Last July I covered the mystery of the Danish school ship København, one of the largest sailing ships ever built at a staggering 430-feet long and 4,000-tons. She is also one of the most enduring mysteries of the sea, having vanished in the South Atlantic in late 1928, with not a soul of her 17 officers and 62 naval cadet crew ever seen again.
Well LSOZI reader Sue Trewartha from South Australia sent in a stack of old Kobenhavn photos for us to enjoy. You see the “Big Dane” was a regular in Australian waters on the wheat run– and in fact was making her way around the tip of South American headed Down Under when she vanished.
Sue tells me, “I have been collecting local and family history here at Ceduna since 1986 and have gathered these photos and chased up a little of the history of Kobenhavn as well.”
Many of these photos are from the collection of the Ceduna National Trust Museum and have rarely been seen. They are all large images so “click to big-up!”
This first one is the Kobenhavn at the Thevenard jetty. The jetty was only opened in 1920 and could handle large sailing ships. Ceduna National Trust Museum
Amidships image by David Harding
Painting signed by the captain of the Kobenhavn (Christensen?) for Mr Vin Irwin. His daughter Helene Bourne shared this photo with us and is happy we use it. Vin Irwin was the provisioner to the ships in Cedena as he was the local market owner from 1912-1953. As such he built up a close relationship with the various captains.
At the jetty, group of locals on jetty. She truly was an impressive ship. From the Ceduna National Trust.
Captain of the sailing ship Mexico, who was part of the search for the Kobenhavn. Image courtesy of Helene Bourne
Photo labeled sailors and locals on board Kobenhavn. This photo is shared by the family of Percy Lange, Ceduna.
Train along docks with Kobenhavn in distance. Photo courtesy of Helene Bourne
This photo shows Kobenhavn on the right, and possibly steam ship VARDULIA on the other side. the smaller boat may be one that has lightered bagged wheat from smaller ports in the area, into THEVENARD
Kobenhavn being loaded with bagged wheat. Photo courtesy of Geoff Lowe of Ceduna
Kobenhavn tied to jetty no 2, Ceduna National Trust Museum.
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 Nov 12, 2014: The Centennial State’s Dreadnought
Here we see the beautiful art deco battleship USS Colorado (BB-45), the pinnacle of pre-WWII U.S. Naval warship design as represented by maritime artist Jim Tomlinson.
Arguably the most powerful class of battleship afloat in the world at the time, Colorado was head of her class of three ships that included USS Maryland, and Warship Wednesday alumni USS West Virginia.
Colorado (BB-45) leading, Maryland (BB-46) following. The 3 sisters can be distinguished from one another (during the 20’s and early 30’s) by the forward range dial. Colorado carries hers half below the bottom of the fire control tower, the Maryland carries hers fully on the face of the fire control tower while the West Virginia (BB-48) carries hers like the Colorado but her dials are black with white numbers. Text & photo i.d. courtesy of Chris Hoehn. Photo possibly by Frank Lynch, chief photographer of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, circa 1929, from the collection of Carrie Schmidt. Navsource . Click to bigup
Displacing nearly 35,000-tons at a full load, their rakish clipper bow set them apart from earlier US battlewagons and made them far drier, especially in rough weather. Turbo-electric transmission pushed four screws and could make 21-knots. Keeping enough oil in her bunkers for an 8000-mile round trip at half that, she was capable of crossing the Atlantic without an oiler to keep close to her.
Colorado just after commissioning. Note the rakish bow.
Up to 13.5-inches of armor (18 on turret faces) shielded her while eight powerful 16-inch guns gave her tremendous ‘throw’. In fact, these guns were among the heaviest afloat until marginally outclassed by the North Carolina-class in 1941.
The closest rival in any fleet around the world to her in 1923 was the British HMS Hood. Hood was bigger and faster (47,000-tons, 31-knots) but had thin armor and 8-15-inch guns. The Japanese Nagato-class were also slightly larger (38,000-tons), slightly faster (25-knots), and 8x 16-inch guns, but like the Hood had less armor.
As a hold back of pre-WWI thinking, she was the last class of US battleships commissioned with torpedo tubes and a four-turret main battery.
Ordered just eight months before the U.S. entered WWI, she was laid down at New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden New Jersey after the end of that conflict. Slow going post-war construction meant that she did not join the fleet until 30 Aug 1923.
A happy ship in the days between the two great wars of the 20th century, she made a maiden voyage to Europe to show off the big guns in every large port from England to Italy and then headed to the Pacific, where she joined the blue water navy based in California and Hawaii. During this next two decades, she performed typical peacetime missions such as NROTC cruises, gunnery exercises, fleet problems, and testing new equipment.
USS Colorado, overhead view 1932. Note the two Vought O3U Corsair float planes on her stern, which Colorado carried since just after she was commissioned. These would be replaced by Curtiss Seagulls in 1936 and in turn by Curtiss Kingfishers.
USS Colorado at 1934 New York naval review with three early float biplanes. While stationed for most of her career in the Pacific, she did reach the East Coast from time to time via the…
…Panama Canal. Click to bigup.
Early 1920s photo with Colorado without her catapult mounted on C turret and seaplanes. These were fitted in ~1928.
When the drums of war in the Pacific started beating in 1941, she was sent to Puget Sound Naval Yard for a one-year refit and upgrade. This saved her from the fate suffered by her sistership USS West Virginia, who absorbed at least 7 Japanese torpedoes on Dec. 7, 1941 while resting on Battleship Row.
With Maryland, who, suffering only two bomb hits at Pearl and likewise escaped destruction on that day of infamy, she formed the tiny reserve of battleships in the Pacific while the Navy was on the defensive. Then in 1943, she went to hard work and proved those mother big twenty-year-old guns of hers weren’t just pretty hood ornaments.
Bow view, port side of the Colorado (BB-45) 2 October 1944. She wore this camouflage scheme through most of the war.
She participated in no less than ten protracted amphibious operations with the Japanese forces between Nov 1943 and the end of the war including Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, the Marianas, Leyte, Mindoro, Luzon and Okinawa. In all she fired over 60,000 shells in anger including 5,495 rounds of 16-inch at shore targets, totally nearly 7,000-tons of ordinance.
During WWII, she spent a total of 204 days in active combat, steaming an impressive 161,879 miles. In addition to this, she downed 11 Japanese aircraft while suffering over 400 casualties during the war from kamikazes and enemy fire.
Many of these losses occurred in duals with Japanese shore batteries. In the worst instance, Colorado was hit by 22 confirmed shells off Tinian July 24, 1944. However, that island was cleared out successfully in part to the ship’s sacrifice and just over a year later, a B-29 carrying the first Atomic bomb to be dropped in warfare took off from that little piece of rock to strike Hiroshima.
USS Colorado off Tinian 24-July-1944 with hull damage, the result of 22 hits from shore batteries
Okinawa Landing, U.S.S. Colorado,1945 Painting By Anthony Saunders.
Colorado holds the all-time record of 37 consecutive days of firing at an enemy and the record of 24 direct enemy air attacks in 62 days both while at Okinawa.
Colorado 1945 Okinawa.Note her seaplanes are not present, likely airborne to help correct shot.
Finishing the war in Japanese home waters, being awarded ten battlestars. She was decommissioned 7 January 1947, just shy of 23 years of hard service. Sadly, after a dozen years on Bremerton’s red lead row of mothball ships, she was stricken and sold to Todd Shipyard for disposal. The Maritime Administration recovered $611,777.77 in her value as scrap metal.
Today her memory is kept alive by the USS Colorado Association who maintain an excellent website.
Although scrapped, parts of her remain in a number of memorials across the country. A half dozen of her 5/51’s are on the decks of the USS Olympia, Dewey’s old flagship, in Philadelphia. These include the ships wheel and bell in Boulder and one of her 5-inch guns in Seattle at the Museum of History and Industry.
Also in Seattle, where she was scrapped at Todd, her beautiful teak-wood decking was re-purposed in 1959 and used to line the cafeteria at the Boeing Developmental Center, where it is still in use today helping to shelter those who build the country’s warplanes.
As a side, if you ever get to Tinian, the 6-inch shore gun that fired at the Colorado (BB-45) and the Norman Scott (DD-640) in 1944 is still there, in much rusted condition.
Specs:
Displacement: 32,600 long tons
Length: 624 ft. 3 in (190.27 m)
Beam: 97 ft. 4 in (29.67 m)
Draft: 38 ft. (12 m)
Propulsion:
Four screws
Turbo-electric transmission
28,900 shp (22 MW) forward
Speed: 21 knots (39 km/h)
Range: 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h) (design)
Complement: 1,080
Armament:
(1923)
8 × 16 inch 45 caliber Mark 5 gun (4 × 2)
14 × 5 inch/51 caliber guns
2 × 21 inch torpedo tubes
Armor:
Belt: 8–13.5 in (203–343 mm)
Barbettes: 13 in (330 mm)
Turret face: 18 in (457 mm)
Turret sides: 9–10 in (229–254 mm)
Turret top: 5 in (127 mm)
Turret rear 9 in (229 mm)
Conning tower: 11.5 in (292 mm)
Decks: 3.5 in (89 mm)
Aviation: one catapult, 2 float planes
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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 Nov. 5, Mr. Bond’s Blowpipe-carrying smoke boat
HMS Aeneas S-72 seen in 1971 coming alongside HMS Forth A-187 at Devonport Photo from Maritime Quest
Here we see the His Majesty’s submarine HMS Aeneas (P427, then S-72), an A-class diesel boat of the Royal Navy coming alongside HMS Forth A-187 at Devonport. She is named after the ancient Trojan hero who fought his way out of the burning city state.
Trojan hero Aeneas and the god Tiber, by Bartolomeo Pinelli.
The pinnacle of British submarine development in World War II, the crown ordered 46 “A-class” vessels in the last months of that conflict to serve in the Pacific. These 1600-ton submersibles, at 280.5-feet oal, were smaller than American fleet boats of the time and were more in-line with German and Italian designs of the era. Capable of a 10,500-nm range at an economical 11-knot, these were deep divers, capable of over 500-feet dive depth. With half-dozen forward tubes and four rear ones, these subs could tote 20 torpedoes in addition to their modest topside armament of a single 4-inch gun and a smattering of AAA pieces. Capable of being constructed in 8-months or less due to their modularity and all-welded final assembly, the boats were an improvement over the RN’s pre-war T-class boats.
HMS Aeneas at Britsol 1946. Compare this image with the one above to see the differences between the 1960s streamlining and the WWII outline.
When peace suddenly broke out (remember that the Japanese were expected to resist for another year or two before the atom bombs changed their mind), 30 of the class were canceled and just 16 completed. Of these boats, most were constructed at Vickers or by the HM Dockyards with only three completed by Cammell Laird, Birkenhead. Of those three, HMS Aeneas, laid down during the war was launched 9 October 1945, just a month after the Japanese surrender.
Inside the HMS Alliance, H.M. Submarine Aeneas sister. Photo by Marine Photography.
Used mainly for overseas patrol, the class spent most of the next three decades in quiet service. In the late 1940s Aeneas, along with 13 of her sisters, were modified with pneumatic extending “snort mast” snorkel devices patterned after German examples to enable them to travel just under the surface with only their breathing tube breaking the waves. An example of this capability was displayed by sister ship HMS Andrew which covered the 2500 miles from Bermuda to the UK in 13 days while submerged– a record only bested by nuclear-powered submarines.
However, this modification was not without troubles as sister HMS Affray reported hers “leaked like a sieve” and was thought for years to be the cause of that boat’s loss in 1951 with all hands.
In 1953 a number of the class were present at the Coronation fleet review of Queen Elizabeth II to include Aeneas. In the late 50s, she was streamlined and given more up-to-date sensors and the new pennant number S72.
The 1953 Spithead Coronation Review. H.M. Submarine Aeneas was there along with about a half dozen of her sisters.
Besides holding the line against the ever-growing numbers of Soviet U-boats creeping around the world’s oceans, and forward deployment to Canada for the Cuban Missile Crisis, the only tense service the class saw was in enforcing the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation in which they were used to counter blockade-running junks. It was during this long-running operation that sistership HMS Aurochs was machine-gunned by an aircraft unknown off the coast of Indonesia in 1958. In this type of service, the boats made port calls in remote Pacific islands that rarely if ever logged a visit from the RN in modern times. They also carried a mottled camouflage scheme while performing this duty.
HMS Aeneas S-72 after modernization in 1961. Note the lack of surface armament and the new sonar dome. Photo by Maritime quest
The class did make appearances a number of films, with Andrew filling in for a U.S. nuclear submarine in the 1959 post-apocalyptic film On the Beach. Sistership Artemis appeared in a RN training film entitled Voyage North, from which stock submarine footage was lifted and reused in movies and TV shows for decades.
Aeneas however, one-upped her sisters by appearing in the Bond film You Only Live Twice in 1967.
Enjoy two very relevant minutes of You Only Live Twice in which Commander James Bond, RN arrives on a British submarine by being disguised in a funeral casket. The boat, “M1” in the film, is actually the Aeneas in her film debut; this was after she had been “streamlined” during her second refit, which removed much of her WWII appearance.
