Tommy’s enormous range of interests included: documenting heraldry as a medieval historian, editing Burke’s Peerage, competing in the 1908 Olympics at speed boat racing (the only time this has ever been an Olympic event), horse racing, sailing, hawking, golfing, flying, model-boating, writing libretti for operas (with music by his friend Joseph Holbrooke) and writing both pageants and pantomimes for his six children and their friends – he did the lot!
When the Great War came, Lord Walden became involved with the 9th Batt., Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and as can be expected, began searching for a blade that set his Welshmen apart.
That’s where antiques dealer, arms collector and scholar Felix Joubert of Chelsea came in. The so-called Welsh sword was a trench dagger that Joubert said was based on the traditional “Welsh cleddyd” (or cledd), but this has been ruled out as just so much window dressing to appeal to Lord Walden.
The pommel is heavy and pointed, the hand guard folds flat against the blade for sheathing and the ricasso is inscribed “Dros Urddas Cymru”, Welsh for “For the honour of Wales”
The blade was some 17.6-inches long, leading to a two-foot long, 36-ounce weapon.
He patented the blade in 1916 (GB108741) and it was produced by both Wilkinson (who apparently made 200) and locally in France by firm(s) unknown. Originally only for use by bombers (grenadiers), trench-pirates and machine gun crew, it was later issued to most officers and ranks of 9th RWF.
They were reportedly “used with great effect in a raid at Messines Ridge, 5 June 1917.”
From the Royal Armories
As noted by the Royal Armories, “The ‘Welsh knife’ inspired the design of the Smatchet fighting knife of The Second World War by the renowned hand-to-hand combat expert and innovator, Lieutenant-Colonel William E. Fairbairn.”
Behold, the famous Fairbairn Smatchet…or is it a Welsh cleddyd?
The Welsh trench swords are widely reproduced by Windlass in India as well as others, while the Smatchet is even more common.
Warship Wednesday, June 6, 2018: The eternal Nordic shark of Sword Beach
Via the Norwegian military museum (Forsvarets Museer) MMU.941853
Here we see the British-built S-class destroyer (Jageren in Norwegian parlance) His Norwegian Majesty’s Ship KNM (Kongelige Norske Marine) Svenner (RN Pennant G03) of the Free Norwegian Sjøforsvaret in 1944, fresh from the yard and ready to fight. Svenner is deeply associated with today’s date. However, before we can talk about her service, let us discuss the Royal Norwegian Navy in WWII.
The Scandinavian neutral had managed to sit precariously on the fence in the Great War and indeed was a peaceful country who had last seen the elephant during the Napoleonic Wars, skirmishing at first with the British and then the Swedes for independence. Some 130-years of peace behind it, the Norwegian Navy in April 1940 was again an armed neutral, ready to take on all-comers to preserve the homeland. Then came the invasion.
German cruiser Blücher in Drøbak Sound, April 1940 outside of the Norwegian capital Oslo
Two months of tough resistance against German invaders while reluctantly accepting Allied intervention left the Norwegian Navy covered in glory (such as when the tiny 200-ton gunboat KNM Pol III stood alone– briefly– against the mighty heavy cruiser Blücher, the heavy cruiser Lützow, the light cruiser Emden, three torpedo boats and eight minesweepers carrying 2,000 troops to Oslo, or when the ancient and nearly condemned coastal monitors KNM Eidsvold and Norge attempted to stop the Germans at Narvik), but was largely left sunk at the bottom of the fjords they defended.
When the endgame came, a dozen or so small ships and 500 officers and men made it to British waters to carry on the war. These included such Edwardian relics as the destroyer Draug (commissioned in 1908!) and the newer Sleipner, as well as fishery patrol ships such as the Nordkapp, which all soon got to work for the Allies, guarding sea lanes, escorting convoys and protecting the UK and Allied-occupied Iceland from potential Axis invasion.
The mighty KNM Draug, with lines that look right out of the Spanish-American War. MMU.945456
With the small core of exiled prewar Norwegian sailors, an influx of Norwegians living abroad and transfers from the country’s huge merchant fleet, the exiled Free Norwegian Navy was able to rebuild abroad.
“Norway Fights On” USA, 1942
Soon, the old Draug was in full-time use as a training and support vessel while small trawlers and whalers provided yeoman service as the “Shetland Bus” regularly shuttling spies, SOE operatives and Norwegian resistance agents into occupied Scandinavia and downed Allied aircrew out over the course of some 200 trips.
As these operations expanded, the Brits began transferring at first surplus (five ex-Wickes-class tin cans transferred originally to the Brits from the USN under the bases for destroyer deal) and then new-built naval vessels (Flower and Castle-class corvettes, motor torpedo boats, Hunt-class destroyer escorts, and later two S-class destroyers) to the growing Norwegian fleet to perform convoy escort missions.
That’s where Svenner comes in.
The 16 S/T-class destroyers were long ships (363-feet) but thin (just 35-feet) giving them a 10:1 length-to-beam ratio, making them a knife on the water. Tipping the scales at just 2,500~ tons, they were slender stilettos made for stabbing through the waves at nearly 37-knots on a pair of Parsons geared turbines. Armed with a quartet of 4.7-inch guns for surface actions, U-boat busting depth charges and an eight-pack of anti-ship torpedo tubes, they were ready for a fight. Class leader HMS Saumarez (G12) was completed in July 1943, right in time for the Battle of the Atlantic, and the 15 ships that followed her were made ready to go into harm’s way as soon as they could leave the builders’ yards. Of those, one, HMS Success, was transferred on completion to the Free Norwegian forces on 26 August 1943 as KNM Stord (G26), and soon got to chasing the Germans, becoming engaged with the sinking of the German battleship Scharnhorst just four months after transfer.
