The popular tourist trap, Ride the Ducks of Seattle, recently filed for bankruptcy after a high-profile 2015 fatal bridge accident with one of their vehicles resulted in a $123 million jury award.
With that being said, they have a collection of more than a dozen vintage DUKW amphibious vehicles up for liquidation in an online auction that runs until the 8th. Several of the vehicles are 1944-45 vintage GMCs and Sparkmans.
More details, here.
With the temperatures hovering around 100 already and another three months of summer to go, I needed a bit of chill in my life.
Maybe not as much as this poor guy, though, busy putting the “cold” back in the Cold War.
A U.S. Army soldier stands guard in the snow armed with an M16A1 rifle at an undisclosed location, 17 September 1985. NARA DA-ST-85-12838
If you ask me, the Joe is certainly rocking a similar vibe to one certain scruffy nerf herder of the same era
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 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 1, 2020: The Hunchback of Nord Virginia
Courtesy of the Library of Congress. LC-DIG-PPMSCA-33402
Here we see the steam ferry-turned-gunboat USS Hunchback somewhere on the James River, likely in late 1864. Note leisurely sitting officers on the lower deck with the sailors carefully posing assorted nautical actions above, complete with spyglasses. The only U.S. Navy warship to bear the name (so far), she was extensively chronicled by Matthew Brady (or someone of his group) in period photographs during the Civil War.
A wooden-hulled sidewheeler steamer, Hunchback was constructed in New York in 1852 for use by the New York and Staten Island Ferry Company. Some 179-feet overall, she could make 12 knots, making her a reliable– and fast– way to move people and light cargo around the boroughs of the bustling metropolis.
Side-wheel ferry Hunchback in commercial service, in 1859. Note horses and carts on her stern and passengers enjoying the upper deck chairs. Image from Maritime New York in Nineteenth-Century Photographs, P.11, Pub. by E. & H. T. Anthony-Johnson, Dover Publications Inc., New York, via Navsource. http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/09949.htm
Purchased by the Navy 16 December 1861, she sailed to Hampton Roads soon afterward and was commissioned there two weeks later, retaining her peacetime name. She joined such interesting vessels on the Naval List as USS Midnight, and USS Switzerland, likewise taken up from trade with their names intact, a necessary evil as some 418 existing ships were purchased for naval use by the Union fleet during the war in addition to the more than 200 new vessels ordered from various yards.
Armed with a trio of soda-bottle-shaped IX-inch Dahlgren smoothbore shell guns (two forward, one stern) and a fearsome 100-pound/6.4-inch West Point-made naval Parrott (capable of a 7,800-yard range) over her bow, she was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron as a fourth-rate gunboat and by 5 February was in combat– only six weeks after her purchase– using her newly-mounted cannon to bombard Fort Barrow in support of Gen. Burnside’s invasion of Roanoke Island. She reportedly had to move in close to the Confederate works and received extensive punishment from the rebels in exchange.
No rest for the weary, her shakedown cruise continued with supporting landings up the Chowan River throughout the next month, coming to a head with a sortie up the Neuse River to New Bern where she and other gunboats of the Squadron engaged batteries and landed troops, capturing the key depot.
“The Battle at Newbern– Repulse of the Rebels, March 14, 1862.” Line engraving, published in Harper’s Weekly, 11 April 1863, depicting the action at Fort Anderson, Neuse River, North Carolina. U.S. Navy gunboats Hunchback, Hetzel, Ceres, and Shawsheen are firing from the river at Confederate forces, as Union artillery and infantry move into position on the near shore. NH 95121
Hunchback continued to see hot service in the sounds of North Carolina through September 1863, especially up the Chowan. During her 20 months in Tar Heel waters, she broke up the Confederate siege of Washington (N.C.) on the Pamlico River, helped defend Fort Anderson, captured at least four small ships, and engage rebels in an extended action below Franklin, Virginia.
It was against Franklin that one of her crew, Ohio-born bluejacket Thomas C. Barton, earned the Medal of Honor. His citation read,
“When an ignited shell, with cartridge attached, fell out of the howitzer upon the deck, S/man Barton promptly seized a pail of water and threw it upon the missile, thereby preventing it from exploding.”
Barton would go on to rise to Acting Master Mate and perish aboard the old 74-gun ship of the line USS North Carolina in 1864, likely from illness. It should be remembered that most of those who died in the Civil War did so from disease and sickness, rather than bullet and shrapnel.
Withdrawn from the line in late 1863, Hunchback would make for Baltimore where her war damage was repaired, her hull corrected, and her steam plant overhauled.