This fits into a classic story from a jack aboard the sub at the time:
“Coming down from Hong Kong to Sydney on HMS AENEAS we were looking for the loom of the light at Darwin. Our navigator was a Lieutenant RNR and a noted tosspot and womanizer. “Bridge to control room” – “Control Room! Tell the Captain I have seen the light” – “Bridge! Message passed to the Captain, from the Captain, about time too!”
The A-class were the last class of British submarine to have deck guns, with most retaining them into the 1960s while Andrew kept hers as late as 1974. During this time, Aeneas, long stripped of her WWII-era gun battery, was armed with something new for a submarine– a surface to air missile system.
SLAM installed on sail of H.M. Submarine Aeneas
Vickers set up the aging smoke boat with a set of Shorts Blowpipe MANPADS style surface to air missiles that were fitted to a retractable mast on the submarine’s sail in 1972. Called the Submarine-Launched Airflight Missile (SLAM) system, it held 4-6 missiles and could ideally shoot down low-flying helicopters and other aircraft while the submarine remained at periscope depth. While carrying the SLAM system, she was pennant number SSG72.
SLAM Blowpipe missile mast
The problem was that the visually guided Blowpipe never was very good at downing aircraft and was generationaly in-line with the U.S. Redeye and Soviet SA-7 Grail (which weren’t very good either). After a series of trials, the idea was scrapped.
(Note the paying off pennant) and the crest on her sail under the SLAM system which is still fitted. And during this time her unit crest was also modified. In place of a spear, the warrior Aeneas carried a stylized missile.
The class was largely disposed of in the early 1970s, replaced by more modern O-class diesel boats, and augmented by nuclear-powered submarines and several of the class were loaned to the Canadian navy to help jump start that service’s sub branch. Aeneas was one of the last to go, 14-Nov-1974 sold, 13-Dec-1974 arrived Clayton & Davie Dunston for scrapping. By 1975 she was no more.
Only Andrew, scrapped in 1977, and Alliance, who served as a pier side trainer at the RN Submarine School until 1979, survived the Bond ship.
HMS Alliance on public display.
Today Alliance is preserved as part of the National Historic Fleet on land and on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, as a memorial to Her Majesty’s 4 334 RN submariners lost in both World Wars and the 739 officers and men lost in peacetime accidents.
Aeneas‘s 4″ Mk XXIII deck gun, removed in 1960, is preserved at the Royal Navy Armament Museum at Priddy’s Head, Gosport, near HMS Dolphin.
Specs
Displacement: 1,360/1,590 tons (surface/submerged)
Length: 293 ft. 6 in (89.46 m)
Beam: 22 ft. 4 in (6.81 m)
Draught: 18 ft. 1 in (5.51 m)
Propulsion: 2 × 2,150 hip Admiralty ML 8-cylinder diesel engine, 2 × 625 hip electric motors for submergence driving two shafts
Speed: 18.5/8 knots (surface/submerged)
Range: 10,500 name (19,400 km) at 11 kn (20 km/h) surfaced
16 nmi (30 km) at 8 kn (15 km/h) or 90 nmi (170 km) at 3 kn (5.6 km/h) submerged
Test depth: 350 ft (110 m)
Sensors (1946) 291, ‘handraulic’ Radar Set with a double di-pole aerial with only an ‘A’ Scan and no PPI
Complement: 5 officers 55 enlisted, up to 75 could be carried to include commandos and MI6 agents as needed.
Armament: 6 × 21″ (2 external) bow torpedo tube, 4 × 21″ (2 external) stern torpedo tube, total of 20 torpedoes,
Mines: 26
Guns: 1 × 4″ main deck gun, 3 × 0.303 machine gun, 1 × 20 mm AA Oerlikons 20 mm gun (removed 1960). Missiles: SLAM system fitted 1972-74.
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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, October 29th. The Ghost Ship St Christopher
(This piece, originally published by Sea Classics in October 2012 as The Schooner St Christopher- Ghost of the Mary Walker Bayou, is one that is very personal to me as I spent two years researching it on two continents and talking to three of the former owners. As a good Halloween tale, I am running it here on the blog. )
Here we see the twin masted Delfzil-built schooner St Christopher of the Caymans, hard aground in the reeds along the Mississippi Sand hill Crane Refuge, where she has been since 1998.
Ghost of the Mary Walker by Christopher Eger. Click to big up
Slipping down the builders ways in interwar Western Europe, the schooner St Christopher survived World War Two while flying a German flag, lost all her masts along with her original name and worked as a tramp steamer for decades, changed names again and sailed the Caribbean as a tall ship under a host of swashbuckling owners, and finally survived being grounded by hurricanes– twice. Now she only haunts a forgotten backwater in Mississippi.
Beginning life as the Heniz Brey
In 1932 at the Scheepswerven Gebr Niestern & Co in Delfzil Holland, Hamburg shipping company owner Johannes Brey ordered Niestern bow number 190 for use as a twin-masted coastal shallow-draught schooner. The ship was named Heinz Brey after Johannes’ father.
Builders Plate
Curiously, she appears twice in the Lloyds’ Register for that time period and is in both the sailing and steamer listings for the year she was completed as entry LR5145984. The vessel is the same in each as she has the same signal code (RFJN), year of build (1932), Builder (Gebr.Niestern and Co.) at Delfzijl, Netherlands, listed as owned by J Brey and has Hamburg as Port of Registry. She was issued and maintained a Germanischer Lloyd certification until 1955.
Heinz Brey as built
In the steamer listing, she was described as a steel vessel with one deck, an auxiliary screw propeller and oil engine. She is also described as ‘Galleas’ (or galleon which means she was primarily propelled by sails) She was listed as 116 tons gross, 93 under deck and 67 tons net. Her dimensions in feet and tenths of a foot were length in the steamer listing is 88.5, breadth, 18.9 and depth 7.3 (but in the sailing list her dimensions are given as 85.6 x 19.1 x 7.3 and her tonnage as 121). Photos of her at the time show that she carried a minimum of nine sails when both her masts and her bowsprit were rigged.
Sister hulls under construction in Holland 1932. From H. Beukema Koninklijke Niestern Sander (2001)
In the steamer listing, her engine details are given as a German DeutschWekeKeil 74kw Type M42 two cylinder, forced air, four-stroke, single-acting engine that generated 22 nominal horsepower and 100-shp. Under power of this engine, the ship would cut blistering 6-knots. Two sister ships, constructed alongside the Heinz Brey to the same general specifications (save for a smaller engine) and for Hamburg based ship-owners were the Allegro (Niestern bouwnr.188) and Franziska (Niestern bouwnr.189). All three ships carried general cargo during the Great Depression-era in the Baltic area.
Sistership Allegro
Service in World War Two
The Heinz Brey’s service in World War II has been lost to history. It is know that the vessel was pressed into service with the Kriegsmarine in September 1939 and remained in use with coastal forces during the war, shuttling supplies, troops and carg around the Baltic. Her original owner, Johannes Brey, recovered the ship in poor condition in Wilhemstaven in November 1945 and returned her to service.
Her sister ships the Allegro and Franziska served alongside her.
The Allegro, (Kriegsmarine pennant number V.1010) was brought to France to support Operation Sealion, the aborted invasion of Great Britain in 1940. When that failed she remained as a U-boat tender and general coaster. Allegro was sunk just off Dieppe harbor at 49.56 N/01.04 E in on Sept 11, 1944.
Franziska used her shallow draft to good advantage transporting supplies to German troops in Norwegian fjords and evacuating more than 100 refugees from Pillaw, East Prussia ahead of the Soviet Army before the end of the war.
Sistership Allegro. She would be sunk by Allied bombs off the French coast while Heinz Brey and Franziska would be used to supply Norway and evacuate East Prussia in the last weeks of the war.
Tales of the Heinz Brey being a ‘ghost ship’ during the war, found afloat crammed with bodies of German civilians and soldiers killed by the advancing Red Army in 1945, have circulated but have not been confirmed. What is known is that Johannes Brey soon rid himself of his once-proud vessel.
Post-war renaming, conversion and Tramp steaming
Following her wartime service, the Heinz Brey was quickly sold in 1950 to Dietrich Mangels, who renamed her Aeolus and removed her after mast and bowsprit. Within a half-dozen years, she was sold at least twice more before winding up with Heinrich Behrmann at Krautsand in 1956. Behrmann had decided to convert the then 24-year old now single-master schooner to a traditional coastal freighter.
Aeolus 1956
She was lengthened to 116 feet at the waterline, her final mast and sailing equipment was removed, and her overall weight ballasted to 240 DWT. (Coincidentally her surviving sister, Franziska, was converted and lengthened at about the same time) Painted with a black hull and buff superstructure. The converted ship, now renamed the Heinz Heino, sailed from Hamburg under a German flag carrying general cargo all along the North Sea and Baltic Coasts until 1979. During this period, she carried a Bureau Veritas certification.
Heinz Heino in Europe
Being too small and impractical for continued profitable service, the owner intended to sell the small freighter with her 47-year old engine for scrap in 1979.
A tall-ship again- with a yet another name
Dutch shipping investor AP Bakker said in a 1980 interview to a local paper: “We more or less accidentally saw the ship in a harbor close to Hamburg. We were not really looking for a ship like that, but something must have been in the back of our minds. We travel all over Europe, and you keep your eyes open.”
At Welgelegen, Harlingen on the slope in beginning 1980, fixing to emerge as the…
…St Christopher under refit 1980.Now with masts once more!
With that, Mr. Baaker bought the Heinz Heino for 60,000-marks in September 1979 and sailed her to Bolsward, Holland for conversion back to a tall ship. She was reworked in a yearlong 1-million guilder ($500,000) conversion at Vooruit Shipyard in Bolsward. To the hull a bowsprit was added lengthening her to 44.20 meters (145ft) overall. The three new masts were installed with the top mast being 27m from the deck. The masts held 510 square meters of sail, divided over five headsails, including the inner and outer flying jibs, inner and outer jibs and the foresail, two mainsails as well as the mizzen sail equipped with topsails. Her gross tonnage overall was increased to 149.11 tons.
ST.CHRISTOPHER Flyer 1981
Her holds, no longer to be used for cargo, were transformed into cabins for up to 24 passengers. A total of eight luxurious two-passenger and two four-passenger cabins were installed as well as a new galley and a full bar, and for the first time, air conditioning. The ship, after completing her transformation back into a sailing ship, was christened Sint Chrisstoffel (St Christopher) after the patron saint for seafarers.
Dr. Sicco Mansholt, former President of the European Commission (the executive branch of the European Union) himself christened the ship. It set sail for the Caribbean under the command of 24-year-old Dutch Captain Jan Fred van den Heuvel from Den Bosch and a five-man crew consisting of a helmsman, machinist, 2 cooks and a deckhand in November 1980.
Before sailing Bakker said in an interview when asked about his hopes for success with the ship in the Caribbean, “There is always plenty of wind, there is sunshine and it has a warm climate. Sun, beaches and palm trees, my love, what more do you want?”
Trouble in paradise
St Christopher at less than half rig
When the Sint Chrisstoffel found her way across the Atlantic to the warm Caribbean island of St Maartin and a busy schedule. The ship’s owner A.P. Baaker intended to sail her with up to 24 passengers for an average fee of $400 per berth on one-week cruises. The large ship, with a hand-cranked windlass and the original 1930’s power plant required a crew of a dozen experienced sailors to man her but with the small 6-man crew embarked it was instead planned to have the passengers sign on for “working cruises” where each would be expected to work so many hours per day while on their week-long sail to keep the vessel moving.
Within a year the ship, undermanned and with a less than ideal sailing rig, soon found herself in trouble. She grounded on Great Bay Beach off St Maartin’s southeast coast under unknown circumstances.
St Maartin Ministry of Shipping director Mike Staam remembers the incident well. “They couldn’t get the ship off and started selling beer to onlookers. It was so successful that they rented a cottage across from the ship and started a little bar called ‘Het Anker Bar’ (The Anchor Bar).”
By 1984, the ship had been pulled off the beach but was non-functional and was impounded at harbor for back slip fees. She was officially de-classsed by Bureau Veritas at about this time.
In December 1984, Oklahoma City jeweler Darold Lerch (incorporated as Caribbean Cruising Co.), purchased the unlucky St Christopher at public auction for $45,000 USD at the famous Bobby’s Marina on St Maartin. The ship was in, ‘floating condition but not much more.”
Lerch sailed her with a scratch crew to Venezuela where the ship’s hull was scraped for the first time since leaving Holland. From there he sailed the ship to Jamaica where a holding tank ruptured and the Caymans where the ship lost an anchor.
Lerch, interviewed in 2010 complained about her initial sea keeping abilities while rigged “She was always breaking anchor…She was beautiful but sailed horribly. You had to keep her 100-degrees off wind and for every mile you gained forward she would drift two sideways”.
In 1985, Lerch found out just how the St Christopher would sail in a hurricane.