Stord, note her Norwegian jack. MMU.945852
One of Success/Stord‘s sisterships, laid down as HMS Shark, transferred to the Norwegians 11 March 1944 on completion and was named KNM Svenner after a Norwegian island. Her skipper, LCDR Tore Holthe, was a prewar Norwegian surface fleet officer and veteran of Stord‘s action against Scharnhorst.
Svenner’s officers, with Holthe center. MMU.945739
Just weeks after her commissioning, Svenner was attached to Bombardment Force S of the Eastern Task Force of the Normandy invasion fleet assembling off Plymouth. Her mission would be to help smother the German beach defenses during the assault on Sword Beach, where British and Canadian forces would land.
On the night of the 5th, Svenner, along with the frigates HMS Rowley and Holmes, helped escort the cruisers HMS Arethusa, Danae, and Frobisher, as well as the Free Polish cruiser ORP Dragon, monitor HMS Roberts and the small craft of the 40th Minesweeping Flotilla from Plymouth across the Channel to Sword Beach, where the famous battleships HMS Ramillies, HMS Warspite and ships of Force D stood by for heavy lifting.
At 0500 on 6 June 1944, Jutland veteran Warspite was the first ship in the entire 4,000-strong Allied fleet on any beach to open fire, hitting a German artillery battery at Villerville from some 13 miles offshore.
As the Svenner, Rowley, and Holmes stood by to allow the minesweepers to clear a channel for the bombardment ships to close with the beach while making smoke to obscure the capital ships, three German torpedo boats out of La Havre– Jaguar, Møwe and T28— appeared at 28-knots to conduct a strike against the force, letting lose some 17 torpedoes in all. It was the only effective Kriegsmarine resistance on D-Day.
The torpedo spread came close to ruining Force D, with steel fish passing within feet of both Ramillies and Warspite. The only victim of the German torps: our brave new Norwegian destroyer, who tried in vain to turn from the spread but came up short.
HNoMS Svenner breaking up & sinking after being struck by two torpedoes
Svenner was hit amidships at 0530 by one or possibly two torpedoes and broke in half, sinking quickly after an explosion under her boiler room. Lost were 32 Norwegian and a British signalman out of her crew of 219. Most of the crew, which included some RN ratings, were rescued by nearby ships and returned to the war in days.
Still, the pair of battleships were saved, and they covered the invasion on Sword with heavy naval gunfire. Warspite fired over 300 shells on June 6 alone before heading back to Portsmouth for more rounds and powder and returning to plaster targets on Utah Beach and Gold Beach. Her sidekick Ramillies heaved an impressive 1,002 15-inch shells in that week, hitting not only defensive strongpoints and batteries but also massing German armor well inland and enemy railway marshaling yards near Caen. The work by those two brawlers on D Day and the hours afterward is well-remembered.
The landing at Sword involved the British Army’s I Corps made up of the 3rd Infantry Division and 79nd Armoured Division along with hardlegs of the 1st Special Service Brigade (which also contained Free French and Belgian Commandos) and No. 41 (Royal Marine) Commando against the German 716th Infantry Division and Caen-based 21st Panzer Div (which launched the only major German counterattack of D-Day.) In all, over 680 Allied troops were killed on Sword alone on 6 June.
SWORD beach – 6 Jun 1944. This image is taken from a Royal Air Force Mustang aircraft of II (Army Cooperation) Squadron. IWM
Besides Svenner, the Norwegians were well-represented at Normandy, with her sistership Stord present elsewhere on Sword on D-Day, hitting a German battery by Riva Bella with no less that 362 of her 4.7-inch shells.
Maleri av invasjonen i Normandie og jageren STORD MMU.943486
The Norwegian-manned Hunt-class destroyer escort KNM Glaisdale was at Juno Beach and fired more than 400 rounds that day at German positions near St. Aubain while the similarly-crewed corvettes Acanthus, Eglantine and Rose were at Utah Beach. The plucky 130-foot fisheries vessel Nordkapp was there too, as an escort and rescue vessel. Seven Norwegian merchant ships were packed with troops and supplies that day, including some 200 men of the 29th U.S. Infantry Division aboard the SS Lysland off Omaha Beach. Another 43 Norwegian merchant ships were in the follow-on wave starting June 7, including three that gave their last as mole ships.
For more on the vital contribution to the war by the 1,081 ships of the Norwegian merchant service (Nortraship) which saw an incredible 570 vessels sunk and some 3734 men taken down to their last across both the Atlantic and Pacific, please check out the excellent site dedicated to these war-sailors.
The Norwegians went on to purchase Stord from the UK government and kept her in service for another decade, only scrapping her in Belgium in 1959. Of note, she returned Vice Adm. Edvard Danielsen, commander of the Norwegian Navy, home from the UK in 1945. On that occasion, the following signal was sent from RN Adm. Sir Henry Moore:
To: H Nor MS Stord
From: C-in-C HF AFLOAT CONFIDENTIAL BASEGRAM
For Admiral Danielsen
On your return to Norway in H Nor MS Stord I should be grateful if you will convey to Lieutenant Commander Øi and to the officers and ships company my keen appreciation of the honour I feel in having had them under my command in the Home Fleet.
Their efficiency and their fine fighting spirit have been the admiration of us all and although we are glad that they now should be reaping the reward of their contribution to the liberation of Europe we shall miss them in the Home Fleet. We hope that some of us may soon have the pleasure to renew our friendship in Norwegian port. To you personally I send my warm regards and sincere thanks for your helpful cooperation with me at the Admiralty: Good luck and happiness to you all.
By the end of the war, the Royal Norwegian Naval Fleet (outside of Norway) consisted of 52 combatant ships and 7,500 officers, petty officers and men. For more on the Free Norwegian Navy in WWII, click here for an English translation compiled by the Norwegian Naval Museum.
As a footnote, the only other S/T-class destroyer lost during the war was also claimed on Sword Beach. HMS Swift (G46) struck and detonated mine off the beachhead and sank after breaking in two on 24 June with the loss of 52 men.