Thus reconditioned, the armed ferry returned to the fleet in May 1864, towing the new Canonicus-class monitor USS Saugus up Virginia’s James River where the armored beast, along with her sisters Canonicus and Tecumseh, could support operations against Richmond and defend against Confederate ironclads.
The 500-ton Hunchback would continue her time in the James River, based at Deep Bottom, for the next 10 months and was used as a fire engine of sorts, splitting her time running supplies and dispatches up the river while pitching in to provide brown water naval gunfire support along the muddy banks whenever the Confederates obliged to come within range. Her most notable action on the James was on 30 June when accompanied by Saugus, she clashed with Confederate batteries at Four Mills Creek.
It was during this Virginia period, sometime between May 1864 and March 1865, that she hosted a photographer, often chalked up as Matthew Brady– or at least someone associated with him, perhaps Egbert Guy Fowx. Notably, and something that is backed up by muster rolls that state many of her crew were enlisted “on the James River,” her complement included several apparent recently freed slaves.
Ship’s officers and crew relaxing on deck, in the James River, Virginia, 1864-65. Formerly attributed to Mathew B. Brady. One man is playing the banjo in the foreground, another is holding a small white dog, while others are reading newspapers. Men seated in the center appear to be peeling potatoes. Many crewmen are wearing their flat hats in the style of berets and most have no shoes, a standard practice in naval service until the 20th Century. About a fifth of this ship’s crew appears to be African Americans. Also, note the two IX-inch Dahlgrens to the port and starboard. The original photograph has Brady negative number B-2011. Catalog #: NH 59430
Some of the ship’s officers and crewmen pose on deck for the novelty of a photograph, while she was serving on the James River, Virginia, in 1864-65. Note swords, folding chairs, and details of the officer and enlisted uniforms to include informal straw hats at a jaunty angle. The original photograph has Brady negative number B-470. NH 51955
Deck of gunboat Hunchback on James River attributed to Matthew Brady. Note the detail of the ensign’s jacket and Model 1852 Officer’s Sword as well as the beautiful bottle-shaped IX-inch Dahlgren on a wooden Marsilly carriage with its crew tools and three shells on deck. The smoothbore beast weighed around 4.5-tons and used a 13-pound black powder charge to fire a 73-pound shell or 90-pound solid shot to 3,450 yards. LOC ARC Identifier: 526212
Boilermakers at work on Hunchback. Note the portable furnace and anvil. Formerly attributed to Mathew B. Brady, via The Met, accession no. 33.65.323
Officers at work on the Hunchback. These include a pair of Acting Ensigns aboard ship under a canopy. Note the sponge and ramrod for a naval gun overhead as well as a gun rack filled with muskets just inside the P-way. The elevation screw of what looks to be the ship’s single 6.4-inch Parrot is to the far left. Formerly attributed to Mathew B. Brady, via The Met, accession no. 33.65.321
Brady/Fowx apparently found the ship’s landing guns fascinating.
Gunners loading a 12-pounder Dahlgren smooth-bore howitzer, which is mounted on a field carriage. Note three of the gun crew appear to be teenage (or younger) “powder monkeys.” Also, observe the roping around the wheels to provide traction on the ship’s wooden decks. Photographed in the James River, Virginia, 1864-65. The original photograph has Brady negative number B-6193. NH 59431
Two bosuns–wearing their photo best to include crisp cracker jacks and brogans– standing by a Dahlgren 12-pounder rifled howitzer mounted on an iron field carriage. Note Hunchback’s walking beam steam engine pivot mechanism overhead. The original photograph has Brady negative number B-635. NH 59434
Two of the ship’s officers standing by a Dahlgren 12-pounder rifled howitzer mounted on an iron field carriage. Note M1852 officer’s swords and very informal uniforms. The original photograph has Brady negative number B-639. NH 59432
Loading drill on a Dahlgren 12-pounder rifled howitzer mounted on an iron field carriage. Note the combination sponge/ramrod in use and monkey at right with powder can. The original photograph has Brady negative number B-620. NH 59433
Two of the ship’s officers seated in folding chairs on the upper deck. Note the excellent view of Hunchback’s walking beam mechanism at right and 12-pounder Dahlgren smooth-bore howitzer in the background. The original photograph has Brady negative number B-613. Name “Rand” appears, erased on the back of the image. NH 59435
Just before the end of the war on 17 March 1865, Hunchback was sent back to her old stomping grounds in the coastal sounds of North Carolina– loaded with solid shot and three spar torpedoes (mines) in case she ran into a rebel ironclad— resulting in once again being sent up the Chowan River to clear the way for Sherman, who was marching North.