Hurricane Elena
St Christopher hard aground 1985. Photo by Frank McBoom
On Labor Day weekend, 1985, Hurricane Elena’s winds forced the St Christopher ashore on Ft Desoto’s North Beach near Tampa Florida in Pinellas County. The ship had been forced from her Bayboro Harbor moorings near the Salvador Dali museum in St Petersburg at the last moment before the storm. Her 24-yer old South African master, Michael J Matter, had unsuccessfully fought against 40-50 knot winds and flood surge tides more than six feet above normal to keep her at sea. For the next nine months, the white-hulled schooner sat impaled on a sandbar –and luckily just out of the jurisdiction of just about any state or local organization.
The ship’s owner, Darold Lerch, drained his bank accounts attempting to free the vessel before he was approached by a group of investors including Cliff Henderson and Jerry Cross to buy the vessel and turn her into a cruise ship in Cancun. The group of investors incorporated under the name “Tall Ship St Christopher” then later “Blue Water Cruising” and managed to finally free her in May 1986. This was not before one of the investors, ironically a German, drowned in an attempt to free the vessel during Tropical Storm Juan.
Signboard at the Schooner’s site 1985
She was taken to Pensacola and there refitted with both new sails and rigging and rewired. From there the schooner sailed to New Iberia Louisiana where her original 1932 DeutschWekeKeil engine (remarkably similar to the same model used by Nazi Seehund type midget submarines) was replaced by two new Detroit Diesel M671 engines. Remembering how badly the ship sailed when he first obtained her Lerch and his partners installed a new generator, bow thruster with a 14” bronze prop, new hydraulics and a new hydraulic windlass. For the first time since Roosevelt was president, the St Christopher could raise her sails without the manual labor of a dozen men.
She was reflagged with a British ensign and a Cayman port of registry, number 710614, call sign ZHEP8. Her name was Anglicized from the Dutch Sint Chrisstoffel to St. Christopher of the Caymans to reflect her new flag.
In an interview in 1989, Lerch said of the St Christopher’s time in Florida, “She’s a beautiful old ship. With 10 years ahead of it as a charter ship out of Cancun, it is unlikely the St. Christopher will return to the bay area anytime soon. We’ve had our ups and downs here. Now it’s time to move on.”
Cancun and more misadventures
After spending three months and some $150,000 to modernize and refit the St Christopher, the ship set sail for Cancun in November 1989. The original plan was for the ship to take up to 60 tourist passengers on short 2-3 hour cruises in local waters for $30 a head. With morning, afternoon and moonlight cruises envisioned, investors planned to run her on as many as three cruises per day. The main impediment to the plan was a number of complaints and lawsuits from local vendors who brought pressure on Mexican agencies that withheld granting permits and licenses. At one point, with all of the paperwork seemingly squared away and passengers accommodated for two months, Mexican officials threatened arrest of the crew and owners for flying the Mexican flag illegally and shut the operation down.
Indeed the 1991 edition of Lloyds Register lists the St Christopher (with no Caymans reference), Registry number 5145984, Call sign PGXY. Still flagged in Phillipsburg, Netherlands Antilles. In 1992, she was dropped from Lloyds Register altogether as “continued existence in doubt.” In newspaper articles of the time, she was referred to as registered in the Cayman Islands although the Caymans had deleted her from their registry in November 1988 as her holding company had struck.
With the ship costing some $3,000 per day between the expenses of her 13-man crew’s wages, dock fees, chandler costs et al to operate in the tourist hotspot and no income flowing back in, the program seemed doomed. Eventually the St Christopher was prevented by the local harbormaster from even leaving port due to the amount of dock fees assessed against the craft. Finally in 1993 one of the more colorful ship owners bribed a harbormaster with a pair of 50-peso gold pieces (worth about $2,000 in gold) to be able to leave port in the dead of night never to return. To this day, the ship owner in question is still known to wear a pirate hat to social events occasionally.
St Christopher of the Caymans at Fletchas shipyard before Hurricane Katrina
The Ghost of the Mary Walker Bayou
After plying Europe as a coaster, evading Allied bombers in World War 2, surviving hurricanes, carrying passengers in the Caribbean, and escaping from Mexican harbormasters, the St Christopher of the Caymans found herself at Fletchas shipyard in Pascagoula Mississippi during the summer of 1998. Her interior spaces were gutted in preparation for the installation of new living quarters. The plan was for her to be refitted for use as a high-end private yacht when Hurricane Georges struck the coastal community.
The eye of the storm passed over Belle Fountaine Beach on September 28 1998, less than ten miles from Pascagoula. The storm brought gusts of up to 125-mph winds, 16-inches of rain and a 12-foot storm surge into the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Breaking from her moorings, the ship drifted across the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge and came to rest 7-miles away deep inside the swamps of the Pascagoula River’s Mary Walker Bayou in Gautier, Mississippi.
St Christopher in the trees. USCG photo
The ship was high and, during low tide, dry, in the muddy snake-infested swamp grass but she was worse for wear above decks. She had lost most of her high rigging in the storm and water had entered the ship. Water-borne looters soon found her and her antique portholes and prop were removed. Uninsured and reluctant to salvage her, owners sold the ship to Bryan Leveritt, a 49-year old former chemist and insurance salesman from Creola Alabama for $10. Leveritt formed an LLC, St Christopher Services to salvage the vessel for use as a floating missionary ship.
St Christopher in the bayou after Katrina, Photo by Bryan Leverette
In 1999, the St Christopher organization applied for a canal to be dug 530 feet long, 24 feet wide and 6 feet deep to accommodate the keel and remove the vessel. The permit expired July 26, 2002 but the organization, unable to raise enough funds for her salvage, asked for a series of extensions through 2005. The organizations, with volunteer labor had worked through tornadoes, looters, hordes of yellow flies, conspiratory clouds of mosquitoes, alligators, and coyotes to enable the ship to be recovered. They were literally within feet of completing the canal and removing the ship from the swamp when Hurricane Katrina swept into the Bayou.
Hurricane Katrina brought devastation and destruction on a near-biblical level to the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Storm surge in excess of twenty feet lifted the St Christopher from her muddy home in the swamp and pushed her another fifty yards deeper into the woods. Worst of all, when she was cast like a toy into the thick pine and oak forests, her hull was holed and crumpled in several places and her masts destroyed.
St. Christopher 2012, Photo by Christopher Eger
Not likely going to spark up any time soon
Note the old school rivets showing pre-WWII construction methods. The ship has been beset over the past two decades by illegal scrappers.Photo by Chris Eger
In her 1932-era riveted hold. Photo by Christopher Eger
Reluctant to let the ship go, Leveritt and his volunteer organization came up with a new plan to continue the canal, lift the battered St Christopher on a barge and float her to a shipyard in Bayou La Batre Alabama for repair. Again, the Mississippi Commission on Marine Resources (MCMR), who had allowed so many extensions in the past for the canal dredging permits, extended it once more due to the new problems. Again, the ship neared removal from her new home in the swamp. Again, events overtook her, as the Deep-water Horizon oil spill hit the Gulf Coast in April 2010.
Photo by Christopher Eger
The Deepwater Horizon spill, maintains Leveritt, pulled the barge he had lined up to carry the ship out of the bayou just days before the ship was ready to move and the resulting cleanup stripped the organization of volunteers and equipment. The MCMR, its patience worn thin from a dozen years of extensions, refused to extend the permits any longer. The MCMR turned the matter of the canal dug in the coastal wetlands to the State Attorney General who in July 2010 began fining Leveritt $500 per day until the canal is filled and the wetlands restored. Leveritt, now 63, remains determined to free the ship that has been landlocked for 16 years.
The St Christopher of the Caymans, a survivor of 81-years, a world war, three hurricanes and the largest oil spill in US History, still rests today near Gautier, Mississippi and is commonly referred to by local fishermen as the “Ghost of the Mary Walker Bayou.” Whether or not she ever stakes to sea again, is not certain by any means.
Through her missing port holes. Photo by Christopher Eger
Fate of her sister ships
The St Christopher’s two sister ships who had been ordered at the same time and built in the same yard in Holland both had interesting post-war histories. The Allegro, sank by Allied bombers in a French harbor in 1944 was raised and used to some extent until 1970 when she was broken up by Captain Joachim Kaiser.
Undine at sea, St Christopher’s sistership still afloat
Captain Kaiser also found himself with the other sister Franziska in 1980. The Franziska had been through no less than five owners, and like the St Christopher had been de-masted and used as a tramp steamer. Listed in Chapman’s , Kaiser shortened the vessel to nearly her original dimensions as a two-masted schooner and since 1999; the ship has sailed for the Gangway Foundation in Hamburg as a traditional sail training and cargo ship under the name Undine.
Specs:
Displacement: 121 tons gross 240 full load
Length: 88.5 feet waterline, 145 feet oal in final scheme
Beam: 19.1 feet
Draft: 7.3 feet
Rig: Twin-masted schooner, 9 sails
Engine (as built) German DeutschWekeKeil 74kw Type M42 two cylinder, forced air, four stroke, single acting engine, 22 nominal horsepower and 100shp, one shaft, after 1986 Detroit Diesel M671.
Speed: 6-knots on diesel, faster likely under sail
Armament: machine guns and small arms during WWII German Naval service.
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out 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.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday October 22, 2014 the Overachieving Gresham
USRC Gresham 1902; photo by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y.
Here we see the gunboat (err. Revenue Cutter) Walter Q. Gresham of the United States Revenue Cutter Service (USRCS) in 1902. This hearty little Great Lakes cutter had a life far removed from the one she was originally designed for.
The USRCS was a branch of the Treasury Department established by an act of Congress on 4 August 1790, (which predates the actual U.S. Navy’s official establishment date however that service uses the older date of the establishment of the Colonial Navy as its basis) and was tasked with counter-smuggling operations in peacetime and serving as a backup to the Navy in war. The USRCS merged with the Lighthouse Service and Lifesaving Service to become the USCG in 1915. But back to the ship.
The USRCS decided in the 1890s to build five near-sisterships that would be classified in peacetime as cutters, but would be capable modern naval auxiliary gunboats. These vessels, to the same overall but concept but each slightly different in design, were built to carry a bow mounted torpedo tube for 18-inch Bliss-Whitehead type torpedoes and as many as four modern quick-firing 3-inch guns (though they used just two 6-pounder 57mm popguns in peacetime). They would be the first modern cutters equipped with electric generators, triple-expansion steam engines (with auxiliary sail rigs), steel (well, mostly steel) hulls with a navy-style plow bow, and able to cut the very fast (for the time) speed of 18-ish knots. All were built 1896-98 at three different yards.
USRC McCulloch in full rig. Note that McCulloch is indicative of the five ship class she came from with the exception of having a three-masted barquentine rig where as the other ships, being about 15-feet shorter, had a two mast brigantine auxiliary rig. Painting, Coast Guard Academy Museum Art Collection.
These ships included:
–McCulloch, a barquentine-rigged, composite-hulled, 219-foot, 1,280-ton steamer built by William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia for $196,000.
–Manning, a brigantine-rigged 205-foot, 1,150-ton steamer, was built by the Atlantic Works Company of East Boston, MA, for a cost of $159,951.
–Algonquin, brigantine-rigged 205.5-foot, 1,180-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,000.
–Onondaga, brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,190-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,800.
The fifth ship was the Gresham.
Launched on 12 September 1896, was a brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,090-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $147,800. She carried the name of Walter Quinton Gresham, an epic overachiever.
Maj. Gen of Volunteers, the great and Honorable W.Q. Gresham (1832-1895)
Born in 1832 in Indiana, Gresham was a bar-certified attorney and elected state Representative by the time the Civil War broke out. He soon became the 29-year old colonel of the 53rd Indiana and fought at Corinth, Vicksburg, and Atlanta where he was invalided out with a shattered knee and the rank of (brevet) Maj.Gen. of Volunteers. This helped supercharge his political career and he soon became a federal judge appointed by Grant, then Chester Arthur’s Postmaster General and later his Secretary of the Treasury (for a month) before picking up a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals while twice running for the Republican presidential nomination. At the time the gunboat, which carried his name, was ordered, he was serving as Secretary of State in President Grover Cleveland’s Cabinet and died in that office May 28, 1895, hence his name was used to christen the newest cutter. Again, back to the ship…
USRC Walter Q. Gresham commissioned on 30 May 1897 after being accepted by the government three months earlier. While two of these ships were intended for blue-water work on the East Coast (Manning) and West Coast (McCullough), Gresham and near-sisters Algonquin and Onondaga were ordered for Great Lakes service, hence their construction in Cleveland and their homeporting in Milwaukee and Chicago. Since the 200+ foot long cutters were too long to fit through the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway, they would be landlocked into the lakes their whole life (more on that in a minute).
When commissioned she caused a diplomatic crisis. You see, since these three cutters had a new-fangled torpedo tube and modern guns, the Canadians and their British big brothers objected that the ships were in violation of the 1817 Rush-Bagot Convention and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. These two acts limited U.S./British-Canadian arms build-ups along the border region between the two countries and to this day regulate how heavily armed ships can be along the Great Lakes.
Well, just 11-months after Gresham‘s commissioning, war broke out with Spain and, as her two blue water sisters were rushed to serve with the Navy, the USRCS decided to withdraw the three lake-bound ships and put them to good use elsewhere. To get them past the locks in the St. Lawrence, they sailed to Ogdensburg, NY, where they were cut in half, shipped through the canal, and rejoined on the Atlantic side. Gresham officially belonged to the Navy 24 March-17 Aug 1898, but she saw no service in that war.