HMS SWIFT ( G 46) MMU.941445
Other than that, all 14 remaining S/T-class sisters survived the conflict and lead a long life with three going on to transfer in 1946 to the rebuilding Dutch Navy. The last of the class afloat, HMS Troubridge (F09), helped sink U-407 during the war and, converted to a Type 15 frigate, was only decommissioned in 1969, going to the breakers the following year.
In 2003, a French Navy minesweeper discovered the wreckage of Svenner off Sword and salvaged her anchor. It is now preserved as a memorial to the ship some 100 yards inland from the beach at Hermanville-sur-Mer.
The Norwegians remember Svenner with fondness, having recycled her name for a Kobben-class submarine commissioned in 1967 which remained in service until after the Cold War.
Svenner has become part of the country’s military lore.
In 2014, King Harald himself helped dedicate the memorial to all Norwegians present at Normandy, accompanied by some of the last of that country’s aging WWII vets.
Today, of course, on the 74th anniversary of Overlord/Neptune and the 156,000 Allied troops that landed across that wide 50-mile front, we remember all the Allies of the Greatest Generation.
Specs:
Displacement:
1,710 long tons (1,740 t) (standard)
2,530 long tons (2,570 t) (deep load)
Length: 362 ft 9 in (110.6 m) (o/a)
Beam: 35 ft 9 in (10.9 m)
Draught: 14 ft 6 in (4.4 m) (deep)
Installed power:
40,000 shp (30,000 kW)
2 × Admiralty 3-drum boilers
Propulsion: 2 × shafts; 2 × Parsons geared steam turbines
Speed: 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph)
Range: 4,675 nmi (8,658 km; 5,380 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Sensors:
Radar Type 290 air warning
Radar Type 285 ranging & bearing
Armament:
4 × single 4.7-inch (120 mm) Mark XII dual-purpose guns
1 × twin Bofors 40 mm AA guns
4 × twin QF 20 mm Oerlikon AA guns
2 × quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes
4 × throwers and 2 × racks for 70 depth charges
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
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.
USS Tautog (SS-199), photographed from an altitude of 300 feet off the Florida coast by airship ZP-31 on 29 May 1945. Note the scoreboard painted on her conning tower.
Tautog (skippers: Willingham, Sieglaff, Basket, Higgs), one of a dozen Tambor-class submarines commissoned in the twilight before Pearl Harbor, was credited with sinking an amazing 26 Japanese ships, for a total of 72,606 tons across 13 war patrols in the Pacific. The “Terrible T” was ranked second by number of ships and 11th by tonnage on the tally sheets. This doesn’t include the number of ships she mauled but got away, such as the Japanese light cruiser Natori, which managed to somehow limp away with her stern and rudders shot off.
Description: USS Tautog (SS 199), World War II Battle Flag. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 63790-KN (Color).
Tautog was decommissioned on 8 December 1945 with just five years under her keel, used for a decade as a pierside trainer at Naval Reserve Training Center, Milwaukee, and scrapped in 1959.
While armored vehicles were not often the focus of the Vietnam conflict, full-sized main battle tanks did get a chance to do more than guard gates on occasion.
Such as a sharp engagement some 50 years ago today.
This painting shows 4 Australian Centurions of C Squadron, 1st Armoured Regiment in Bien Hoa Province, South Vietnam 26 May 1968. The tanks let out to clear some NVA bunkers situated around the base from whence attacks were being staged on the Aussie’s base.
An armored troop made up from the 1st Armoured Regiment (1 Armd Regt) was deployed on active service to South Vietnam in May 1965 and, through several rotations supported by the regiment, remained in country until withdrawn from Vietnam in September 1971. In that time, 58 Centurions had served in Southeast Asia with 42 damaged in battle– six were beyond repair. Two crewmen had been killed in action.
The regiment is still around, and today is the only armored unit in the Australian Army to be equipped with the M1A1 Abrams.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The intel of Captain C.F. O’Keefe, shutterbug
You don’t have to be a Jack White fan to know about the Soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance, formed to suppress China’s Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Encompassing sea and land forces from Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the U.S., Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary, the force was originally named after the 409 soldiers from eight countries that helped defend the Peking legation area when things went sideways in August 1900.
All photos by O’Keefe, via National Archives, U.S. Naval Historical Command, and Library of Congress
Eventually, relief columns landed and marched into Manchuria would account for more than 50,000 Allied troops and set the stage for the Russo-Japanese War that followed in its wake and continuing outside military intervention in China through 1949.
But we are focused on one Capt. Cornelius Francis O’Keefe of the 36th U.S. Volunteer Infantry (formerly a lieutenant in the 1st Colorado Infantry Regiment) who accompanied the U.S. expedition under Maj. Gen Ada Chaffee to China. Attached to Chaffee’s staff, O’Keefe, who before the rebellion was part of the Engineer office in Manila as a photographer, took notes and photographs at the Taku forts and ashore, moving through the Chinese arsenals at Tientsin and points West.
Accompanied by a Sgt. Hurtt and “three privates equipped for sketching,” the hardy volunteer field officer lugged his camera equipment around the front and rear lines of the expedition. As such, he took advantage of close interaction with foreign troops who could be future adversaries to extensively photograph their uniforms and gear from all angles.
You can see his U.S. Army Engineers logo on most and Signal Corps photo numbers as well.
111-SC-74919 French Engineer Packs. (Same equipment was used for Infantry, except for pick and shovel), during the Chinese Relief Expedition, 1900.
111-SC-74974 French Zouaves during the Chinese Relief Expedition (Boxer Rebellion), 1900
111-SC-74920 French Marine Infantry during the Chinese Relief Expedition, 1900
111-SC-75121 French Engineers at Peking, China, during the Chinese Relief Expedition, 1900
111-SC-74925 Boxer Rebellion (Chinese Relief Expedition), 1900. Japanese Infantryman on duty with the Chinese Relief Expedition, 1900
111-SC-74924 Boxer Rebellion (Chinese Relief Expedition), 1900. Japanese Artillerymen on duty with the Chinese Relief Expedition, 1900. First man on left is an Non-Commissioned Officer.