RADM David Porter, in writing to Commodore William H. Macomb, was blunt about the flotilla’s ability to halt any expected sortie by the Confederate ram CSS Neuse, sistership of the infamous CSS Albemarle— which was in fact not a threat at the time.
By 1 April, Hunchback made contact up the Chowan with advanced scouts of the 1st New York Mounted Rifles, part of the Army of the James pushing South, near Stumpy Reach (Point?), where her war effectively ended.
On 1 June, Hunchback was “sent north” on orders from Porter, along with at least 20 other converted steamers, no longer needed for any sort of naval service, and swiftly disarmed and decommissioned at New York 12 June 1865.
She was sold 12 July 1865 to the New York & Brooklyn Ferry Co., was renamed General Grant in 1866, and remained in service until 1880. While some records have her on the Brooklyn-to-New York ferry run for the next 15 years, the City of Boston has records of her purchase, for $23,000 in December 1865, to the East Boston Ferry Company.
Her final fate is unknown, but as she was a wooden-hulled vessel, it is not likely she endured much beyond the 1880s.
The muster rolls of the Hunchback, as well as extensive disapproved pension applications for her former crew members, are in the National Archives.
Specs:
Painting/Computer-generated imagery by Orin 2005, via Navsource http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/09949.htm
Displacement: 517 tons
Length: 179 ft.
Beam: 29 ft.
Depth of Hold: 10 ft.
Propulsion: One 40-inch bore, 8-foot stroke vertical walking beam steam engine; twin sidewheels
Speed 12 knots
Crew: Listed as “99” although some muster rolls have her with as many as 125 aboard
Armament: Hunchback was listed in naval returns as having 7 guns, however, DANFS just lists:
3 x 9-inch guns
1 x 100-pounder 6.4-inch Naval Parrott rifle
She also carried at least two if not three 12-pounder landing guns, as extensively shown in photos, which could explain the apparent discrepancy.
In 1865 she also apparently carried a spar torpedo
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!
While Remington has quietly ditched traditional black rifle brands Bushmaster and DPMS in the past several months– perhaps in a bid to get bought by the Navajo Nation — Colt exited the AR market late last year, much to the applause of anti-gun groups and politicians.
However, I spoke to Colt at the time and they made clear the departure was only temporary, due to having landed a multi-million FMS contract for overseas allies.
With that being said, Colt says they are now back to the business of shipping ARs for the consumer market again. Everything old is new again, it would appear.
Colt first began marketing the semi-auto AR-15 Sporter to consumers in 1963 and continued to sell the SP-1 (R6000) series with few changes until 1984, since moving on to other AR-style rifles.
More in my column at Guns.com.
In a follow-up to the post on the German Type 212A submarines earlier this week, check out this SINKEX of the former Hellenic Navy transport Evros (A-415)— herself the ex-West German Navy Type 706 replenishment ship Schwarzwald (A1400)— sent to the bottom of the Agean by the Greek Papanikolis- (German Type 214)-class submarine HS Pipinos (S-121) through the use of a warshot SST-4 Mod. 0 Robbe (Seal) torpedo off Karpathos island last month.
The SST-4, introduced by Atlas Elektronik in 1980, is a Cold War-era 533mm heavyweight wire-guided/passive homing torpedo that has been replaced in German service with more modern fiber-optic guided torps. Still, it seems to work well enough to do the job against a stationary target ship, anyway.
In the video below, you can see the fish track all the way on the surface to make a near-perfect hit.
Of note, the Turks, who also operate German-made subs, had a SINKEX, two years ago, with TCG Yıldıray (S-350) using an SST-4 against a retired tanker, TCG Sadettin Gürcan (A 573)– of course putting the Greeks on notice.
Founded in 1664, the Royal Marines have been around for a minute.
Royal Marines, left, and U.S. Marines meet in Egypt in 1882
Their new uniform– a very U.S. style Crye Precision MultiCam pattern job which looks familiar alongside their M4 style carbines– will include the WWII-era commando patches as well as, for the first time, a Royal Navy Ensign in tactical green and black rather than the traditional “White Duster.”
Further, the iconic Fairbairn-Sykes Dagger patch of 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines has been redesigned and is based on the first pattern of the legendary fighting knife made in 1940.
The RMs are increasingly using Canadian C8 Colt Carbines (adopted as the L119A2) rather than the same L85A2 Enfield (SA80 A2) used by the British Army. They switched from the Browning Hi-Power to the Gen 4 Glock 17 a few years back.