Gresham cut cleanly in two and barged through the St. Lawrence locks. Her other two sisters were subjected to the same fate.
However, the war ended in August 1898, before Gresham could be reassembled. Not wanting to get the Canadians riled up again, the USRCS left Gresham, Onondaga, and Algonquin on the East Coast where they served as any respectable white-hulled cutter of the time did. Algonquin set off for the West Indies and Onondaga moved to Philly while Gresham lived the life of a New England cutter, based in Boston.
She used her popguns to sink derelict vessels found at sea. She patrolled fisheries looking for interloping foreign trawlers and poachers. Nantucket Island was only able to get supplies and mail during especially harsh winters by the use of Gresham as an ersatz icebreaker.
U.S.R.C. Gresham, flagship of the patrol fleet, America’s Cup races. Library of Congress photo.
She served as the official government presence at a number of the fashionable sea races of the time. This led to a collision during a regatta with Sir Thomas Lipton’s beautiful steam yacht, the Erin, in which the Gresham‘s torpedo tube scraped alongside the hull of that fine ship. The fault was all on Lipton’s ship by the way.
Gresham saved mariners in distress, including famously the “palatial” steamship RMS Republic of the White Star Line (yes, the Titanic‘s company) when she collided with the Italian liner Florida near Nantucket and foundered in 1909. That incident was the first time a CQD distress call was issued on the new Marconi radio device. Standing alongside the stricken ship, Gresham along with other ships and the cutters Mohawk and Seneca helped save more than 1200 passengers and crew.
In 1915 she, along with the rest of the cutter service became part of the new U.S. Coast Guard and she was given pennant number CG-1, her name by that time just shortened to Gresham, without the Walter Q. part.
When war erupted, she was transferred to the Navy for the second time in 6 April 1917 and remained in the fleet until Aug. 1919. Her sail rig was removed as were her 57mm and 37mm popguns, her wartime armament was greatly increased and was depth charges were fitted, which added several hundred tons to her weight and several feet to her draught. During the war, she escorted coastal convoys, watched for U-boats and naval raiders, and helped train naval crews. Interestingly enough, her old collision-mate Erin, while serving as the armed yacht Aegusa in the Royal Navy, was lost to a German mine during the war.
Returning to her normal peacetime cutter activities in the Coast Guard, to which was added policing and chasing after rumrunners in the 1920s (for which some water-cooled Brownings were installed) Gresham entered a quiet chapter in her life. Her armament was greatly reduced and by 1922, her torpedo tube was deactivated as all of the Navy’s stocks of the aging Whitehead Mk3 torpedoes were withdrawn from service.
In 1933, Gresham was again assigned to the Navy and was sent to Cuban waters to monitor the situation there. As part of the Navy Special Service Squadron she was used to patrol the Florida Straits during a series of revolts that eventually put Fulgencio Batista in power in Cuba. In this she served with a number of other Coast Guard vessels sheep-dipped to the Navy to include the Unalga for two years, alternating between Key West, Gitmo, and San Juan.
She was decommissioned 19 January 1935 just before her 40th birthday, which is about right for a Coasty hull. She was then sold for her value in scrap metal on 22 April 1935, the last of her five-ship class to remain in the Coast Guard’s service. Cleveland-built sisters Algonquin and Onondaga had been sold in 1930 and 1924 respectively and disposed of. Cramp-built McCulloch, who served with Dewey at Manila Bay, was sunk in a collision 13 June 1917. Boston-built Manning likewise was sold for scrap in 1931. The Coast Guard just did not have use for a bunch of slow old tubs.
Until World War II came along, anyway.
In 1943, the Coast Guard found Gresham still afloat in some backwater somewhere in the Chesapeake and reacquired her, the sole remaining ship of her class. She was old, with 47 years on her hull. She was in exceptionally poor condition– still with her original cranky vertical, inverted cylinder, direct-acting triple expansion steam engine fired by four single-ended boilers fed by coal.
Nevertheless, she could hold a few guns and maybe scare off a U-boat or two so she was bought (sum unknown) on 21 January 1943 and renovated in Baltimore.
Gresham during WWII. Notice her sail rig is long gone and, for the first time, she has a visible hull number. Photo from Navsource.
Two months later she was relatively seaworthy and, armed with a sonar, radar, depth charge racks and guns, placed into commission as the USS Gresham (WPG-85) on 25 March 1943. Assigned to coastal convoy escort, moving from port to port up and down the East Coast, she was not liked very well. Since her best possible speed was just 8-knots, she slowed the convoys down and they often decided to leave Gresham in port rather instead. In these terms, she served as a guard ship in New York for most of her 13-month WWII service.
Decommissioned 7 April 1944 before the war even ended, she was sold for scrap for a second time.
However, she just wouldn’t die.
In 1946, she was being used by one Nicholas D. Allen of Teaneck, NJ, converted to a tug and renamed T. V. McAllister. He apparently wasn’t very successful with Gresham as in turn he sold her to the Weston Trading Co. of Honduras who renamed the elderly vessel, Trade Winds.
She became a coaster and banana boat along the Caribbean, flying a Panamanian flag. Then in February 1947 she quietly became one of the 12 vessels purchased in America by Ha’Mossad Le Aliya Bet to carry Jewish refugees from Europe, many only months out of concentration camps, to Palestine past the British blockade. Appropriately, Gresham was in good company, as at least three of the other vessels, Unalga (who she had served with in the old Navy Special Service Squadron), Northland, and Mayflower, had served in the Coast Guard at one time or another as well.
Her scant 27-man crew consisted mostly of young American Jewish volunteers with former naval and military service under their belt. She was prepared for its voyage to Palestine at Lisbon, Portugal and PortoVenere, Italy. Yehoshua Baharav Rabinowitz was in charge of the work in Portugal and Avraham akai was in charge in Italy. The vessel, under the Hebrew name “Hatikva” (The Hope) sailed from Bocca di Magra, Italy on May 8th 1947 carrying 1,414 Ma’apilim refugees. Israel Rotem was its commander and those accompanying him were Alex Shour and Meir Falik; the radio operator was Nachum Manor. Soon five Royal Navy destroyers, enforcing the blockade on Palestine, were tailing the old tub.
c. May 1947 Hatikva loaded with Jewish refugees Algerine Associates photo from Paul Silverstone’s Aliyah Bet Project Aliyah Bet Project. Note that her mast has been stepped.
One of these ships pulled alongside and called to the captain, “Your voyage is illegal, and your vessel is unseaworthy. In the name of humanity surrender.”
On May 17, 1947, the Hatikva was forcibly intercepted, rammed, and captured by the destroyers HMS Venus and HMS Brissenden. Upon boarding, RN sailors and Royal Marines used tear gas, rifle butts, and batons to enforce their directives and ordered the ship to Haifa to unload where it sat while the American crew was interned on a British prison ship. (For an excellent in-depth story of this action and the American’s fate, read Greenfield’s, The Jews’ Secret Fleet: Untold Story of North American Volunteers Who Smashed the British Blockade)
With Royal Marines coming aboard. Note her old pilot house, a relic from the 19th century.
Later the Israeli Navy was able to reclaim Hatikva in 1948 after independence, but after sea trials, the desperate organization realized they were not that desperate, and sold her for scrap in 1951.
ex-Gresham, then Hatikva of the Israeli Navy (אוניית_מעפילים_התקוה) around 1948. This is the last known picture in circulation of her.
However, Hatikva/Gresham beat the scrappers once more it seemed. She popped up in Greek ownership in the 1950s and found herself back on the other side of the Atlantic again as an unpowered barge, her superstructure, funnel, and mast removed. She was last semi-reliably seen in the Chesapeake Bay area as late as 1980.
Her ultimate fate is unknown, but she may in all actuality be afloat somewhere in Blue Crab country, hiding out as a houseboat in some back eddy or grounded on a mudflat somewhere. If only boats could talk, Gresham would have had much to say. The Spanish American War, both World Wars, a revenue cutter that was deconstructed then reassembled, gunboat, coast guard cutter, freighter, refugee ship…talk about an epic tale. After all, how many ships have been sold to the breakers and lived to tell the tale not once, or twice, but three times!
The Gresham/Hatikva is well remembered in Israel and in the European Jewish community as a whole. This summer a group of 800 French Jewish students announced plans to recreate the voyage of the historic ship.
As a final note on the ship, Israel’s national anthem is named Hatikva, of course it is about the movement overall, but still; there is a small hatttip to the tiny Gresham in there every time it is played.
And Walter Quintin Gresham himself? He was buried in Section 2 of Arlington National Cemetery a little to the right of the grave of Union cavalry master Phil Sheridan.
The former seaplane tender made cutter USCGC Gresham
In 1947, the Coast Guard took possession of a 311-foot long gently used seaplane tender, USS Willoughby (AGP-9; AVP-57) and renamed her USCGC Gresham (WAVP/WHEC/WAGW-387) in honor of this long serving vessel and remained in service until 1973. However, if the reports of the original Gresham making it to 1980 are true, her namesake outlived her by almost a decade.
Armament:
1896: Two 6-pounder 57mm, one 1-pounder 37mm, three .50 cal. machine guns, and one bow torpedo tube
1918: 3 x 4-inch guns; (1500 rounds of ammunition stored in two magazinesfore and aft); 16 x 300-lb depth charges; 4 x Colt machine guns; 2 x Lewis machine guns; 18 x .45 Colt pistols; 15 x Springfield rifles.)
1930: 2 x 6-pdrs RF, 3 x .50-cal watercooled for rumrunners, tube deactivated.
1943: 2x 3″/50 (singles) 4x20mm/80 (singles), 2 depth charge racks, 2 K-gun depth charge projectors, 2 mousetrap depth bomb projectors, QCL-8 sonar, SF-type surface search radar.
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out 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. –Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, October 15, 2014: The Devil Dog of the Seven Seas
Here we see the Independence-class light aircraft carrier USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), dark and in her war paint, near Hunters Point in 1945. She was a hard-working ship that had a hard war. She was a ship built to meet a very specific need, and she met it well under no less than two flags.
In 1942, the Navy had its ass in a bind. Starting the war with just six large-deck fleet carriers, within the first six months of combat, the number was down to just four, and by the end of the year, just a single one of these (Enterprise) was still afloat and operational. While the first huge and ultra-modern 34,000-ton Essex-class carriers were building as fast as the riveters could rivet and the welders could chip slag, they would not be able to arrive in numbers until 1944. This put the Big Blue behind the Japanese 8-ball in naval warfare.
FDR, himself always a Navy man (he won a naval warfare essay contest while a teenager and slept with Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History on his nightstand before being appointed Asst. Scty of the Navy during World War One came up with the idea to convert a bunch of cruisers that were already partially complete at the New York Navy Yard over to flat-tops. Although the Navy balked, FDR was the commander and chief, so guess who won?
USS Cleveland CL-55 1942. The Navy wanted between 40 and 50 of these hardy little cruisers. They settled for much less, and nine of those became aircraft carriers while still under construction
The 14,000-ton Cleveland-class light cruisers were designed after the gloves came off in 1940 and the U.S. no longer had to abide by the Washington and London Naval treaties of the 1920s and 30s. As such, these were very large cruisers, at just a hair over 600-feet long, and very fast (33-knots). Designed to carry a dozen 6-inch and a supplemental dozen 5-inch guns, they were also heavily armed.
In all, the Navy wanted something on the order of 40 of these warships to lead destroyer groups, escort convoys, scout ahead of battle groups, and screen carriers and battleships. Well, FDR carved nine whose hulls were nearing completion but did not have decks, guns, or superstructures installed yet.
A scale model of the Independence-class light carriers and the Cleveland-class light cruiser. Note the hulls.
It was not that hard a concept. Many of the first carriers were auxiliaries, cruisers, and battleships that had their topside removed and covered with a flattop. Langley, the first U.S. carrier, was a collier. Lexington and Saratoga, the country’s second and third carriers respectively, were originally laid down as battlecruisers.
The first of the class of FDR’s “cruiser carriers,” laid down originally as the cruiser Amsterdam but commissioned instead as the USS Independence, was commissioned on 14 Jan 1943 and rushed to the fleet. Over the next nine months, eight sisters would join her, roughly one every 45 days on average. The third of the class, originally laid down as the light cruiser New Haven (CL-76) just four months before Pearl Harbor, was stripped of that name and hull number and commissioned instead as the USS Belleau Wood (CV-24) on 31 March 1943.
Sponsored by the wife of the Commandant of the Marine Corps at her christening, the ship was named after the epic Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918 during the First World War. This battle, steeped in Corps lore, was fought by the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments (and rumor has it, a few Army units too) in a thickly wooded area of Northern France.
The Battle of Belleau Wood by Georges Scott.
It produced the time-honored catchphrases, “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” from Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly, and “Retreat? Hell, we just got here,” attributed to Capt. Lloyd Williams. It was in this pitched combat, where Marines fought so savagely that German troops opposing them referred to the sea soldiers as Teufelshunde (literally, “Devil Dog”), a name that has stuck for the past hundred years. After the war, the wooded area was renamed Bois de la Brigade de Marine in honor of the more than 1,000 Marines killed there in the summer of 1918.