Boxer Rebellion (Chinese Relief Expedition), 1900. Japanese Infantrymen, 1900.
As for O’Keefe in 1901, he returned to the Philippines and presented himself to Maj. Clifton Sears of the Corps of Engineers to resume his role as photographer for the Manila-based outfit for the remainder of his hitch. The 36th Volunteers were mustered out in July 1902 and from what I can tell, O’Keefe hung up his uniform with it.
His photography from the exotic region, including taken in the Forbidden City, graced Harper’s Weekly (especially Harper’s Pictorial History of the War with Spain) and was shown as part of the “Mysterious Asia” exhibition at St. Louis’ Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904.
A collection of some 170 O’Keefe images, formerly owned by Capt. Harley B. Ferguson, the Chief Engineer of the China Relief Expedition, appeared at auction in 2015 while hundreds of others, as exhibited above, are in various U.S. institutions to include the National Archives, NHHC and the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Another 85 images from his time in the PI with the 1st Colorado are in the collection of Colorado’s Stephen H. Hart Library & Research Center while the NYPL has its own, smaller, dossier.
Warship Wednesday, May 16, 2018: Schermerhorn’s contribution to naval history
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 53955
Here we see the pride of the New York Yacht Club, the steam patrol yacht Free Lance, in her newly-applied gray military scheme on duty off New York City, probably in August 1898. The brand-new pleasure craft would, oddly enough, be called upon not once, but twice, to defend her country.
But first, let us speak of that great knickerbocker, Frederick Augustus Schermerhorn.
As a young man, Schermerhorn came from a prominent Empire State family and, after a string of private schools and tutors, was accepted at what was then Columbia College for the Class of 1865. However, as the Civil War evolved, he promptly dropped out of school at the ripe old age of 20 in 1864 and sought an appointment to West Point, which was denied. Not to be outdone, he applied to a series of New York volunteer units and was enrolled to the roster of the newly-formed 185th New York Volunteer Infantry regiment’s C Company in the fall of 1864 and shipped off to the Petersburg Campaign in Northern Virginia.
Portrait of a soldier F. Augustus Schermerhorn standing, via the Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth collection
By the end of the war, the bloodied and decorated 1st Lt had been breveted a captain and was assigned as the aide-de-camp of MG Charles Griffin, the V Corps commander during its final campaign, and was present in the yard when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. In all, Schermerhorn served less than a year, but it was a hell of a year.
MG Charles Griffin and staff officers posed in front of the Cummings House. Our fellow is to the right
Returning to New York after the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, Schermerhorn went back to school, picking up his mining degree from Columbia in 1868, and continued his service with the famed “Blue-Bloods” of the 7th New York Militia regiment for another several decades. By 1877, he was a Columbia trustee and member in most of the clubs and societies in The City that meant anything including the Riding, Knickerbocker, Metropolitan, and Tuxedo clubs. He rose to become a Director of the N. Y. Life Insurance and Trust Co.
The good Mr. Schermerhorn was duly nominated and confirmed by the membership to the New York Yacht Club on 25 March 1886 and by 1897 was elected to a position as a flag officer with that esteemed organization, a post he held through at least 1903. During his time with the NYYC, he was one of the backers of the 1893 (eighth) America’s Cup contender Colonia but was beaten by Nathanael Greene Herreshoff’s Vanderbilt-backed centerboard sloop Vigilant.
Schermerhorn’s Colonia via Detroit Publishing Co, LOC LC-D4-21915
Moving past cutters, Schermerhorn commissioned Mr. Lewis Nixon of Elizabethport, NJ’s Crescent Shipyard to construct him a beautiful screw steam schooner designed by A. Cary Smith for personal use. As noted by the Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers at the time, his new ship, Free Lance, was 108-feet on the waterline and 137 from figurehead to taffrail with a cross-section “different from all other steam yachts” due to its long bow and lapped steel plating. A pair of Almy water tube boilers drove a 600 IHP triple expansion steam engine.
Yacht Free Lance in civilian livery, 11 June 1896, most probably on Long Island Sound. Note her guilt bow scroll and extensive canvas awnings over her twin deck houses. Also note her yacht ensign on the stern, NYYC pennant on her foremast, and Schermerhorn’s Maltese Cross pennant on her after mast. Photo via Detroit Publishing Co. 8×10 glass negative photographed by Charles Edwin Bolles LOC# LC-D4-62113
Her 25 September builder’s trials report made the Oct. 12, 1895 issue of Forest and Stream which noted that with a forced draft and 200-pounds of steam she was able to clear 19 miles in 62 minutes. By the turn of the century, she regualry hit 17 knots in civil use and utilized the novel Thorne-patent ash ejector, which gave steady work for her stokers.
However, the Free Lance only got two seasons in before war came with Spain, and Schermerhorn freely volunteered the services of his yacht to the Navy, which were promptly accepted.
The armed yachts of the Spanish-American War are fascinating reading as they were often very handsome sailing ships such as past Warship Weds alum Peter Arrell Brown Widener’s custom-built schooner-rigged Josephine and Massachusetts textile magnate Matthew Chaloner Durfee’s rakish and very well-appointed steam yacht, Sovereign.
At the time the Navy needed to rapidly expand and among the ships acquired for Spanish-American War service were no less than 29 armed and hastily converted yachts, primarily drawn from wealthy Northeast and New York Yankees such as our very own Mr. Schermerhorn. A baker’s dozen of these former pleasure craft were rather large ships, exceeding 400 tons. With relatively good gun-carrying capacity and sea-keeping capabilities, these bigger craft saw service off Cuba where they were used as auxiliary cruisers, scouting vessels, and dispatch ships.
