishing five sisters, Louisiana, Vermont, Kansas, Minnesota, and our hero, New Hampshire by 1908, spread across four east coast shipyards. Antiquated before they were even finished.
View of the ship’s bow decoration, taken while the battleship was in dry-docks at the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York, 6 January 1909. Note gilt-work on the eagle figurehead and associated decorations, stockless anchors in hawsepipe, stocked anchor on billboard further aft, Sailors leaning on the bow bulwark, jack at half-mast, bell mounted in front of the ship’s pilothouse, and barred portholes. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives / USNHC # NH 19-N-4-8-21, via Navsource. Click to very much big up
New Hampshire was laid down 1 May 1905 (just days before the pivotal Battle of Tsushima Strait., the apogee of predreadnought battlewagons). She was built alongside sistership USS Kansas at New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, NJ at a cost of $3,748,000 and was commissioned 19 March 1908– then was rushed into front line service.
New Hampshire on trails note no main 12 inch guns have been fitted. Also note her twin military masts.
On her shakedown cruise, New Hampshire schlepped a provisional Marine regiment from Hampton Roads to Panama to protect the Canal there. You see her five sisters, all completed the year before, had set off on an around the world cruise of the Great White Fleet, and she was left holding the line until they returned and, afterwards, was one of the first ships made “combat ready” by replacing her original military masts with lattice cage masts, trading gleaming white and buff for haze gray, and landing her ornate bow crest seen above.
In March 1911, she got to warm up her four 12 inch /45 Mark 5 guns as well as her extensive (20 gun!) mixed set of 7 and 8 inchers on the former battleship USS Texas. Renamed the USS San Marcos, that 1892-era 6,300-ton vessel was one of the nation’s first modern heavy warships. By 1911, she was barely considered a warship anymore by modern standards so it made sense that her 12-inches of armor plate should be tested on the New Hampshire‘s still relatively modern guns.
USS New Hampshire B-25 firing on the target ship San Marcos (ex-Texas) at Tangier Sound in Chesapeake Bay, March 1911. This photograph is of historical interest as it was one of the first gun shoots where a spotter in the cage masts was used to spot fall of shot. Previously, each gun layer or turret captain utilizing their turret gunsights was responsible. This new technique increased the maximum possible engagement range from 12,000 yards (11,000 m) up to about 24,000 yards (22,000 m). Also note the ship’s wake and that firing a broadside did not push the ship sideways. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 73105. Photo colorized by irootoko_jr Oh yeah, and CLICK TO BIG UP
And the 870 lbs. AP shells of New Hampshire did their job very well, destroying her above the waterline and holing her below so many times she sank at her moorings and the current was allowed to flow without hindrance from side to side.
The below images are from Navsource via USNIP, 1938, courtesy of Pieter Bakel, and are attributed to Lt.Cdr. Radford Moses, USNR who was among the inspectors of the old San Marcos after New Hampshire was done with her.
After sinking San Marcos, New Hampshire trained mids from Annapolis and conducted peacetime cycles of training and flag waving missions abroad.
In April 1914, she was among the ships who landed shore parties to occupy Veracruz.
By the time the U.S. entered WWI, New Hampshire was relegated to train gunnery and engineering rates in Chesapeake Bay and by September 1918 was tasked with escorting convoys across the North Atlantic.
In the Hudson River, New York, 27 December 1918. Note wartime modifications, including removal of some of the seven-inch and three-inch broadside guns and fitting of blast deflection shields on the “cage” mast fire control positions. Photo courtesy of Larry Bonn. Text courtesy of USNHC # NH 2891
Then came magic carpet rides bringing Doughboys back from ‘Over There’ through the first part of 1919.
Lloyd Brown, a 104-year-old World War I veteran takes a moment to pause as he remembers being in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard with his ship the day WW I ended, at his home in Charlotte Hall, Maryland, on November 9, 2005. Brown remembered Armistice Day in 1918 as few, ever so few, veterans can. “For the servicemen there were lots of hugs and kisses,” he recalls Brown, a teenage seaman aboard the battleship USS New Hampshire when the fighting stopped. “We were so happy that the war was over.” Brown added, “There’s not too many of us around any more.” An estimated 2 million Americans served in Europe after the U.S. entered the war in 1917. Lloyd Brown passed away in April of 2007, at the age of 105. (AP Photo/Chris Gardner)
Peacetime service after the war for the relatively young ship (she was but a decade old) was more of the same midshipmen cruises and flag-waving.
On Nov. 10, 1923, in one of the saddest days for any naval buff, all six of the Connecticuts were stricken from the Naval List and very soon after scrapped in accordance with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty.
By the end of 1924, the entire class was nothing but so much re-purposed steel, although it’s likely that some of her smaller mounts were retained in storage and used during WWII to arm merchantmen.
Perhaps the only tangible piece of the old battleship New Hampshire is her 72-piece silver service and bell. Expertly made by New Hampshire’s W.B. Durgin Co. and presented to the PCS in 1908, it is currently on display at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord.
Via Robert Dole, Maritime Quest.
Her bell is preserved at Portsmouth. Image by Jim Cerny
Specs:
Displacement: 16,000 long tons (16,000 t)
Length: 456 ft. 4 in (139.09 m)
Beam: 76 ft. 10 in (23.42 m)
Draft: 24 ft. 6 in (7.47 m)
Propulsion: 12 Babcock & Wilcox boilers
16,500 ihp (12,300 kW)
Speed: 18 kn (21 mph; 33 km/h)
Complement: 827 officers and men
Armament:
4 × 12 in (305 mm)/45 cal Mark 5 guns
8 × 8 in (203 mm)/45 cal guns
12 × 7 in (178 mm)/45 cal guns
20 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 cal guns
12 × 3 pounder guns
4 × 1 pounder guns
4 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor:
Belt: 6–11 in (152–279 mm)
Barbettes: 6–10 in (152–254 mm)
Turret Main: 8–12 in (203–305 mm)
Turret secondary: 7 in (178 mm)
Conning tower: 9 in (229 mm)
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