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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023: Of Mustaches, Stars, and Condemned Cannons

Above we see a beautiful large format photograph of the early protected cruiser, USS Newark (Cruiser No. 1, later C-1) — the first modern steel-hulled cruiser in the U.S. Fleet, in the Hudson in 1891. You can clearly see her broadside of a half dozen 6″/30 guns, the ornately adorned ram bow, the extensive array of whaleboats and gigs to include a steam launch in the water, as well as her three-masted auxiliary sailing rig. A true warship caught between the end of the canvas and iron Navy and the beginning of the one made of steel.

She would have a unique place in American naval history.

The Squadron of Evolution

The Navy’s first run of steel-hulled ships, all mounting modern rifled breech-loading naval guns, protected by at least a modicum of armor, relying on steam engineering plants as their main means of propulsion, and even lit by electric lights, started with the famed “ABCD” ships– the protected cruisers USS Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago, joined by the smaller dispatch boat USS Dolphin (later PG-24)-– all ordered from the same shipyard, John Roach & Sons of Chester, Pennsylvania.

While the ABC part of this quartet was built to fight, running 3,200 tons in the case of Atlanta and Boston and 4,500 tons for Chicago, with as much as 4 inches of armor plate and a total of eight 8-inch, 20 6-inch, and two 5-inch guns between them, Dolphin was a lot less of a bruiser. That was OK, because their demonstration unit, the so-called Squadron of Evolution, or “White Squadron” was soon augmented by three smaller 1,900-ton Palmer and Cramp-built Yorktown class gunboats including USS Bennington and USS Concord.

Although the ABCD boats and the Yorktowns were all ordered and built between 1883 and 1890, it is Newark, ordered 3 March 1885 and not delivered until 1891, that is classified by the Navy as Cruiser No. 1 as Atlanta and Boston never received “C” series hull/pennant numbers while Chicago, by a twist of fate, earned a somewhat retroactive “CA-14” only in 1920 when she was hopelessly obsolete. The follow-on protected cruisers USS Charleston, USS Baltimore, USS Philadelphia, and USS San Francisco, therefore, became C-2, C-3, C-4, and C-5 although their orders and construction roughly overlapped Newark.

Anywhoo…

Meet Newark

Our subject was the first warship commissioned to honor the largest city in New Jersey (as well as towns in Delaware, New York, and Ohio).

Some 328 feet long overall (311 at the waterline) she was considered a considerable improvement on Chicago. With a displacement of just over 4,000 tons, she carried a complete protective deck that ran two inches thick amidships with three inches at the slopes as well as splinter shields for her main guns and a conning tower with three-inch armor on the sides.

As a sailing ship, she was rigged as a barque without royals or headgear while her main propulsion was via a set of HTE engines propelled by four coal-fired boilers, sufficient to gin up 8,500 hp and able to drive the fighting ship at a healthy 18 knots.

Her primary armament was a full dozen 6″/30 Mark 3 Mod 0 breechloading guns, an upgrade from the 6″/30 Mark 1s carried by the ABCD squadron and the Yorktowns. Black powder “bag” guns, they were capable of firing 105-pound AP shells out to 18,000 yards at maximum elevation/charge, with a rate of fire of about one shell every other minute or so. 

To zap small steam torpedo launches and small craft capable of coming in close and under her broadside’s minimum depression arc, Newark carried an array of small pieces.

This included four 57mm/40cal Hotchkiss Mk I/II 6-pounders, a quartet of 47mm/40cal 3-pounder Hotchkiss Mk Is, and two 37mm/20cal Hotchkiss Mk I revolving Gatling-style guns.

Like most naval vessels of her day, she could muster about a third of her 384-man crew who, joined with her Marine detachment, could disembark for extended landing force service ashore, equipped with rifles and field gear as a light infantry company. More on this later.

Then of course the ship herself was a weapon, a massive ram capable of smashing into the hull of an opponent and crashing her strengthened bow into the bulkheads of an enemy vessel.

Among her boats were plans for a 28-foot steam whaleboat, a 24-foot twin-masted sail cutter, two 28-foot sail cutters, a 30-foot whale gig, and two 29-foot whaleboats.

Happy service

Ordered from William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia– the yard that had built Yorktown and would likewise build the cruisers Baltimore (C-3) and Philadelphia (C-4) alongside– Newark was laid down 12 June 1888, launched 19 March 1890, and commissioned on Groundhog’s Day 1891.