Others, such as our newly commissioned USS Free Lance, were used in what was termed the Auxiliary Naval Force, keeping a weather eye for Spanish raiders just over the horizon of the increasingly undefended U.S Eastern Seaboard.
USS Free Lance underway off New York City, probably in August 1898. A small sailboat is just astern of Free Lance, and USS New York (Armored Cruiser # 2) is in the background. Also, note that her awnings have been stripped away, she is no longer flying her yachting pennants, and she has guns on her pilot house and stern. NH 53953
Her armament: a pair of .65-caliber Royal Navy contract 1870s-vintage Mark I 10-barrel Gatling guns mounted atop the yacht’s pilothouse and on her stern, reportedly picked up through the offices of local NYC military surplus guru Francis Bannerman.
USS Free Lance (1898-1899), Gatling Gun Crew, 1898. Note the “Free Lance” bands on their flat caps, the .45-70 rounds and Springfield Trapdoor bayonets on their Mills belts, and the gun’s hopper which held 20 rounds. Detroit Publishing Company.
Each Gatling gun weighed 725-pounds, not including the mount and fired a 1,421-grain projectile at 1,427fps. The rate of fire (theoretically) was 1,200 rounds per minute but the gun was limited by the speed that assistant gunners could drop rounds down the beast’s top-mounted Bruce Feed-style chute.
USS Free Lance (1898-1899), Petty Officers 1898. Detroit Publishing Company
With her unconventional armament and small relative size, she was used as a harbor patrol craft during the conflict, commissioned as USS Free Lance, 12 May 1898.
USS Free Lance at anchor off New York City, probably in August 1898. Note the small sailboats in the left background and Free Lance’s pilot house-mounted Gatling gun. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 53954
Her term of service was short, decommissioning on 24 August 1898 after just 14 weeks on active duty.
Returned to her owner, when WWI came the aging Schermerhorn once more contributed his love to the Navy, with the yacht leased for $1 on 19 July 1917 and commissioned as USS Freelance (SP-830) with no space between the two words. This was because from 1905 on, her name was spelled “Freelance.”
Freelance Underway, prior to World War I. This yacht served as USS Free Lance in 1898 and as USS Freelance (SP-830) in 1917-1918. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 102819
Under command of Ensign J. B. Nevins, USNRF, and armed with a pair of recycled 3-pounder guns (Gatling’s were reserved for museums by 1917) she was once more put in service patrolling in the New York area. Her DANFS record is slim.
USS Freelance (SP-830) In port during the World War I era. The original print is in National Archives’ Record Group 19-LCM. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 101720
His epitaph is Psalm 37:37: “Mark the perfect man and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.”
Schermerhorn’s 1915 portrait by August Franzen is in the Smithsonian‘s National Portrait Gallery.
I cannot find what became of his cherished Free Lance, but I would like to think she is still in Gotham somewhere, perhaps on the bottom of the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard, which in a way would be fitting.
Specs:
Displacement 132 t.
Length 137 feet overall
Beam 20′ 8″
Draft 7′ 6″
Propulsion: One 600ihp steam engine (3cyl, 11,17&29×20 Crescent), one shaft. Two Almy WT boilers
Speed 14 knots in naval service, almost 19 on trials
Complement 18 (military service)
Armament: Two .65-caliber Gatling guns (1898)
Two 3-pounders (1917)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
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.
Here we see the much-feared German Bismarck-class battleships, SMS Tirpitz, in Gotenhafen (occupied Gdynia, Poland) on 5 May 1941, on sea trials in the peaceful mid-Baltic (the Soviets were allies with Hitler then) just two months after she was commissioned.
More a figurehead than a fighter, this lavender marriage of convenience was the last capital ship ever completed by any version of the German nation and the fleet that operated her was on orders to never truly risk her loss. So of course, she was possibly one of the most-often attacked ships in history. In all, the Allies launched at least 20 separate attacks, mostly by air but also by midget submarines and frogmen (and once by a Soviet Red Banner Fleet submarine in open ocean), against her between 1941 and 1944 when she was finally gesunken by Royal Air Force bombers.
In addition to splashing a few attacking British aircraft over the years with her AAA suite, the only time the mighty Tirpitz fired her fearsome main battery of 38 cm SK C/34 L/52 guns was against shacks manned by a platoon-sized element of Free Norwegian army troops on the remote metrological outpost of Spitsbergen, killing 9 Norwegian soldiers and capturing 41, surely an immense waste of firepower that could have been duplicated by a destroyer, or perhaps even a determined U-boat.
German 380mm/15″ SK C/34 gun being installed on the Battleship Tirpitz during her construction
Still, you can argue more dollars, rubles, and pounds were spent trying to destroy her than marks in her construction and operation, and the Allies were forced to tack capital ships on to every convoy that sailed in waters threatened by the largely immobile Teutonic dreadnought, so there’s that.
But you can always buy really sweet knives made from her remains…
Charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill by Frederic Remington: Theodore Roosevelt leads the charge on his horse, Little Texas. K Troop officer, Woodbury Kane is the brown-uniformed officer in the foreground with pistol in right hand and saber in his left. To the upper right of Lt Kane is a hat-less African-American Buffalo Soldier from either the 9th or 10th Cavalry that got mixed in along with the Rough Riders as all of them raced to the top of Kettle Hill.
Last weekend, Skinners had an early 1895-production Springfield Model 1896 Krag Saddle-Ring carbine up for grabs. Few of 1896s were made, just 22,493– with only a handful being 1895-marked. With their handy 22-inch barrel and 41-inch overall length, the five-shot”half-capsule” fixed magazine, bolt action repeater had a magazine cut-off to allow single .30-40 Krag rounds to be fed to keep the stumpy horse gun topped off.
It was also the last saddle ring (due to its ring and bar sling attachment) carbine ever made for the U.S. government– the end of an era. It even had a cleaning rod that was stored in the butt trap.
Another thing that made this gun special is that it was SN 27892, known to be issued to Alvin C. Ash, a trooper in G Troop of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry.