With her name to live up to, and packed with 24 F6F Hellcats (of VF-24 “Fighting Renegades”) and 9 TBM Avengers (of VT-24 “Bobcats”), Belleau Wood arrived in the Pacific just three months after her commissioning and by September was dropping it like it was hot in raids on Tarawa, Wake Island, and the Gilberts, reminding the Japanese Navy that the Yanks were playing for keeps and all would soon be in order.
Underway 1943 Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center (photo # NH 97269). Note the center deck elevator. From Navsource
Assigned to the fast-moving Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Task Force 58, she was the battered old USS Enterprise‘s wingman during the Roi-Namur Landings and remained with the group for the seizure of Kwajalein and Majuro Atoll, the Hailstone Raid on Truk, the occupation of Saipan and a number of other engagements.
Carrier Raids on the Marianas, February 1944. A Japanese bomber explodes as it crashes into the sea near USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), during an attack on Task Group 58.2 off the Mariana Islands, 23 February 1944. Photographed from USS Essex (CV-9). Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (Photo # 80-G-218422). From Navsource
In 1944, she found herself up to her radar masts in Japanese aircraft during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, where her air wing delivered the final torpedo to the Japanese Navy’s 25,000-ton aircraft carrierHiyō, sending her to the bottom on 20 June 1944. The Japanese avenged the loss by sinking Belleau Wood’s sister ship USS Princeton (CV-23) at the Battle of Leyte Gulf just four months later.
On October 30, 1944, the same day that the USS Franklin survived her famous kamikaze attack, Belleau Wood almost succumbed to a hit from a Zeke kamikaze that killed no less than 92 of her crew and sent her to the shipyard for much-needed repair.
USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24) burning aft after she was hit by a Kamikaze, while operating off the Philippines on 30 October 1944. Flight deck crewmen are moving undamaged TBM torpedo planes away from the flames as others fight the fires. USS Franklin (CV-13), also hit during this Kamikaze attack, is afire in the distance. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (Photo # 80-G-342020).From Navsource.
Back in the war by 1945, Belleau Wood‘s new air wing shot down the very last enemy aircraft of the war, a Yokosuka D4Y3 “Judy” dive-bomber swatted out of the sky by Ensign Clarence Moore, an F6F-3 pilot of “The Flying Meat-Axe” VF-31.
By this time in the war, with opportunities to sink Japanese ships few and far between, most light carriers were switched to an air group that consisted of 34 x F6F fighters and 2 x F6F-3P recon aircraft, and one of the class (Independence) even operated a hybrid night fighter group late in the war.
Landing Signal Officer, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Walter F. Wujcik, bringing in a plane on Belleau Wood, circa 1945.
Her airwing took place in the immense aviation armada over Tokyo harbor on Sept. 2, 1945, that blackened out the sky, and she helped bring U.S. troops home from overseas all through 1946. With the U.S. Navy flush with brand new Essex-class carriers, the days of the Independence class were numbered in a post-war environment. Soon, the eight remaining ships of the class were all in mothballs, with Belleau Wood, by then reclassified as a “light carrier” (CVL-24), being decommed 13 January 1947.
Class leader Independence was scuttled after being used as a target for the A-Bomb during Operation Crossroads in 1946, while a few (Monterrey, Bataan) were dusted off for Korea. However, most would be on the scrap heap by the early 1960s. A few, however, were loaned to friends.
USS Cabot, which served with Belleau Wood in TF58 during WWII and VF-31 also flew off of, was transferred to Spain while the Belleau Wood herself and sister ship Langley (CVL-27) were loaned to the French Navy as their fifth and sixth aircraft carriers, respectively.
While the French renamed Langley as Lafayette (pennant R96) when they acquired her in 1951, they aptly kept the Belleau Wood’s name intact, only correcting the spelling to Bois Belleau. She was accepted into the French Navy with pennant number R97 on 5 September 1953 and commissioned 23 Dec of that year with Captain Louis Mornu in command.
Sailing for French Indochina she had an airwing made up of surplus USN F6F-5 Hellcat (of 11° Flotille) aboard (see our entry here on that little neatness) SB2C Helldivers (of 3° Flotille) and a pair of Piasecki HUP-2 SAR helicopters. These neat little twin rotary craft could carry a half dozen crew and passengers up to 300 miles.
French Carrier Bois Belleau, formerly USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), at Saigon. Early 50’s. Note the Corsairs on her deck
French Navy Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat launched from French carrier Lafayette off Indochina, 1956
Her planes dropped it like it was hot on Charlie during the first part of 1954 when the French withdrew, helping to evacuate some 6000 French troops and citizens in December that year.
Aircraft carrier Belleau Wood in Haiphong Bay, 1954, while in French service. Note the impressive air wing aboard of at least a dozen F6Fs and Helldivers plus two HUP-2’s forward
However, she soon found herself in the Med doing the same thing for Algerian rebels with an airwing of late model F4U-7 Corsairs (the last 93 Corsairs ever built and considered the most advanced) of 14° Flotilleoff and on between 1955-59.
During this period, she also participated in the Suez Crisis in 1956 and attended an International Naval Review in Hampton Roads in 1957.
French carrier Bois Belleau seen at the Hampton Roads International Naval Review in 1957
French F4U-7 Corsairs lined up on Bois Belleau “somewhere in the Mediterranean”
The bumblebee recognition stripes of the F4U-7s of 14 Flottille were added for the joint UK-French intervention in the Suez in 1956, recalling the same type of markings used over D-Day in 1944.
Her last commander, Captain Pierre Hurbin, retired her colors on 12 September 1960, and she was returned to U.S. Navy custody in Philadelphia, replaced by the newly built carrier Clemenceau.
Langley/Lafayette picked up her squadron for another two years until Bois Belleau was likewise returned to her place of birth, replaced by the newly built aircraft carrier Foch.
Vought F4U 7 Corsair French Navy Flottille 15F17 on the La Fayette (ex-USS Langley) 1956.
The French aircraft carrier LAFAYETTE (R 96) former USS LANGLEY (CVL-27) at Mers el Kebir, Algeria, North Africa, 1962. Note the F4U-7 Corsairs aft, TBM Avenger amidships, and Piasecki H-21 Shawnee tandem rotor chopper forward.
14° Flotille then hung up their Corsairs in 1963 and transitioned to the F8E (FN) Crusader.
The aircraft carrier Bois Belleau during an excessive off the French Naval base at Oran-Mers-el-Kebir with two HUP-2’s on deck and her crew manning the rails. (14 June 1959). Picture by Marine Nationale
For Belleau Wood, the U.S. Navy held on to her for a couple of weeks, then struck her name from the Navy List on 1 Oct, and sold her on 21 November 1960 for her value in scrap metal. She had earned a Presidential Unit Citation and 12 battle stars for her WWII service.
The last of her class, Cabot, was returned to the U.S. by Spain in 1989. Shamefully, she sat in New Orleans for a decade in disrepair as one group after another squandered money donated to turn her into a museum ship. I visited her on the Mandeville docks there in 1998 (after letting myself in through a poorly locked gate), and fought back an urge to open up the seacocks and sink the poor old gal myself. In the end, that ship was finally scrapped in 2002, but her small island is preserved at the U.S. Naval Air and Space Museum in Pensacola, along with a working Mk3 40mm mount that the Spaniards did not remove.
Cabot’s Island at the USN-ASM
If Pensacola is too far of a drive, a closer memorial for the old USS Belleau Wood may be the ex-USS Little Rock (CL-92/CLG-4/CG-4). One of the ships of the Cleveland class that was actually completed as a cruiser, Little Rock, has been operated by the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park, Buffalo, New York, as a Museum Ship since 1977. She is the Belleau Wood‘s technical half-sister (at least from the 01 level down anyway)
On 23 September 1978, the U.S. Navy commissioned the Tarawa-class landing ship USS Belleau Wood (LHA-3) to honor the old light carrier (even though she was almost twice the size of her namesake!) in my hometown of Pascagoula. After a hard 27 years of service, that veteran was decommissioned and expended as a target in 2006. That ship’s coat of arms carried the twelve gold battle stars in a field of blue to honor her namesake’s accomplishments, while her island carried the Devil Dog insignia
USS Belleau Wood mascot as displayed on the island superstructure of LHA-3. Artwork by DM2 Artilles Faxas.
Specs:
Displacement: 11,000 long tons (11,000 t)
Length: 622 ft 6 in (189.74 m)
Beam: 109 ft 2 in (33.27 m)
Draft: 26 ft (7.9 m)
Speed: 31.6 kn (58.5 km/h; 36.4 mph)
Complement: 1,569 officers and men
Armament: 26 × Bofors 40 mm guns
Aircraft carried: 30-40
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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, October 8, 2014: The Lost Loot of Nakhimov
Admiral Nakhimov, NYC, 1893. Click to big up.
Here we see the one-off armored cruiser Admiral Nakhimov of His Majesty the Tsar of Russia’s Imperial Navy as she looked with a black hull and buff stack during the 1893 Columbia Naval Review in New York City. She was a pretty odd duck who had a hard end and a weirder legacy.
In the early 1880s, European powers became fascinated with the “Armored Cruiser” concept. These large ships were to be (stop me if you heard this already) fast enough to outrun capital ships, but sufficiently armed and armored to fight it out successfully against anything smaller. One such class of these vessels was the Royal Navy’s HMS Imperieuse/Warsprite class of very chunky (315-foot, 8500-ton) cruisers.
Well, taking this design and giving it even larger guns and more armor, the Tsar’s naval architects came up with a ship that was 8600 tons and 338 feet long (take that!) while mounting an impressive battery of eight 203mm (8-inch) naval guns protected by up to 10-inches of armor belt.
The ship had an interesting 8-gun arrangement in four twin turrets, one aft, one forward, and two amidships. This was actually extremely progressive and was not copied in the fleets of the world until twenty years later.
Aft barbette mount of the Russian armored cruiser Admiral Nakhimov
That was actually pretty good for the time, especially when you consider this Leviathan could make 17 knots on a standard load with a fresh hull and everything lit with good coal (remember this later).
The new warship, named after Fleet Admiral Pavel Stepanovich Nakhimov, the commander of Sevastopol during its epic Crimean War siege and the man who annihilated the Ottoman fleet at Sinope in 1853, was ordered in 1881.
The namesake Admiral at Sevastopol. He was killed at the siege.
Finally laid down at the Baltic Works, Saint Petersburg, she was commissioned at the end of summer in 1888, just before the Baltic froze over.
Note the ship’s 1890s scheme. This later changed to an all-white scheme with a buff stack and black cap.
Skedaddling put Europe ahead of the coming annual freeze, Admiral Nakhimov set sail for her duty posting with the Russian Pacific Squadron at Vladivostok (and after 1895, Port Arthur). Waving the flag on her epic nine-month voyage, as the strongest Russian ship in that great blue ocean, she was appointed squadron flag.
Over the next fifteen years, she would retain this posting, returning to St. Petersburg every few years for refit and replacement of boiler tubes.
Ironically for how this story ends, she also visited Japan several times for drydock periods, such as an 1890 stint at Nagasaki detailed below:
This put a lot of mileage on the proud cruiser, but she was able to make stops everywhere from New York to Greece to Toulon on the way each time, waving the crap out of the Tsarist naval jack for all to see.
Admiral Nakhimov, NYC, 1893, doing that whole waving the Russian Naval Jack thing. Dig the misspelling on the news photo. The detail is exceedingly fine, including the numerous launches on the side of the cruiser– some of these could be equipped with spar torpedoes and conduct their own attacks if needed. Also, note the Torpedo nets deployed. She was the first Russian ship so-equipped. Click to big up.
She took part in some sharp combat a few times, supporting the Boxer Rebellion relief group among others. She then was used as the shuttle boat between Russia and Japan during the diplomatic tension leading to the coming war. In this period before the Russo-Japanese War, Admiral Nakhimov’s crew included no less a figure than the young naval officer better known as Grand Duke Cyril, grandson of Tsar Alexander II and cousin of Nicholas II.
Cyril would later shamefully tie a red armband on his uniform and lead his elite Guards Naval Infantry battalion to swear personal allegiance to the Revolutionary government in St. Petersburg during the Russian Revolution. This, of course, did not stop him from pretending to the throne in exile after the Reds later wiped out half of his family while simultaneously hanging out with the Mladorossi group– who were actually something of a pawn of the Soviet secret police. Anyway, back to the cruiser.
Armoured Cruiser Адмирал Нахимов ‘Admiral Nakhimov’ in Port-Arthur between 1900 and 1903
When war broke out with Japan, the well-used Admiral Nakhimov was back in the Baltic on her regular refit period. This was fortuitous, as she likely would have been sunk at Port Arthur like the rest of the Russian Pacific Squadron. However, let us not congratulate ourselves just yet, as the Russian glass is always half empty.
Attached to the doomed “2nd Pacific Squadron” of ADM Zinovy Rozhestvensky at the last minute (who didn’t want the aging, slow cruiser), Admiral Nakhimov set sail for her end fate.
