Tag Archives: key west

The well-lit, but briefly-loved, Perry

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I give you, the winner of Destroyer Division 601’s Christmas lighting competition, December 1961:

USS John R. Perry (DE-1034) Christmas lighting aboard ship while at Key West Naval Station Annex, Key West, Florida.

She was a Claud Jones-class destroyer escort built at Avondale in New Orleans and commissioned 5 May 1959. The 1,750-ton, 312-footer was lightly armed, even more so than DE’s of WWII, with just 2 3″/50 caliber Mk 33 guns, 6 324mm ASW torpedo tubes, and two Hedgehog projectors.

Slow and more of an offshore patrol vessel than a destroyer, they were unpopular ships for the Navy and soon on the chopping block when the new and much more capable ASROC/5-inch gun/DASH drone-equipped Knox-class (DE-1052/FF-1052), capable of 27+ knots, began showing up on the scene in 1969.

Perry was decommissioned in 1973 after just 14 years service and warm transferred to Indonesia, (along with all three of her sisters: Jones, Barry, and McMorris) where she served as the KRI Samadikun (341) until 2003.

A Key West Prohibition-era scene

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Photo courtesy of The Haffenffer Collection

Here we see a waterfront view of Naval Station Key West sometime likely around 1925. Visible to the right is the Wickes-class destroyer USS Maury (DD-100) just behind the local twin-masted schooner Eureka, while the tug to the left is USS Saco (YT-31).

Named after famed 19th Century astronomer and hydrographer, CDR Matthew Fontaine Maury and commissioned 23 September 1918, the 1,199-ton Maury was a “flush-deck” or “four-stack” type destroyer common to the Navy until the 1930s and got in one Atlantic convoy run in the Great War before she was sidelined on red lead row. Reactivated in 1920 as a destroyer minelayer (DM-5) in July, 1920, she carried her former destroyer bow number (100) through her active career, which she largely spent on the East Coast– with the exception of a Caribbean cruise in the summer of 1925 that included a stopover at Key West. She later struck in 1930 as part of the fallout from the Washington and London naval treaties and was scrapped in 1934. Incidentally, three other ships went on to carry Maury’s name, including DD-401 and two survey ships, the most recent of which just entered service.

Purchased for use as a yard tug at the Naval Air Station Key West, Saco operated there as “Alexander Brown” until 24 November 1920, when she was renamed “Saco” and re-designated YT-31. She continued yard tug operations until struck from the Navy list on 22 October 1926. She was sold the next year and her ultimate fate is unknown.

As for Eureka, she sailed regularly around the Gulf throughout the 1920s as a coaster carrying various cargoes and I found mention in the Marco County library that she was still pulling houseboats down to the Keys as late as the 1930s. Odds are she crossed paths with Papa Hemingway in her travels and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was still around somewhere down south under a different name.  Key West is funny like that.

That Key West experience

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“Military Men standing by a small gun. Fort Zachary Taylor. Key West. 1918. Monroe County Library”


Looks like a 3-inch gun on a masking parapet mount without the gun shield (which would have gone on the hooks) mounted. Taylor had six of these guns in two batteries (Adair and Dilworth) between 1899-1920 during the installation’s Endicott Period, which would correlate to the uniforms, which curiously are Naval though the fort was an Army Coastal Artillery post. Perhaps they were just checking out the landlubber’s gun…

From the position, it looks like Battery Adair, which mounted four Driggs-Seabury low-angle 3-inchers in M1898MI mounts, emplaced to cover controlled minefields leading up to the fort’s masonry walls. The battery was named after the late 1st Lt. Lewis D. Adair, 22nd U.S. Infantry, who died 5 Oct 1872, of wounds received in action with Sioux Indians at Heart River Crossing, Dakota Territory. Adair, who at the time of his last battle was fifteen miles from Heart Butte, on Heart river, while on duty with his company escorting the Northern Pacific Railroad survey of the area, was reportedly given his death blow by the great Hunkpapa Sioux chief Gall.

According to Fort Wiki, the end of the Great War ended the battery’s usefulness and “On 27 Mar 1920 all four guns were ordered removed and the carriages salvaged. The guns were transferred to Watervliet 17 Sep 1920 and the mounts were scrapped 20 May 1920.”

A look at JIATF South

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CBS takes an in-depth look at Joint Interagency Task Force South. Based out of Key West, it’s commanded by a USCG flag officer but includes assets from throughout USSOUTHCOM and 4th Fleet. It’s a neat video with a lot of access granted. They go inside the CIC of a National Security Cutter– USCGC James (WMSL-754)– see HITRON fire some rounds, and get a close up of Bigfoot, the narcosub over at Truman Annex that everyone poses for pictures with.

So many racing stripes

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A rarely seen combined fleet of some 26 District 7 Coast Guard cutters from the entire East Coast of Florida and South Georgia moored at the piers of Sector Key West for storm avoidance during Hurricane Matthew earlier this month.

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In the above images, you can spot three medium endurance cutters including two 270-foot Bear-class and one 210-foot Reliance-class (Diligence, WHEC-616), 10 new 154-foot Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutters (WPCs), an WLIC type construction tender, a couple of 110’s and at least six 87-foot Marine Protector-class WPBs.

Word is, drinks at the Hog’s Breath and along Duval’s watering holes were bottomed out.

In addition to the USCG armada, the bulk of the Royal Bahamas Defense Force, some nine haze gray patrol boats, weathered Matthew at Key West tucked in among the cruise ships and the old USCGC Ingham.

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Once the all clear was sounded, many of the cutters left for urgent disaster relief along the U.S. coast as well as in Haiti. The RBDF vessels sailed home to their own disaster response– stocked with diapers, bottled water and non-perishable food donated by the people of Key West.

Bonne Chance and welcome to the Conch Republic

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French Friggate Germinal F735 of the French Marine Nationale moors to the Mole Pier in Key west 17 june

French Floreal-class frigate (“frégate de surveillance”) Germinal (F735) of the French Marine Nationale moors to the Mole Pier in Key West 17 June, 2016.

She is roughly the size of Key West’s normal “naval” presence– the 270-foot medium endurance cutter USCGC Mohawk, though marginally better equipped and about a decade newer.

Commissioned 17 May 1994, she is one of a class of six lightly armed (a 100mm CADAM mount re-purposed from retired destroyers, a couple of Exocets and a couple of 20mm cannons) sentry ships designed to patrol French overseas territories and dependencies such as Tahiti, French Guiana, etc.

Equipped with an all-diesel powerplant, she can cruise forever, just not very slowly and is built to merchant specs (dig the marking for the bulbous bow and thruster).

Basically, she is the modern concept of a “peace cruiser.”

Germinal is based at Fort-de-France, Martinique, which actually makes the Keys part of her “beat.”