As appropriate with the 70th anniversary of the Korean War this month, the DOD reports:
In the largest repatriation of South Korean soldiers’ remains from the Korean War, 147 such remains were returned to South Korea following an honor ceremony last week at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and [South Korea’s] Ministry of National Defense Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification have jointly worked on the remains, as being ROK soldiers who had often died alongside U.S. troops.
MAKRI and DPAA scientists have conducted joint forensic reviews and validated 147 remains as being of South Korean origin.
In a mutual exchange, six Americans identified on South Korean battlefields were transferred to U.S. custody at Osan.
Honor Guard from UN countries participates in a dignified transfer as part of a repatriation ceremony at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, June 26, 2020. The United Nations Command in Korea remains committed to enforcing the 1953 UN Armistice Agreement and overseeing activities such as this repatriation. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Noah Sudolcan)
In logical reaction to police brutality in Minnesota captured in an iPhone snuff film, Loreal is deleting the word “whitening” from its marketing but will surely still sell the same fish oil under a different name, cartoon characters have vanished like commissars in Stalinist photographs, and episodes of already dated sitcoms are being memory-holed from their streaming service time capsules.
Meanwhile, statues of everyone from Francis Scott Key– whose virtually unknown ditty could be replaced by a hippy song that came from the Yoko-era– to a Norwegian abolitionist who died trying to end slavery have been toppled.
In the latest episode of waking from the slumber of a lack of awareness to scrub something away that is now problematic, the historic 327-foot Secretary-class gunboat/high endurance cutter USCGC Taney (WPG/WHEC-37), known to many as the “Queen of the Sea,” has been quietly renamed, her stern nameplate torched off and her signage and gangplank fabric removed from where she sits as a museum ship in Baltimore.
Living Classrooms Board of Trustees, who controls Historic Ships Baltimore, voted over the weekend to change Taney’s name to Thurgood Marshall.
As a background, the vessel was named for Roger Brooke Taney, a controversial figure and racist by today’s standards who, besides serving as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of War and Attorney General, also filled in for “Old Hickory” as his Treasury Secretary– which is why the cutter was named after him, as the class of seven 327-foot cutters were all named for previous Revenue Service bosses (Bibb, Campbell, Duane, Alexander Hamilton, Ingham, Spencer, Taney), a department the USCG belonged to until 1967. Further, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service had named a previous ship “Taney” in the 1830s, arguing that it was a historic ship name to one degree or another.
By all means, Taney the man is seen as unredeemable today, delivering the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case and penning some other very tough-to-read thoughts that no one in the past half-century has entertained as being acceptable.
Should the 1930s USCG have named their new vessel after him? Probably not, even by the standards of that era, but nonetheless they did and USCGC Taney went on to deliver tremendous service to the country.
She was at Pearl Harbor and Midway then escorted convoys across the Atlantic before coming back to the Pacific where she served as an amphibious command ship off Okinawa, ending WWII in Japanese Home Waters.
Taney at Pearl Harbor
USS Taney, CG (WPG-37) Taney, 327-foot Coast Guard combat cutter, is shown here wearing battle gray while on convoy escort duty in the Atlantic
A few years later she put on her war paint once again for Korea.
Not to be deterred, she continued to serve in the post-war Coast Guard, saving lives, delivering the rule of law across marine fisheries, combatting smugglers, and manning isolated ocean stations for the sake of the greater good. Oh yeah, and doing the whole Cold War thing, too.
Taney maintains surveillance of the Soviet refrigerator vessel Chernjakhovsk off northern California in May of 1965.
She went on to fire 3,400 rounds in NGFS in Vietnam while her crew assisted 6,000 souls ashore in civil support.
In the summer of 1973 Taney was fitted with a special storm-tracking, first in the world, Doppler Radar antenna housed in a distinctive bulbous dome fitted atop her pilothouse. She would spend most of the 70s on Ocean Weather Station (OWS) Hotel.
On weather station, every six hours or so, the NOAA folks would launch a weather balloon, which the cutter could track in CIC with its AN/SPA52 Air Search radar.
Thousands of men, and in her latter days, women, walked her decks and risked their lives against all manner of enemies both two-legged and sent by Poseidon. They did so for their shipmates and their country, not to honor Andrew Jackson’s T-SEC.
None of her crew ever met the man. Honestly, most probably never read the first word of any of his legal opinions or speeches. Nonetheless, they are now deemed guilty of Dred Scot-by-proxy by people who know nothing of their sacrifice.