As noted by Springfield Armory, who has a similar 1895-marked M1896 (SN 30023) in their collection, TR and his buddy Leonard Wood (now remembered with Fort named after him) really worked to get them:
“Wood and Roosevelt had to put forth some effort to obtain the Krag carbine for the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry; this was the first-line cavalry weapon, and it had been in service only two years when the Spanish-American War broke out. All the carbines issued to the Rough Riders were new, unused weapons, even though many of them were manufactured in 1895. The mechanism of the Model 1896 Carbine had been improved in a number of respects over that of the Model 1892 Rifle, many of which were in the hands of regular infantry troops at Santiago.” – Franklin B. Mallory MAN AT ARMS, July/August 1989
In the end, Ash’s Krag went for $30,750, with most of that being the premium for a Rough Riders-connected named piece, as Saddle Rings of the same vintage normally go for about a 1/10th of that.
Here we see a white-painted Leopard 1DK main battle tank of the Royal Danish Army’s Jydske Dragonregiment (Jutland Dragoon Regiment) while deployed to the UN-led international force UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) in the former Yugoslavia in 1994.
Danish Leopards 1A3s were originally purchased in 1976, 120 in all which were renamed Leopard 1DK, delivered until 1978. 110 more were acquired in 1993 and all were gradually upgraded to the 1A5 standard.
Designed in the 1950s as the Standard-Panzer to replace the West German Bundeswehr’s U.S.-built M47 and M48 Patton tanks, the Leopard was built on all of the German lessons learned from WWII and the follow-on Allied after-action reports from Korea. In all, some 4,744 Leopard I MBTs were produced between 1965 and 1984 when they were replaced on Porsche’s line by the much-improved Leopard II. Besides West Germany, the Leo was sold throughout NATO including Denmark, as shown above, Canada, Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Turkey. Outside of the military alliance, Australia, Brazil, and Chile bought Leopard Is– with the latter going on to sell theirs to Ecuador while Lebanon picked up former Belgian panzers.
With all of those thousands of Leos in circulation, it may come as a surprise that the first combat action by the tank was by the Danes.
Yes, in April 1994, DANSQN (Danish Tank Squadron), a 10-tank unit of the Jydske Rgt, commanded by Major Carsten Rasmussen, was dispatched to form the armored overwatch fist of the 2nd Nordic battalion (NORDBAT2) composed of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish forces operating under the UN mandate. Commanded by Swedish Col. Ulf Henricsson (later dubbed the “Sheriff of Vareš” for his “no shit” attitude in Bosnia), the Nordic unit was composed of the Danish armored squadron, a Norwegian field hospital (NORMEDCOY), and the three-company strong first Swedish mechanized infantry battalion (BA01).
While in Bosnia, in an action remembered as Operation Bøllebank (“Hooligan bashing”) 7 tanks of the Danish squadron rushed to the aid of a Swedish observation post on 29 April that was under attack outside of Tuzla and was in turn ambushed on the way by elements of the Bosnian-Serb Sekovici brigade of the VRS (Republic of Srpska Army) outside the village of Kalesija.
The VRS had Sagger anti-tank missiles (which had proved deadly to other UN armored forces), 122mm guns and T-55 tanks but the Danes had better, FLIR-enabled night vision (the engagement started at 2315hrs) and in the end, carried the day.
Serb casualty reports range from 9 to 150. The Danes lost none of their 28 tankers involved and all of the Viking tanks were still more or less operational, though one had its paint scratched a bit.
The Leos had fired 72 105mm rounds in the 2-hour fight, (44 HE, 9 WP and 19 armor piercing.)
Eskadronchef Rasmussen, who was on scene for the fight in his command tank, said later of the counter-ambush against a nominally superior force, “The cat set a trap for the mice, but the mice caught the cat.”
Here is a pretty good run-down of the battle (in Danish)
Besides the Leo’s first use in combat, it was the first Danish overt military action since World War II and the first Dane tank-on-tank fight ever (in 1940, the Danish army only had a half-dozen Swedish-built Landsverk 180 and Landsverk PV M 39 Lynx armoured cars, armed with 20mm Madsen cannon, and they did not have a chance to engage German tanks in the brief blitzkrieg of the tiny country).
While the event has since been celebrated in Denmark, Rasmussen has downplayed the notoriety of the engagement. The tankers were not even decorated for the engagement.
As for DANSQN, they caught a whiff of gunpowder again on 26 October 1994 when three Danish tanks fired 21 rounds against Bosnian Serbs’ near Gradacac north of Tuzla in order to retake a UN- observation post. Dubbed Operation Armada, the Nordic Leos bagged at least one more T-55 in that engagement, suffering zero casualties.
As part of IFOR, they later helped in the disarmarment of local forces in Bosnia.
Leopard 1A5 of the Royal Danish Army Jutland Dragoon Regiment (Jydske Dragonregiment) crushes a 20mm autocannon abandoned by Bosnia Serbs
Here we see the last of the Royal Navy’s Arrogant-class cruisers, HMS Vindictive (P.4C), going through just over an hour’s time at the center of hell along the Mole in the German-occupied Belgian port city of Zeebrugge on St. George’s Day, 100 years ago this week.
The four-pack of Arrogant-class 2nd class protected cruisers were approved under the 1895/96 Programme and designed for fleet use rather than in protecting trade from enemy auxiliary cruisers in wartime (at the time thought most likely to be Russian) and policing colonies. As such, they were a bit beamier than the nine preceding Eclipse-class cruisers (5,700 tons, 350x53ft, 18.5kts, 5x QF 6″ guns) while being faster. The subsequent Arrogants went 5,840-tons with a 320-foot overall length while having a 57-foot beam and a ram bow.