Her first skipper was Capt. Silas Casey Jr. (USNA 1860), a future admiral who had learned his trade during the Civil War on the blockade line aboard the famed Unadilla-class gunboats Wissahickon and Winooski. Her next eight skippers, some of whom only held command for a few months to cap a career, were all Civil War veterans– the end of an era.

The next half-decade, until she entered ordinary for a well-deserved refit in March 1896, saw Newark showing the flag in West Indies ports then ranging to South Africa and Europe, often serving as an admiral’s flagship, and taking part in numerous international naval activities such as the 400th Anniversary of Columbus’ sailing which included port calls in Genoa (the explorer’s birthplace), towing a replica of the humble caravel Nina across the Atlantic from Spain, and attending the myriad of naval reviews in Hampton Roads and New York in 1893.

This left several great images of our cruiser.

Period photographers likewise captured some great shots of her crew that stand as absolute time capsules for the era, saved in a scrapbook from the vessel collected by William D. Edwards and via the Detroit Postcard company.

War!

Following an extensive 14-month overhaul, Newark recommissioned on 23 May 1898, just weeks after the U.S. declaration of war on Spain. When she emerged, she looked much more like a 20th Century warship rather than one of the 19th, having removed her original mainmast as well as her sails and rigging to leave two short military masts topped with searchlights, and donned a heavy coat of gray paint. She was swathed in splinter nets and landed much of her ornate woodwork from below decks. 

Her wartime skipper was Capt. Albert Smith Barker (USNA 1861), who had served in the Civil War aboard the old USS Mississippi and held command of the early battleship USS Oregon and, leaving his position on the Army-Navy Board eagerly accepted command of Newark. Her new navigator, late of the armored cruiser USS New York, was LT William F. Halsey Sr.– yes, that Halsey’s old man.

Sailing on 13 June for Key West and then Cuba, she joined the blockade on 30 June and served intermittently as the flagship of Commodore John Crittenden Watson, Commander, Eastern Fleet. Cruising in Cuban waters throughout the summer, Newark bombarded the port of Manzanillo on 12 August and on the following day accepted its surrender.

Carrying part of the First Marine Battalion with its commander, Col. Robert W. Huntington, aboard, Barker noted the sadness displayed by the Marine colonel at the sight of the white flags over Manzanillo on 13 August, saying, “As part of the contemplated plan of operations was the landing of some or all of the marines of Colonel Huntington’s command. This officer’s regret at the loss of an opportunity to win additional distinction for his corps and himself was only equaled by his careful study of the necessities of the case and his zealous entrance into the spirit of the enterprise.”

After the Battle of Santiago, she participated in the final destruction of Admiral Cervera’s fleet, bombarding the burned Spanish hulks.

With the war over, Newark was needed on the other side of the globe where the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, was ablaze.

After a short trip back to New York, Newark steamed through the Straits of Magellan to San Francisco then across the Pacific for the Philippines arriving in Cavite on 25 November 1899. By the end of the year, her landing forces were moving ashore, receiving the surrender of insurrectionists in the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, and Bataan.

Boxing the Boxers

Having had little rest since she was recommissioned in May 1898 that took her from Santiago to Bataan, the year 1900 found our cruiser and her seasoned crew still in haze gray on Asiatic Station. She pulled up anchor on 20 May while at Yokohama, bound for China to help land reinforcements to relieve the international legations under siege by the anti-foreign/anti-Christian forces of the “Society of the Righteous Harmonious Fists,” at Peking.

Just two days later, she was in the midst of the mess, arriving at the port of Tientsin and then moving against Taku and Chefoo.

Over the next 11 weeks, Newark and her crew and Marine detachment would be involved in a series of actions, battles, and sieges ranging from running dispatches and medical supplies through bandit territory to outright heavy fighting against the Chinese Imperial Army.

A joint naval force was assembled from eight European navies and placed under the command of VADM Edward Hobart Seymour, Royal Navy, with Newark’s Captain Bowman H. McCalla as the second in command. In all, the 2,100-strong force (including 112 Americans, mostly from Newark) went down in history as the Seymour Relief Expedition, which tried but failed to relieve Peking and had to withdraw back to Tientsin by train, with Peking relieved later in the summer by the successful Gaselee Expedition.