Sailing with the fleet on its epic ride to Valhalla, eight months later the ship, aged 16 but with years of hard use on her, her hull a forest of underwater vegetation, her boiler tubes leaking, her guns hopelessly obsolete and her armor considered quaint compared to modern Harvey and Krupp designs, rounded the straits of Tsushima on May 28, 1905.
Vladimir-Emyshev’s rendering of the battlecruiser Admiral Nakhimov at Tsushima.
It was an easy day for Admiral Togo’s fleet and soon Admiral Nakhimov had her turn in the barrel, being hit by no less than 30 massive large-caliber shells in short order. Somehow, she remained in the fight and even landed some hits on the IJN’s armored cruiser Iwate— some of the only Russian successes of that day. However, in the end, she was doomed.
According to the Japanese, they sank her with a torpedo that night.
According to the Russians, they scuttled her.
The fact that the majority of her crew (623 men out of 651) escaped in good order lends credence to the Russian version of events.
Gold!
Then, years later, something odd happened.
In 1980 Japanese businessman (and fascist Class A war criminal) Ryoichi Sasakawa financed an expedition to dive on the Nakhimov in her watery grave in some 314 ft. of water 5.5 miles off Tsushima Island. The goal of the mission? What was believed by some to be as much as $40 billion in 5,500 boxes of gold bullion, ingots, and British sovereigns, as well as precious jewels and crates of platinum ingots that the ship was carrying when she was sunk. Surely the Tsar was in the habit of loading billions of precious metals on doomed ships, right?
You see a group of Russian naval officers, including the Nakhimov‘s paymaster, told wild stories after 1905 that the ship had picked up on the way to the Pacific some 700 million francs and 800 million marks worth of metals following the sale by the Russian government of overseas bonds to help finance the war. These officers and their statements circulated enough that groups of enterprising Japanese as early as the 1930s began looking for the ship to salvage its treasure. This continued over the decades as a myriad of groups kept looking for the Pacific’s equivalent of the Spanish treasure galleon. The Japanese considered it spoils of war and even mounted an official government salvage attempt in 1944 during the darkest days of WWII, losing three divers but accomplishing nothing.
Well, Sasakawa found the ship, and even brought up some pictures of the ship and its contents, offering to swap the prize to the Soviets for a group of isolated Japanese islands that the Reds picked up as a boobie prize in 1945. Only, in the end, the Russians didn’t bite and the “ingots” pictured on the Nakhimov turned out to be of iron and lead used in ship repair.
One of Admiral Nakhimov‘s original 8-inch guns, raised during salvage operations in 1980, is on display at the Japanese Museum of Maritime Science in Tokyo.
Does this gun look familiar to the one above? It should.
The namesake admiral and cruiser have proved to be a popular name for later Russian cruisers. A 1920s Svetlana class cruiser carried the moniker as did a 1950s Sverdlov class cruiser and a 1960s Kresta II-class cruiser. The memory of the ship sunk at the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905 is today preserved by the Kirov class battlecruiser of the same name. Currently, in refit (some things never change), she is projected to rejoin the Russian Navy in 2018.
Formerly the Kalinin, the 25,000-ton battlecruiser was renamed after the Nakhimov once the Kresta class warship with the same name retired.
Specs:
Displacement: 7,781 long tons (7,906 t) standard
8,473 long tons (8,609 t) full load
Length: 103.3 m (338 ft 11 in)
Beam: 18.6 m (61 ft 0 in)
Draught: 7.7 m (25 ft 3 in)
Propulsion: 2-shaft reciprocating vertical triple expansion (VTE) engines
12 cylindrical coal-fired boilers
9,000 shp (6,700 kW)
Speed: 17 knots (20 mph; 31 km/h)
Range: 4,400 nmi (8,100 km)
Boats & landing
craft carried: 2 × torpedo boats
2 × spar torpedo boats
Complement: 572-650
Armament: • 8 × 203 mm (8 in) guns
• 10 × 152 mm (6 in) guns
• 4 × 110 mm (4.3 in) guns
• 15 × 47 mm (1.9 in) 3-pounder guns
• 3 × 381 mm (15 in) torpedo tubes
• 40 × mines
Armor: Compound armor
Belt: 254 mm (10 in)
Deck: 51–76 mm (2–3 in)
Barbettes: 203 mm (8 in)
Turrets: 51–63 mm (2.0–2.5 in)
Conning tower: 152 mm (6 in)
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 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, Oct 1, Of Wind, weather wars, and space junk
U.S.S. Atka stands in McMurdo Sound to keep the channel open for Operation Deep Freeze supply ships and the evacuation of the last summer residents.
With things starting to get colder, I figured we should go with an icebreaker. Here we see an amazing image of the Wind-class polar icebreaker USS Atka (AGB-3) holding the line at McMurdo Naval Station in Antarctica.
When World War II started, the Navy was up to the proverbial frozen creek as far as icebreaking went. While some foreign powers (the Soviets) really liked the specialized ships, Uncle Sam did not share the same opinion. However, this soon changed in 1941 when the U.S., even before Pearl Harbor, accepted Greenland and Iceland to their list of protected areas. Now, tasked with having to keep the Nazis out of the frozen extreme North Atlantic/Arctic and the Japanese out of the equally chilly North Pac/Arctic region (anyone heard of the Aleutians?), the Navy needed ice-capable ships yesterday.
The old (read= broken down) 6000-ton British-built Soviet icebreaker Krassin was studied in Bremerton Washington by the Navy and Coast Guard. Although dating back to the Tsar, she was still at the time the most powerful icebreaker in the world. After looking at this ship, the U.S. began work on the Wind-class, the first U.S. ships designed and built specifically as icebreakers.
Set up with an extremely thick (over an inch and a half) steel hull, these ships could endure repeated ramming against hard pack ice. Just in case the hull did break, there were 15-inches of cork behind it, followed by a second inner hull. Now that is serious business. At over 6000-tons, these ships were bulky for their short, 269-foot hulls. They were also bathtub-shaped, with a 63-foot beam. For those following along at home, that’s a 1:4 length to beam ratio. Power came from a half-dozen mammoth Fairbanks-Morse 10-cylinder diesel engines that both gave the ship a lot of power on demand, but also an almost unmatched 32,000-mile range (not a misprint, that is 32-thousand). For an idea of how much that is, a Wind-class icebreaker could sail at an economical 11-knots from New York to Antarctica, and back, on the same load of diesel…twice.
USCGC Southwind (WAGB-280) at anchor probably in the vicinity of San Pedro, CA., in July 1944 sometime before or after her commissioning on 15 July 1944. Note how beamy these ships were. The twin 5″ guns make her seem extremely well-armed. Also, note the J2F Duck seaplane perched amidships. Photo by Navsource
To help them break the ice, the ship had a complicated system of water ballasting, capable of moving hundreds of tons of water from one side of the ship to the other in seconds, which could rock the vessel from side to side in addition to her thick hull and powerful engines. A bow-mounted propeller helped chew up loose ice and pull the ship along if needed.
With a war being on, they just weren’t about murdering ice, but being able to take the fight to polar-bound Axis ships and weather detachments as well. For this, they were given a pair of twin 5″/38 turrets, a dozen 40mm Bofors AAA guns, a half dozen 20mm Oerlikons, as well as depth charge racks and various projectors, plus the newfangled Hedgehog device to slay U-boats and His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s I-boats. Weight and space were also reserved for a catapult-launched and crane-recovered seaplane. Space for an extensive small arms locker, to equip landing parties engaged in searching remote frozen islands and fjords for radio stations and observation posts, rounded out the design.
In all, an impressive eight Wind-class ships were built. USS Atka, named appropriately enough for the largest island in the Andreanof Islands group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, was the third of these. Laid down at the Western Pipe and Steel Company shipyards in San Pedro, California, seven months after Pearl Harbor, she was actually commissioned as USCGC Southwind (WAG-280) in the service of the US Coast Guard on 15 July 1944. Her wartime service with the Coast Guard, though short, was memorable.
Assigned to the Greenland Patrol, she helped fight a little-known battle remembered as the Weather War. This campaign, though not very bloody, was an enduring cat and mouse game between U.S. maritime assets and those of the Germans, who set up weather stations along the remote coasts of Greenland, Canada, and Spitsbergen to get vital met data on pending fronts headed to Europe from the Arctic. Remember this was before the days of weather satellites. As such, one of the most knowledgeable oceanographers in the service, Commander Richard M. Hoyle, commanded Southwind.
USCG landing parties with captured Nassy battle flag
While on the Greenland Patrol, Southwind, in conjunction with the USCGC Eastwind, one of her sisterships, trailed the German Naval Auxiliary ship Externsteine, an armed and converted trawler. After a short skirmish in the ice, in which Southwind illuminated the German ship with her searchlights, the trawler surrendered and was boarded by USCG landing parties. Christened the USS Eastbreeze, a salty prize crew made up of Eastbreeze and Southbreeze coasties took the captured ship in to Boston.
The “Eastbreeze”
The Germans chased from the Arctic, and the war winding down, Southwind was decommissioned 23 March 1945, largely disarmed, and loaned to the Soviets two days later as the country was, ironically, short on modern icebreakers. She served them well under the name Kaptian Bouleve then later Admiral Makarov for almost five years, only being returned to U.S. service to be commissioned as the USS Atka (AGB-3) just in time for Korea.
From left to right, USS Burton Island (AGB-1), USS Atka (AGB-3), and USS Glacier (AGB-4) pushing an iceberg out of the channel near McMurdo Station, Antarctica, 29 December 1965. US Navy photo from DANFS.
As Atka, she sailed from Boston for 16 years as part of the Atlantic Fleet. During this time, she made at least three polar trips and was a frequent visitor to Thule Air Force Base, Greenland, breaking ice on the regular resupply runs there.
Then in the 1960s, the Navy decided it was getting out of the icebreaker business and transferred the Atka back to its original owners, the Coast Guard. Not one to rest on a Navy-issued name, the USCG returned to their original moniker for the ship, Southwind, when she was brought back into the fold on Halloween Day 1966. “Trick or Treat” indeed (and another reason for this to be an October Warship Wednesday!).
The “Polar Prowler,” now in her 20s with her last major refit back in 1951, continued to serve hard time in the frozen Polar Regions, as is the nature of her breed.
Now-USCGC Southwind (WAGB-280) transits the Panama Canal, 28 November 1967. Note the single 5″ forward and the USN Sea Sprite ASW helicopter aft with the telescoping hangar. US Coast Guard Historian’s Office photo, copy sheet # 112867-13-16. (Click to bigup)
CGC Southwind in Palmer Station Antarctica Deepfreeze 1968 Photo by Ron Henderson
In the next decade, she made at least three Antarctic trips, and six Arctic ones, including a rare 1970 port-call in Murmansk, her old home while in Soviet service. While there, she picked up a NASA Apollo program unmanned training capsule (Boilerplate #-1227), that was lost at sea, found by a Hungarian trawler, then transferred to the Russians, and later collected by the Southwind.
While in Murmansk, from 4 to 7 September 1970, over 700 local citizens visited the ship. CAPT. Cassidy paid homage to Soviet and American dead at a local cemetery where American and other Allied sailors killed near Murmansk were buried. Also, the Soviets returned an Apollo training capsule (BP-1227) that they had recovered at sea. Apparently the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Rescue and Recovery personnel who were using the 9,500 pound capsule for training but lost it at sea near the Azores in February, 1969. It was recovered by a Soviet fishing trawler. Southwind, after first sustaining a “bump” by a Soviet icebreaker while departing Murmansk for home, carried the capsule back to the U.S. and deposited it at Norfolk before ending her cruise at Baltimore on 17 November 1970.
USCGC Southwind (WAGB-280) crew members chip away at the ice while in Baffin Bay, November 1970. Note the Apollo capsule on the deck. USCG Photo scanned from Southwind’s Arctic East 70 scrapbook.
Finally, showing her age and being replaced by the new 399-foot Polar class cutters, she was decommissioned in 1974 and sold for scrap two years later. Today all that remains of her is the light that is kept burning by her veteran’s association.
In 2007, she was memorialized in an official USCG painting, “WAGB Southwind” by Thomas Carr, where she is depicted in the red-hull that she had only briefly towards the end of her career.
“A Coast Guard Icebreaker on patrol in the Antarctic moves through the ice floe.” WAGB Southwind by Thomas Carr (ID# 87112) USCG Image. (Click to bigup, very nice image)
Her seven sister-ships have likewise all been retired and scrapped. However, her half-sister, the USCGC Mackinaw, which broke the ice on the Great Lakes for six decades, is a floating museum in Michigan, and her grandfather, the old now 98-year old Krassin, is preserved at Saint Petersburg.
Icebreaker Krassin survived all of the Wind-class breakers she helped inspire
Also, Apollo BP-1227 is on display at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, where it has been since 1976, courtesy of a cruise on the Southwind, although the capsule continues to be a subject of much discussion and conjecture in the NASA fanboy community.