A group of 18 Belleville water-tube boilers (the first installed on a British cruiser of the size) and pair of 3-cyl VTE engines on twin screws enabled these ships to be considered “20-knot” ships (on forced draught) while a battery of four 6″/40cal QF Mk II singles and six 4.7-inch guns gave them the comparable muscle to the Eclipses. The first two vessels of the class, Arrogant and Furious, were built at Devonport, while the third, Gladiator, was laid down at Portsmouth.
Our hero, the fourth and last of the family, Vindictive, was laid down at Chatham Dock Yard in Kent on 27 Jan. 1896, carrying the name of a hard-luck Napoleonic War-era 74-gun third-rate ship of the line that was only broken up two decades before.
HMS Vindictive, from Navy and Army Illustrated, 1900, via Wiki
Commissioned on the 4th of July in 1900, she was a happy peacetime ship that served in the British Mediterranean Squadron for a decade before she was considered obsolete in the rapidly advancing days of post-Dreadnought naval technology.
In ordinary for two years from 1909-10, her armament was revamped, and she was modernized. Gone were the old MkII guns and 4.7s, replaced by a homogenous group of 10 new MkVII 6″/45cal breechloaders, among the snazziest British guns of the era.
Here is her diagram from the 1914 Janes.
In the above, note that she is the only one of her class left listed in the naval almanac. This is because Gladiator sank after a collision with the American liner (and Warship Wednesday alumni) SS Saint Paul in a heavy snowstorm off the Isle of Wight in 1908, Arrogant had become a depot ship in 1911 and Furious had likewise been hulked, leaving Vindictive as the sole member of the group still with the fleet by the time the Great War began– and even that was as a tender to the Home Squadrons.
On August 6:
0630: N.D.L. (Norddeutscher Lloyd) S.S. Schlesien boarded by Lieutenant Sayle R.N.R. and Fleet Paymaster G.A. Miller. Lat 46 02 N, Long 7 37 W. Reported carrying general cargo to Antwerp. Lieutenant Sayle and an armed guard of 13 men proceeded in the ship to Plymouth by order of Rear Admiral.
3.20 pm: Fired shot ahead of Austrian S.S. Alfa; Austrian steamer S.S. Alfa boarded by Lieutenant Pope R.N.R. and Fleet Paymaster Miller in Lat 45 24 N, Long 7 56 W. Reported carrying a cargo of grain. Ship ordered to report herself at Falmouth. Boarding Party returned.
8.30 pm: Atlantea S.N. Co. S.S. Polnay under Austrian Flag boarded by Lieutenant Pope and Fleet Paymaster G.A. Miller in Lat 44 57 W, Long 8 05 W. Reported carrying grain consigned to order at Rotterdam. Ship ordered to report herself at Falmouth. Boarding party returned.
Sept 8:
German collier Slawentzitz boarded by Commander Grayson, Lieutenant Sayle R.N.R. and Fleet Paymaster Miller. 5044 tons of coal consigned to Haiffa Syria. Lieutenant Sayle and prize crew of 13 men placed on board and ship sent to Gibraltar.
Following this, Vindictive was sent to warm Equatorial waters along the Abrolhos Rocks off Brazil and spent the next 18 months on the lookout for German surface raiders and submarines, boarding passing ships but largely having no reportable results.
Then, in June 1916, she was recalled to Britain for a change of pace that saw her deploy in October to Romanov (Murmansk) in the frozen wastes of the White Sea to protect the growing stockpile of Allied war material in that isolated Arctic backwater. She shuttled from there to Arkhangelsk and conducted drills with the locals and other visiting Allied ships until she was recalled to Plymouth once more in October 1917– just before Russia really went to crap in the Revolution.
Chilling back in England with the war at its fiercest, the old cruiser without a mission was to pull one heck of a job.
It was decided that she would be part of the big push to block the Belgian port at Zeebrugge, home to flotillas of German patrol boats and squadrons of U-boats. The task was three-fold, with (1) Vindictive and two converted Mersey ferries– Iris and Daffodil— coming alongside the mile-long Mole so they could discharge a battalion of sailors and Marines to go ashore and jack up the port while (2) a group of old cruisers–HMS Thetis, HMS Intrepid, and HMS Iphigenia— sank themselves as blockships in the Bruges Canal and (3) an old submarine blew the Mole itself.
Vindictive would be commanded during the raid by Capt. Alfred Francis Blakeney Carpenter, an RN veteran with service that dated back to the Boxer Rebellion.
The raid in a 2-minute nutshell:
To carry out her job as a landing ship (held to the Mole by a ship pushing bow on her starboard), the portside of Vindictive was fitted with a fly deck with 18 gangways handled by derricks, to allow rapid disembarkation of the landing force, made up of most of the 4th RMLI battalion and two companies of armed Jacks.
To provide more protection than her thin Harvey armor could on her exposed topside, splinter mats were installed liberally. Besides the mats, two Mk I 7.5-inch howitzers were mounted to go along with her four remaining 6-inch BL guns and as many Vickers Maxim guns as could be found. The Marine Storming Party, as it was termed, was equipped with 16 81mm Stokes trench mortars, one 11-inch howitzer (mounted aft), five 1-pounder (37mm) quick-firing Vickers Mark 1 pom-pom guns, and 16 Lewis guns which both added to Vindictive‘s armament and provided some mobile artillery to be taken ashore during the raid.
Going along with the Marines were 34 engineers, all volunteers of the Royal Naval Air Service Experimental Party, or Pyrotechnic Party, led by Lt. Graham S. Hewett, R.N.V.R., with Lt. A. L. Eastlake, R.E., second-in-command, armed with a variety of demolition charges, “fixed and portable flame-throwers, phosphorus grenades, etc.” Among these were a “telescopic” fixed flamethrower capable of sending a jet 90m– made by the J Morriss & Sons Ltd, an engineering company from Manchester that normally made fire hoses– as well as two very large five-man weapons fixed to a steel A-frame, these latter guns were called “Vincents” after Vindictive.