Among Newark’s crew at the time was a young midshipman, Joseph Knefler Taussig, who would go on to become a WWII Vice Admiral– one of a very few individuals who served in the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II, famously clashing with FDR. Taussig would be in good company, as, included among the British contingent were young Royal Navy officers Capt. John Jellicoe and LT David Beatty.

The cadet was seriously wounded in the leg during the Expedition. He wasn’t the only one. During the battle for the Hsiku Arsenal, Capt. McCalla, along with 25 of his force, was wounded and five were killed.

Those who did make it to the Legation Quarter in Peking on 31 May amounted to roughly a light company under Marine Capt. John “Handsome Jack” Myers, who, along with 20 Marines from the battleship USS Oregon also counted a force from USS Newark made up of Capt. Newt Hall and 23 Marines, five Sailors, and U.S. Navy Assistant Surgeon T.M. Lippett.

They arrived with five days rations, an M1895 Colt “potato-digger” machine gun removed from Newark along with 8,000 rounds of ammo for it, and 20,000 rounds for their Navy-Lee rifles. Leaving their kit on their ships, they only had the clothes on their back and the contents of their pockets.

Then began the famed “55 Days in Peking” that lasted from 20 June to 14 August before the Gaselee Expedition arrived and the Boxers were defeated.

One of the bluejackets from Newark during the Peking Siege was Gunner’s Mate First Class Joseph Andrew Mitchell. Born in Philadelphia in 1876, Mitchell grew up tinkering with the flotsam of the Revolutionary and Civil War and was something of a cannon fan, hence his occupation. It was to come in handy when the outnumbered Legation garrison was facing off with upwards of 20,000 besieging Boxers.

As told in an article via the Sextant:

Mitchell and the U.S. legation’s secretary Herbert Squiers had an idea: build a piece of artillery using the cylinder of a pump as the cannon barrel. They began to experiment, but then, on 7 July, a stroke of luck changed their plans. Chinese Christian refugees sheltering in the Legation Quarter discovered a cannon barrel reportedly lying in a junk shop, likely a relic from the Anglo-French expedition during the Second Opium War. Firsthand accounts record that the barrel was rifled and forged from either bronze or steel, but what Mitchell received was a “mass of rust and dirt.” He scraped and cleaned the barrel to give it “a creditable appearance,” one worthy of serving as the centerpiece for his improvised gun.

At first, the barrel was mounted to a heavy pole. When this proved unsatisfactory, the gun carriage was taken from the Italian’s 1-pounder, and the barrel was secured to the carriage with rope. Now, ammunition was needed. The Russian allies had arrived in Beijing with a chest of 3-inch shells but forgotten their gun in the city of Tianjin. When the siege began, they had thrown their shells down a well to prevent them from falling into Chinese hands. The disposed shells were hauled up, but found to be too large for the narrow barrel. Mitchell solved this problem by first removing the shells from their casings, then ramming them into the barrel. Thus, the “International Gun” was born, made of material from Russia and Italy and primarily manned by an American gunner, Joseph Mitchell. Members of the international guard also knew the weapon as “Betsey” or “the Empress Dowager.”

Mitchell and his crew somehow kept the International Gun and its improvised shells working, moving the artillery piece from location to location within the Legation to make it seem like the garrison had more than just a single pop gun at their disposal.

Of the 56 Sailors and Marines from Oregon and Newark, seven were killed and 10 seriously wounded during the siege, including Mitchell who was shot in the arm on the last day of the action.

Of the 22 Marine and 33 Navy recipients of the Medal of Honor for the Boxer Rebellion, a whopping 35 (12 USMC and 22 USN) came from men assigned to USS Newark, including Mitchell. Keep in mind that 11 Navy ships (Brooklyn, Monocacy, Nashville, New Orleans, Newark, Solace, and Wheeling) served in Chinese waters during the Rebellion long enough for their personnel to be authorized the China Relief Expedition Medal.

It was a melting pot amalgamation of bluejackets to be sure.

Among Newark’s crew who earned the MoH were German-born Coxswain Karl Thomas, Seaman Hans Anton Hansen and Chief Machinist Carl Emil Petersen; Norwegian Gunner’s Mate Third Class Martin Torinus Torgerson, Finnish-born Seaman Axel Westermark, London-born Seaman William Seach, Sons of Eire to include Belfast-born Seaman Samuel McAllister and Landsman Joseph Killackey of County Cork, and one Boatswain’s Mate First Class Edward G. Allen who, despite his Anglicized name, had a birthplace was listed as Amsterdam, Holland in 1859, making him 41 at the time of the expedition, its “old man.”