BP1227 has been on public display and sealed since 1976 as a time capsule to be opened in 2076. Photo by Mark Wade
Specs:
Displacement: 6,515 tons (1945)
Length: 269 ft (82 m) oa
Beam: 63 ft 6 in (19.35 m) mb
Draft: 25 ft 9 in (7.85 m) max
Installed power:
6 × Fairbanks-Morse model 8-1/8OP, 10-cylinder opposed-piston engines at 2,000 shp (1,500 kW), each driving a Westinghouse DC electric generator.
Propulsion: 2 × Westinghouse Electric DC electric motors driving the 2 aft propellers, 1 × 3,000 shp (2,200 kW) Westinghouse DC electric motor driving the detachable and seldom-used bow propeller.
Speed: Top speed: 13.4 knots (24.8 km/h) (1967)
Economic speed: 11.6 knots (21.5 km/h)
Range: 32,485 nautical miles (60,162 km)
Complement:
21 officers, 295 men (1944)
12 officers, 2 warrants, 205 men (1965 USN service)
13 officers, 2 warrants, 160 men (Post-1967 USCG service)
Sensors and processing systems:
Radar:
SA-2, SL-1 (1944, removed 1949)
SPS-10B; SPS-53A; SPS-6C (1967)
Sonar: QCJ-8 (1944-45)
Armament: 4 × 5″/38 (twin mounts)
12 × 40mm/60 (3 quad mounts)
6 × 20mm/80 (single mounts)
2 × depth charge tracks
6 × “K” guns
1 Hedgehog
M2 Browning machine guns and small arms (1944)
Aircraft carried: 1 Grumman J2F Seaplane, later helicopters in telescoping hangar
(1967)
1 x5″/38 single mount
20mm Mk 16 cannons (singles)
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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 September 24, 2014, the Kaiser’s Far Eastern leviathans
Scharnhorst, 1907. Click to bigup.
Here we see the armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst of the Kaiserliche Marine, the Imperial German Navy. The huge cruiser, along with her only sister ship, SMS Gneisenau, was Kaiser Wilhelm II’s muscle in the Pacific Ocean for their brief existence.
When old Willy picked up the concession (in a lease like the Brits did with Hong Kong) from the old Manchu Chinese government at Tsingtao (Qingdao, pronounced “Ching-dow”) in 1898, he added that Chinese port to a growing list of islands he bought from Spain after the Spanish American War (they weren’t using them anymore) as well as the new colony of German New Guinea. What’s a list of oddball far-flung colonies without a fleet to protect them though, right? This meant an upgrade to the small German East Asia Squadron (Ostasiengeschwader) from a handful of rusty gunboats and obsolete cruisers to something more dramatic.
With the Russians and Japanese mixing it up right on the German Far East’s door in 1904, the Kaiser pushed for a pair of very large, very well-equipped armored cruisers to be the core of a new Teutonic blue-water fleet in the Pacific. As the Grand Admiral of the Kaiserliche Marine was none other than Alfred von Tirpitz, former commander of the run-down East Asia Squadron, the Kaiser found easy support. This led to the Scharnhorst-class.
Scharnhorst and her sister were very distinctive in profile with their four large funnels and two masts fore and aft.
These ships were huge, comparable to pre-Dreadnought style battleships only with less armor (remember that later). At nearly 13,000-tons and over 474-feet long, they commanded respect when they sailed into a foreign port in the Pacific–, which was the point. Able to steam at 22-knots, they could outpace older battleships while upto 7-inches of armor protected them from smaller vessels. An impressive main battery of eight 8.3-inch (210mm) guns, backed up by a further two dozen 5.9 and 3.5-inch guns gave her both the firepower of a heavy cruiser and a light cruiser all in one hull. In short, these ships were built to tie down British and French battleships in the Pacific in the event of a coming war– keeping them away from the all-important Atlantic.
The two cruisers each had tw0 double turrets and four single mounts, each with stout Krupp-made 8.3-inch/210mm guns
The crews of these ships were blessed with a fire control center and artillery pieces that worked better than hoped, as evidenced by the fact that between 1909 and 1914, these two cruisers consistently won the Kaiser’s Cup naval gunnery contests, often coming in first and second place when stacked up against the rest of the fleet.
The German Armored cruiser Gneisenau. Date unknown.
Scharnhorst was laid down in 1905 at the Blohm and Voss shipyard in Hamburg, while her sister Gneisenau was simultaneously being built at AG Weser dockyard in Bremen. Germany, being short of naval heroes, named these two ships after a pair of Prussian generals during the Napoleonic Wars. Scharnhorst was completed first and sent to Tsingtao, where her 750+ crew made a big splash on the local scene. Gneisenau followed within a year.
The two white-hulled cruisers, among the largest warships of any nation in the world’s largest Ocean, were joined by an ever-increasing cast of small and fast light cruisers (SMS Dresden, SMS Emden, SMS Leipzig, and SMS Nurnberg) until the Kaiser had a half dozen new ships to protect his little slice of Germany in Asia. The commander of the force, Vice Admiral Maximilian, Reichsgraf von Spee, chose Scharnhorst for his flag. A wily veteran with over 30-years of colonial service under his feet, Von Spee was the perfect commander for what was coming next.
Scharnhorst
When World War One broke open in August 1914, the ships of the East Asia Squadron were spread around the Pacific at their pre-war stations. Von Spee wisely left Tsingtao, just ahead of a large Japanese force that would place the concession under siege with a preordained outcome.
Bringing his forces together in the Northern Marianas islands (then a German colony, now a U.S. territory, after capture from the Japanese in WWII, what a story!), Spee detached the fast ship Emden to meet her fate as an independent raider, while taking his five remaining cruisers to a place the British and French fleets that were hunting him never imagined– the South American coast
After just missing a British fleet at Samoa, and bombarding the French at Tahiti (where the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sank the French gunboat Zélée and the captured freighter Walküre in a very one-sided battle that was more of a waste of ammunition than anything else was), Von Spee made for Chile in the hopes of catching British shipping headed to and from the Atlantic.
The German steamer Walküre sunk in the harbor of Papeete, Tahiti, when the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau shelled the town
What he found was a force of four cruisers led by British Rear Adm. Sir Christopher Cradock.
On All Saints Day 1914, now coming up on its 100th anniversary, Craddock and Von Spee fought it out. While it would seem that four British cruisers, with a navy of long traditions in coming out on top in ship-to-ship engagements at sea, would best the five German cruisers, it would only seem that way.
By large matter of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau‘s enormous advantage in gunnery skills and armor/armament, the Germans smashed Craddock’s fleet at what is now known as the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile. It was simply a case of who had more large guns. The Germans had sixteen 8.3-inch guns against just two British 9.2-inchers. The engagement ended with the deaths of some 1500 British sailors, and the cruisers HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth at the bottom of the ocean. The Germans sailed away largely unscathed.
Sinking of the HMS Good Hope. The 14,388-ton Drake-class armored cruiser was formidable when designed in the 1890s, but she only had two breech-loading 9.2-inch Mk 10 guns that could be used in the battle. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau gave her no chance.
Von Spee then rounded the bottom of South America and made for the British crown colony of the Falkland Islands, then an important coaling station and stop-over point for Cape-bound ships. His ships low on coal, low on ammunition, and starting their fourth month on the run, were surprised when they met Vice Adm. Doveton Sturdee’s strong force that consisted of two new 20,000-ton HMS Invincible class battle-cruisers, backed up by five smaller cruisers and the old battleship HMS Canopus on December 8, 1914. In a direct mirror image of the Battle of Coronel, Von Spee was doomed.
Chart of the engagement, showing Sturdee’s chase of Von Spee’s fleet. Click to make much larger. From Project Gutenberg
Again, it came down to who had more heavy guns. The British this time had 16 quick firing 12-inch guns against the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau’s sixteen 8.3-inchers. Engaging the now-fleeing Germans at extreme range, the Scharnhorst turned into the two British battlecruisers, taking Invincible and Inflexible on in turns while Von Spee ordered the rest of his squadron to try to escape. However, it was no match By 16:17, ablaze and listing, she capsized. In the end, Scharnhorst took every single man who was aboard her that day, including Von Spee, to the bottom of the Atlantic.
The British were so pleased in the destruction of Scharnhorst that not one but two pieces of martial art were soon produced to celebrate it.
Sinking of the Scharnhorst painted by Admiral Thomas Jacques Somerscales currently on display at the Royal Museums Greenwich
Battle of the Falkland Islands, 1914 by British Artist William Lionel Wyllie, showing Scharnhorst slipping below the waves as Gneisenau battles on
Gneisenau’s life would only be scant minutes longer. Her engines barely able to break 16-knots against the Invincible and Inflexible’s 25, they soon caught up to her and at 17:50, out of ammunition and dead in the water, the mighty cruiser joined her sister in the depths. While a few of her crew were picked up by the British battlecruisers, over 600 perished.
HMS Inflexible picking up German sailors from Gneisenau after the battle
Later the same day they Royal Navy caught up to Nurnberg and Leipzig, completing a near hat trick of destroying the German East Asia Squadron in a single day. Dresden, out of coal and ammunition, scuttled herself in Chilean waters in March 1915, while her intelligence officer, a young Lt. Canaris, later to lead the Abwher in WWII, managed to escape destruction with her.
The Royal Navy had avenged the shame of Coronel. However, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would in turn be avenged at Jutland in 1916 when accurate large caliber shells of the German High Seas Fleet sent HMS Invincible to Valhalla while Inflexible, whose crew watched their sister ship vaporize, only narrowly avoided a salvo of torpedoes.
Scharnhorst’s battleflag was recovered; legend has it from a waterproof shell tube tied to the leg of a German bosun’s mate, and returned to Germany where it disappeared in 1945. Likely, it is hanging on a wall in Russia somewhere.
As far as a memorial to these, two armored cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were remembered in a pair of later German battlecruisers who, as fate would have it, were destroyed by the British in another World War. Von Spee himself, who not only lost his life at the Battle of the Falklands but those of his two sons, was memorialized in a pocket battleship that carried his name, before being the only German capital ship to be sunk in South America in another strange twist of fate.
As a side note, the Germans set up a brewery in Tsingtao, in part to provide good beer for the fleet still stands and is well known and even loved today as the best German beer in China. So if you ever run across one, pour out the first sip for Adm. Maximillian Von Spee and the 2200 sailors of the German East Asian Squadron that never saw their homeland again.
Specs:
Displacement: 12,985 t (12,780 long tons; 14,314 short tons)
Length: 144.6 m (474 ft.)
Beam: 21.6 m (71 ft.)
Draft: 8.37 m (27.5 ft.)
Propulsion:
18 Schulz Thornycroft Boilers
3 shaft triple expansion engines
27,759 ihp (trials)
Speed: 23.6 knots (44 km/h)
Range:
5,000 nmi (9,300 km; 5,800 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph)
2,200 nmi (4,100 km; 2,500 mi) at 20 kn (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Crew: 38 officers, 726 enlisted men
Armament:
8 × 8.2 in (21 cm) (2 × 2, 4 × 1)
6 × 5.9 in (15 cm) (6 × 1)
18 × 3.45 in (8.8 cm) (18 × 1)
4 × 17.7 in (45 cm) torpedo tubes
Armor:
Belt: 6 in (15 cm)
Turrets: 7 in (18 cm)
Deck: 1.5 in (3.8 cm)–2.5 in (6.4 cm)
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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, Sept 17, the slow gunboats of the Canal
USS ERIE moored to her sister ship USS CHARLESTON at Balboa, CZ. (Colorized photo courtesy of Clive Fennessy, http://www.usserie.org/ ) Click to bigup.
Here we see the two Erie-class gunboats USS Erie (PG-50) and USS Charleston (PG-51) at Balboa in the Panama Canal Zone in a photo courtesy of the Erie Memorial association.
These two ships were built under the specifications of the Washington and London Naval treaties on ‘slow gunboats.’ While carriers, battleships, cruisers, and submarines all had several very strict limits as to the maximum number of vessels of each type that could be produced by signatory powers, there was no limit how many small patrol-type combatants (such as gunboats, coast guard cutters, sloops, armed yachts, etc.) each navy contained on their list so long as the ships were generally built for what we would term littoral, convoy escort, and sovereignty type operations, not general fleet use.
Subject to any special agreements, which may submit them to limitation, the following vessels are exempt from limitation: Naval surface combatant vessels exceeding 600 tons (610 metric tons), but not exceeding 2,000 tons (2,032 metric tons) standard displacement, provided they have none of the following characteristics:
(1) Mount a gun above 6.1 inch (155 mm) calibre;
(2) Mount more than four guns above 3 inch (76 mm) calibre;
(3) Are designed or fitted to launch torpedoes;
(4) Are designed for a speed greater than twenty knots.
So there you had it, a ship, at 2000-tons or smaller, with no more than four large guns no bigger than 155mm, no torpedo tubes, and go no faster than 20-knots. This rough specification gave the U.S. Navy an outline for a pair of ships that they could use to patrol the Panama Canal Zone, freeing more flexible destroyers and cruisers for other missions. Naval architects Howard C. Fletcher and Mandell Rosenblatt crafted the design of these ships, which were budgeted at about $4-million apiece (in 1933 dollars, which is about $71 million today—a bargain when you consider an LCS, which is about the same size, is over $300 million).