The group’s portable flame weapons consisted of the scuba-tank like Hay Flame Gun, created by Captain P. S. Hay of the Ministry of Munitions in December of 1917. It was the only portable British-made flamethrower used in WWI.
The operator slung the Hay Flame Gun from a shoulder strap so that it hung in front of his chest. He pressed a button on a dry-cell battery mounted on the lance, which ignited a pilot light under the nozzle. He then squeezed the oil-release valve at the base of the lance, which was identical to the brake handle on automobiles of the era.
The oil was pressurized with deoxygenated air pumped directly into the tank. When the operator ran or jumped, the propellant gas mixed with the oil and produced a foam, which greatly limited the range. For this reason, other flamethrowers had either separate internal propellant chambers or bottles attached externally to the oil tank.
The Hay Flame Gun was 35 inches tall by 5.5 inches in diameter. It carried 2.6 gallons of oil, which gave it a laden weight of 66 lbs. It had a range of about 66 feet and a duration of 15 seconds. A total of 36 where ordered by the Admiralty for use at Zeebrugge of which about 15 Hay Flame Guns were used in the raid in the raid In April 1918. The Flamethrowers were used to engulf the Mole parapet with liquid fire to clear any opposition before the storming parties went ashore.
HMS Vindictive steaming toward Zeebrugge, April 22, 1918. This image shows the full extent of the modifications for storming the mole, including the multiple brows and ramps, the splinter mat-armored foretop, the highest point of the ship (with machine guns and quick-firing cannons). Forward of that is the conning tower and forward of that was a mount for a large flamethrower (another is aft). These were put out of action by German shellfire before they could be used. Smoke from only the after stack shows that the forward boilers have been secured
Vindictive hit the Mole on schedule and was the center of the German fury during the raid. It was her illumination rockets that the Marines and sailors fought by, her smoke screen, flame and fire they were covered by, and her collision sirens that they retired to at the end of the operation.
As noted in the after-action report on the raid by Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, everything involving Vindictive came off as planned:
According to the time-table, the hour at which the “Vindictive” (Captain Alfred F. B. Carpenter) should have been laid alongside the Zeebrugge Mole was midnight. She reached her station one minute after midnight, closely followed by the “Daffodil” (Lieutenant Harold Campbell) and “Iris II” (Commander Valentine Gibbs). A few minutes later the landing of the storming and demolition parties began. By 1.10 a.m. the “Vindictive” had taken off the survivors, who had meanwhile done their work upon the Mole, and by 1.15 a.m. she and her consorts were clear of the Mole.
In the 75 minutes she spent on the Mole, Vindictive took a terrible beating, but she made it back to Dover under her own steam.
“Vindictive after Zeebrugge” 1918 May 23, Bain News Service print via LOC
German propaganda photo of the above
Besides Carpenter, who received the VC from the King as well as the Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor from France, several officers received lesser awards while 18 of Vindictive‘s crew picked up Distinguished Service Medals:
Ch. Air Mech. Clifford Armitage, R.N.A.S., O.N. F6981.
E.R.A., 4th Cl., Norman Carroll, O.N. M17679 (Ch.).
E.R.A., 3rd Cl., Herbert Cavanagh, O.N. M1111 (Po.).
Sto., 1st Cl., William Crawford, O.N. K34438 (Ch.).
M.A.A. Charles George Dunkason, O.N. 191301 (Po.).
Arm. Arthur William Evans, O.N. M7148 (Ch.).
Ldg. Sig. Albert James Gamby, O.N. J11326 (Ch.).
A.B. Arthur Geddes, O.N. J30822 (Ch.).
E.R.A., 5th Cl., Herbert Alfred Harris, O.N. M6218 (Po.).
Sto. P.O. Thomas Haw, O.N. 306429 (Po.).
Sto., 1st Cl., James Lewis Hayman, O.N. K35627 (Dev.).
P.O. Herbert Jackson, O.N. 213767 (Ch.).
A.B. Richard Ellis Makey, O.N. 219228 (Po.).
S.B.S. Arthur Ernest Page, O.N. M960 (Ch.).
Ch. Sto. Alfred Edward Sage, O.N. 281683 (Ch.).
Sto., 1st Cl., Joseph Smith, O.N. K24538 (Dev.).
E.R.A., 4th Cl., Alan Thomas, O.N. M16493 (Dev.).
P.O. Thomas Wood, O.N. 171903 (Ch.)
The next month, the battered and beaten but still afloat Vindictive had one more mission. Two hundred tons of cement was put into her after magazines and upper bunkers on both sides– which was all her draught would permit her to carry– and she was sunk as a blockship in the approaches to Ostend Harbor on 10 May 1918.
After the war, she was raised and broken up in 1920, with her bow saved and put on public display at Ostend, where it remains today.
Two of her sisters, Furious and Arrogant, was broken up just after her– though they had seen no action during the war. As for Vindictive‘s skipper, Carpenter, he went on to command a series of capital ships before moving to the retired list as a Rear Admiral in 1929, though he did return to service in WWII to command a Home Guard district. All good men must do their part, you know. His VC is in the IWM.
Several relics from Vindictive, to include her shot-up binnacle, a rum draw with a shrapnel wound, her J Morriss & Sons Ltd telescopic flamethrower, one of her 7.5cm howitzers, her voice tube, a piece of concrete from the Mole found on her deck after she returned to Dover and portions of her splinter mattresses are all in the collections of the IWM.
The same gun is now in the Royal Marines Museum’s collection
She is, of course, also remembered in maritime art such as the piece at the beginning of the post and this one on display at the Britannia Royal Naval College by Charles De Lacey, showing HMS ‘Vindictive’ at Zeebrugge, 23 April 1918, on loan from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
This week, the RN and RMs celebrated the 100th anniversary of the great raid. On Saturday, Belgium held a special service attended by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines with HRH The Princess Royal representing Her Majesty the Queen. A similar event was held in Dover on Monday with dignitaries from Belgium and Germany as well as the Senior Service.
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.