While the oldest ship in the fleet in 1984, the Coast Guard filmed a recruiting commercial partially on her deck– narrated by James Earl Jones– highlighting diversity in the service.
After 50 years of service, Cutter Taney decommissioned on 7 December 1986– the 45th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack– and by Act of Congress was turned over to the city of Baltimore, Maryland–Roger Brooke Taney’s hometown, for use as a museum ship, and as such was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
No one could argue that Thurgood Marshall was not “a colossus of U.S. history.” First appointed to the federal bench by President John F. Kennedy– a Navy man– Marshall came to the court after arguing cases such as Brown v Education before the nation’s high court, which in many ways helped move civil rights forward for the nation. However, while Marshall is interred at Arlington due to his service as a jurist and in the early 1950s investigated charges of racism in the United States armed forces, he was not a military man and had no connection to the Coast Guard, Navy or the cutter that is preserved in Baltimore that now bears his name in retirement. About his closest tie to the sea service was that one of his grandfathers, Isaiah Olive Branch Williams, volunteered and served aboard the brig USS Santiago de Cuba during the Civil War and the frigate USS Powhatan after.
In the end, should the historic vessel have its name– from a man that is now considered despicable but nonetheless one that was carried into battle across three wars– erased from history and replaced with one of a man who, although a hero, never had a connection to said vessel, to atone for the nation’s guilt when it comes to race relations?
As noted by Jay Sea Archeology on the very subject of the Taney’s name :
A ship and more importantly, its crew makes her own history and being a ship, a form of transportation, makes it part of the context of larger world history. The vessel is preserved because of her own history and not that of her namesake and continues to educate to this day. This ship is not something to condemn, its something to be proud of.
But then again, I guess none of that matters anymore.
Some 500 people, many former crewmates, have signed a petition against the move.
Insert random George Orwell quote here __
WELT has recently posted this super interesting 50~ minute English-language doc on the German Type/Klasse 212A Unterseeboot, U32 (S182) “on its journey from the Eckernforde naval base through the difficult-to-navigate Kiel Canal to Plymouth in England,” for a NATO exercise.
I caution you now, when compared to U.S. bubbleheads, the modern crop of Germans are a bit sloppy looking and sport a lot of hair, but then again, that has been pretty common in the past few decades with Western European NATO militaries with the exception of the French, Brits, and Italians.
Nonetheless, Type 212s are excellent platforms.
Commissioned in 2005, U32 is tiny when compared to U.S. boats, tipping the scales at 1,800-tons (submerged) and having a length of just 183.7-feet.
She carries up to 13 fiber-optic-guided torpedoes in time of war or tension. With her X-tail, she can dive in seas as shallow as 55-feet– making her able to operate almost to the edge of the 10-fathom curve in littoral space– and, using AIP, remain submerged for weeks without poking a snorkel up. Periscope depth is just 44 feet.
On such a compact vessel, everything is a bit cramped and every compartment serves multiple purposes– the boat’s small arms locker is under the skipper’s bunk.
Sister U31. I still think a laughing sawfish would look great on her sail.
U31
Of note, Germany only has six of these vessels in a single squadron and a total of just about 80 active submariners in four crews, each of about 20~ men (and women).
“There are more Bundesliga footballers than submariners in Germany.”
The German boat also has beer aboard, enough for two cans per sailor per day– stored in empty torpedo tubes.
Donitz is surely rolling in his grave!
The below image shows Maj. A. D’Arcy Marks and Capt. A. Brandon Conron of the Canadian 6th Armoured Regiment (1st Hussars) (6 CAR), posed in front of an M4A2 Sherman medium tank near Colomby-sur-Thaon, France, 28 June 1944 in the push out from Normandy.
Note the tracks on the front of the Sherman. Photo by Ken Bell, Library and Archives Canada
Marks has what appears to be a Browning Hi-Power (or M1911?) in a very interesting holster that appears to be a British Pattern 37 flap holster that has been partially cutaway. Conron, meanwhile, is well-outfitted with a revolver rig that includes not only spare rounds but also a cleaning rod in the holster.
As for the 1st Hussars, formed in 1856, they served overseas with distinction in the Great War, earning honors at Vimy Ridge. They returned to France in 1944, landing at Juno Beach where they were “the only unit of the Allied invasion forces known to reach its final objective on D-Day,” which certainly lived up to their motto of Hodie non cars, (Today not tomorrow).
Still part of the Canadian Forces Reserve, they are currently stationed at London, Ontario as part of the 31 Canadian Brigade Group.