Click to bigup. Newspaper write-up from the day. These were handsome ships
Erie, patrol gunboat #50, was laid down on 17 December 1934 at New York Naval Yard while Charleston, #51 was laid down about the same time, appropriately at the Charleston Navy Yard. It should be remembered that most other PGs of the day were “China” patrol boats that were much smaller, and much less heavily armed.
With their economical Parsons geared turbines coupled to a pair of Babcock and Wilcox boilers, these new patrol gunboats were rather beamy, with a 327-foot long hull and 41-foot beam giving them a length to beam ratio of 1:8. With everything lit they could just touch 20-knots, but running on one boiler they could churn up the seas at 12 knots for a pretty impressive 12,000nm, meaning they could go a long time between port calls if needed.
USS ERIE (PG-50) at the Canal Zone, Nov.1942.
A quartet of 6-inch/47 cal low-elevation guns in single mounts (150mm bores– just under the limit!) gave the boats enough punch to capture random enemy merchantmen and run off smuggler, pirates, and small warships. These MK 17 guns were a single-mount improvement over the guns carried in triple mounted turrets on U.S. light cruisers of the Brooklyn, Cleveland, classes et al. Only mounted on the two Erie-class ships, they were neat in the respect that they used 3.5hp motors for both powered elevation and training, which wasn’t very common for the time. They could fire the same 105-pound “Common Shell” used by the rest of the 6-inch guns of the fleet out to 19,000-yards, at a rate of up to 8 rounds per gun. They also used bagged charges, which were a pain compared to full-up once-piece shells. However, firing these big guns on a short boat led to some issues. According to reader Ed Foster, whose father served on Erie, they had to fill ballast tanks before firing a broadside.
I believe him.
Four quad 1.1-inch AAA mounts largely felt to be the worst AAA mount ever fielded by the U.S. Navy, gave the ships a modicum of protection against random air attack. Novel for the time, these 327-foot ships had accommodations for up to 44 Marines to put ashore (back then Marine detachments were just for cruisers, battleships, and come carriers). They could also carry an OS2U Kingfisher floatplane. Overall this ship type was designed as something of a force projection platform in low-threat areas. A mini, if somewhat slow, cruiser if you will.
Aerial starboard bow view of Erie underway in May 1940. National Archives photo 80-G-466205. Click to bigup
Their plant was an experiment of sorts and helped advance naval engineering designs that followed them. According to the Naval History Command:
Although their propulsion powering requirements were far lower than those of a destroyer, Charleston, and Erie’s machinery plants incorporated numerous advancements in marine engineering that had been first introduced aboard the Farragut Class destroyers, which were designed in 1932 and entered service in 1934 and 1935. These advancements included the use of superheated steam at higher pressures, air encased boilers, semi enclosed feed water systems, an AC electrical distribution system, an emergency diesel generator, and a number of other improvements. The ship had a single rudder operated by an electro-hydraulic steering engine. Prior to 1930, steam steering gears had been standard aboard naval vessels. Although Charleston was not a destroyer, a number of these design features carried over to the design of surface combatant ships that were built up through and during World War II
If these boats look familiar, you should realize that the U.S. Coast Guard’s ‘Secretary‘ class of high endurance cutters (originally classified as gunboats), were based on the design of these two Navy ships. We profiled one of these, Spencer, here earlier this year. Instead of the 6”/47 MK17s, the Coast Guard went with 5”/51’s and saved money in other areas, building their cutters out at about 30 percent less cost than the Eries.
USCGC Duane (WHEC33, formerly WPG-33) returning from Vietnam in 1968. She is a half-sister to Erie and Charleston.
This produced the simultaneous phenomena of the Navy ships of the class being among the slowest and most poorly armed in the fleet, while the Coast Guard ships, which were even more lightly armed, were the fastest and best equipped in that service’s armada! Different strokes for different folks.
Erie rolled down the ways and was commissioned 1 July 1936 while sister Charleston followed just a week later. These ships proved popular with the U.S. Navy of the Great Depression-era due to their small crew size, just 180 officers, men and marines (fewer on a peacetime cruise), and an economical cruise speed. Even though they were designed originally as the Panama Canal’s guard force, this allowed the ships to deploy far and wide for several years, waving the flag on the cheap. Remember, we have “Hope and Change,” the sailors of the 1930s had the “New Deal”, but money had to be saved for both.
Erie in the Atlantic Ocean off New York Navy Yard. October 19, 1936
Erie went to Spanish waters in 1936 to be an armed observer of American interests in the Spanish Civil War and then served as a midshipman trainer at Annapolis the next year. Charleston, meanwhile, did a Med cruise with stops that included Yugoslavia and Algiers and then spent a period poking around the coast of Canada’s Pacific shoreline and the Alaskan Territory.
Of course, they did still spend time in the Canal, as witnessed in the image at the top of this post. Ideally, one would be based at Balboa, on the Pacific end, while the other would be at Cristóbal, on the Atlantic. However, this did not go down as planned.
When World War II came to the Americas, Charleston was still in Alaskan waters and proceeded to spend most of her wartime service there.
Fore view of Gunboat USS Charleston at Ketchikan AK Harbour 1941.
Aft view of Gunboat USS Charleston at Ketchikan AK Harbour 1941.
She avoided Japanese torpedoes and bombs and bombarded shore positions in the Aleutians during the recapture of those islands from the Imperial Army– making her one of the only U.S. Navy ships in history to fire weapons into U.S. territory in wartime since the Civil War. Even when the Japanese were kicked out in 1943, Charleston spent the next two years on quiet anti-submarine patrol in Alaskan waters, after the addition of depth charge roll-off racks, while the rest of the fleet moved on. While assigned to the Aleutians the ship completed 130 escort missions involving a total of 253 convoyed ships. She performed a needed if unsung war, being decorated with but a single battle star.
Erie, however, had a much different wartime experience.
When the balloon went up on Dec. 7, 1941, Erie was in the Canal Zone where she was designed to be. Based at the Pacific end, she shuttled around in a mad dash for several weeks picking up interned Japanese citizens and directing questionable ships to authorities. Then, with Nazi U-boats haunting the U.S. East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, Erie was called up to the majors and sent through the Canal and into the Caribbean.
German U-boats haunted the Dutch West Indies in 1942. The image above shows a torpedo that ran up on Eagle Beach in Aruba on 16 Feb 1942. Fired from U-156, it missed the Texaco tanker Arkansas, berthed at Eagle Pier (although a second hit the ship). Shown being inspected by an unidentified Dutch Marine (Korps Mariniers) officer and U.S. Army Capt. Robert Bruskin, the steel fish was very much still a live war-shot round. It later killed four Dutch Marines who tried to disassemble it for study. Photo from LIFE March 2, 1942
One of the small regional convoy routes established at the time was the Trinidad to Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) run. These “TAG” convoys shuttled across the Caribbean at low speed due to the nature of the small coasters and tankers that often made them up, which made them the perfect target for U-boats. On 12 Nov 1942, not even a year into her war, Erie was escorting TAG Convoy #20 when U-163 came across the little gunboat just out of Curacao. Being the most valuable ship in the convoy, KrvKpt. Kurt-Eduard Engelmann fired three torpedoes at her. In a testament to her sturdy design, she suffered just 18 casualties and was able to beach rather than sink.
USS Erie (PG-50) beached and burning after being torpedoed by U-163 off the coast of Curaçao, November 1942
Erie, stricken, port side three-quarter view. Fort Nassau is at the top right of the photo. Note the dramatic list of port quarter. Photo http://www.usserie.org/
However, a resulting fire left Erie at a near-total loss. Towed to Willemstad harbor in the Dutch West Indies (now Curacao), she capsized three weeks later and settled in the harbor. Struck from the Naval List on 28 July 1943, she was salvaged in 1952, and her hulk sunk in deeper water. Today her memory is kept alive for posterity online by a most excellent association from which we used much information for this piece.
(Note: Erie‘s death was avenged. U-163 was sunk on 13 March 1943 just four months after Erie‘s attack. The boat was sent to Davy Jones in the North Atlantic northwest of Cape Finisterre by depth charges from the Canadian corvette HMCS Prescott with all hands, to include Engelmann, lost).
Erie‘s sister Charleston, after World War II, was largely unneeded. The Navy had hundreds of new ships and no naval limitations treaty requirements to adhere to anymore, which made the lone survivor of a two-ship class that carried a unique main gun and propulsion plant very much surplus.
The ships carried a very distinctive camouflage scheme during the war.
Even the Coast Guard, who still operated six half-sisters (one, Hamilton, was torpedoed and sunk 10 miles off Iceland 29 January 1942), didn’t need the aging and in need of refit Charleston for their fleet since they had picked up 13 brand new Owasco-class cutters as a result of wartime spending that they were having a hard time finding crews for. The Owascos, and Secretary class cutters, augmented by a few WWII-built fleet tugs and seaplane tenders transferred from the Navy, carried the Coast Guard through the 1960s and 70s when two new-built classes took their place.
USTS Charleston in the late 1940′s at Buzzard’s Bay while a school ship for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. NHHC image NH 77120.
This led Charleston to be disarmed (except for a single aft 6-incher), her wartime camo removed, and transferred to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy on 25 March 1948, where she served as a training ship for a decade. Accordingly, this led to other modifications:
A number of changes had to be made in order to make the ship suitable for duty as a school ship. All of the ship’s wartime armament had been removed with the exception of one of the after 6” mounts. The removal of all of this topside weight resulted in an increased metacentric height, which, if anything, made the ship too stable. Naval architects refer to this as being “stiff.” During the first few days of the annual training cruises, the ship often encountered a seaway off Cape Hatteras and it would start violently rolling. The majority of the cadets and some of the instructors would become seasick. This condition would last until calmer waters were reached in the Caribbean. When it was originally commissioned, Charleston was fitted with portholes along the side. These had been sealed up in its wartime configuration but they had been reinstalled to provide at least some degree of ventilation as the ship had no air conditioning system. Invariably some would be found to be leaking under the conditions described above resulting in water with a very unpleasant odor sloshing around in the berthing compartments.
According to CAPT. George W. Stewart, USN Ret., 1956 MMA alumni who sailed on USTS Charleston as a start to his thirty-year (SW) Navy career, she was a good ship to learn on.
“Despite its limitations, Charleston was an excellent ship to learn the basics of marine engineering aboard during the 1950s. The lack of automation was actually an advantage because there were plenty of underway watch stations with things for the Midshipmen to do. The experience gained aboard Charleston would prove to be extremely valuable to me aboard both naval and commercial steam-powered ships during a seagoing career,” wrote Stewart.
By 1958, however, she had become too expensive to operate and was turned back over to Uncle. Disposed of by MARAD in 1959 just past her twentieth birthday. Rumor is that she was sold to an Italian developer for use as a floating casino, but I cannot find anything on her past 1960 (so if you know what happened to PG-51, share please!).
Although Erie and Charleston are no longer with us, and five of their Coast Guard sisters have likewise vanished, two of that class are preserved as floating museums.
Erie‘s Kingfisher knocked off the ship by U-163‘s torpedoes in 1942, is a popular dive site off Curacao today as is her final resting place offshore for deepwater ‘bounce’ dives.
The USCGC Taney is currently a museum ship at the Baltimore Maritime Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland and the USCGC Ingham is part of the Key West Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida. Please visit them if you have a chance and when you go, give a moment’s respect to the noble Erie and Charleston as well.
Specs:
Via Shipbucket
Length overall: 328 feet, 6 inches
Length on waterline: 308 feet (at standard displacement)
Extreme beam at/below the waterline: 41 feet, 3 inches (at standard displacement)
Mean draft: 11 feet, 4 inches (at standard displacement)
Maximum draft in service: 14 feet, 6 inches
Design displacement: 2,000 tons
Displacement in service: 2,830 tons
Maximum speed: 20 knots
Range: 8,000 nautical miles at 12 knots
Engines: 2, Parsons geared turbine
Boilers: 2, Babcock and Wilcox
Generator sets: 3 (2 turbos, 1 diesel), all A.C.
Armament:
6-in., 47 caliber, Mark 17 guns: 4, with Mark 35 battery director
1.1 in., quadruple anti-aircraft guns: 4
20 mm, single anti-aircraft guns: 4
Depth charge roll-off racks: 2, Mark 6 (each holding 15 depth charges)
Smoke pipes: 1
Masts: 2
Armor: 3½ inch side belts (over vital spaces)
Armor: 1 inch on six-inch gun shields
Armor: 1¼ inch on main deck
Armor: 4 inches on conning tower
Radar: 1, Mark 3 (mounted atop battery director)
Sonar: 1, ASDIC
Scout plane: 1, OS2U “Kingfisher”
Captain’s cabin: 1
Admiral’s cabin: 1
Guest cabin with 2 staterooms: 1
Officers’ wardrooms: 15
Chief Petty Officers’ quarters: 18
Enlisted men’s berths (inc. 44 Marines): 213
Boats:
36-ft motor launch (70 men): 1
35-ft motorboat (27 men): 1
30-ft motor launches (40 men each): 2
26-ft motor whaleboats (24 men each): 2
Balsa life floats (25 men each): 2
10-ft punt: 1
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/
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.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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