Other Newark crewmembers with Boxer Rebellion MoHs:

• Chief Boatswain’s Mate Joseph Clancy (age 37)
• Chief Carpenter’s Mate William Francis Hamberger (later LCDR)
• Oiler Frank Elmer Smith
• Coxswain Francis Thomas Ryan
• Coxswain John McCloy
• Coxswain Jay P. Williams
• Boatswain’s Mate First Class William Edward Holyoke
• Machinist First Class Burke Hanford
• Gunner’s Mate Second Class John Purness Chatham
• Hospital Apprentice Robert Henry Stanley
• Landsman James a Smith
• Seaman George Harry Rose (later LCDR)

Then of course were Newark’s Marines who earned the MoH:

• Gunnery Sergeant Peter Stewart
• CPL Reuben Jasper Phillips
• CPL Edwin Nelson Appleton (later Captain)
• PVT William F. Zion
• PVT France Silva
• PVT Harry Westley Orndoff
• PVT Henry William Heisch (formerly of Latendorf, Germany)
• PVT Louis Rene Gaiennie
• PVT Daniel Joseph Daly (the only enlisted Marine to have won the Medal of Honor twice, for two separate acts of gallantry)
• PVT William Louis Carr
• PVT James Burnes
• Drummer John Alphonsus Murphy (aged 18)

Back from the East

Newark sailed for home in mid-April 1901, via Hong Kong, Ceylon, and the Suez, arriving at Boston in July 1901. There, she would be modernized, landing her SpanAm War-era “bag” 6″/30 Mark 3 guns for a dozen new 6″/40 Mark 4s that used fixed shells and had easily twice the rate of fire.

She would put her gleaming white paint scheme back on for at least a half-decade and once again show the flag around the West Indies and off the coast of South America, then clock in as a training ship for the Naval Academy.

She spent a year on loan (May 1907-May 1908) to the New York Naval Militia and would be the floating home to the organization’s 1st Battalion.

Then, returning to active service, she was used as a station ship at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay until 1912.

By that time, although she was just 21 years old, the concept of an 18-knot cruiser on the cusp of the Great War was ludicrous and she was marked for decommissioning.

Stricken from the Navy List in June 1913 she served as a Public Health Service quarantine hulk at Providence, Rhode Island, and temporarily as a naval hospital annex there until 1926 when she was disposed of, sold for her value as scrap on 7 September, some 97 years ago this week.

Epilogue

Across her career from February 1891 to June 1912, Newark had 21 skippers, all Annapolis men. No less than seven went on to wear admiral’s stars.

Some of her Mark 4 6″/30s, removed in 1913, were no doubt used to arm merchant ships against U-boats in the Great War.

Newark is well remembered in period artwork from her era, some of it breathtaking.

GM1 Mitchell, who later retired from the Navy as a lieutenant, passed in 1925 and is buried at St. Paul’s Catholic Cemetery in Portsmouth, Virginia.

His work at Peking was commemorated in the DC war comic, “Our Fighting Forces” # 135, Feb. 1972, by Norman Maurer.

As for Mitchell’s International Gun (also known as ‘Old Betsy’, ‘Boxer Bill’, ‘Old Crock’ and the ‘Empress Dowager’), used during the siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking, the cannon was carefully escorted back to the States after the rebellion and has been in storage at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum for decades.

An icon of “Devil Dog” history right up there with Chesty Puller, Sergent Major Dan Daly’s Medals of Honor, including the one earned at Peking while a part of Newark’s Marine det, are in the National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico.

For more about the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps in the Boxer Rebellion, please check out Emily Abdow’s new work, “The Boxer Rebellion: Bluejackets and Marines in China, 1900–1901,” at the NHHC in PDF format.

As for the name “Newark” despite the Navy’s best efforts, it just hasn’t been done justice ever since.

During the Great War, a commercial tug by the name was taken into service for the duration for work as a minesweeper patrol craft (S. P. 266) and retained her peacetime moniker. A planned Cleveland-class light cruiser (CL-88) was canceled in 1940 while a second of the same class that was to carry the name (CL-100) was converted during construction to the Independence-class light aircraft carrier USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). Finally, another planned USS Newark (CL-108), a Fargo-class light cruiser was canceled on 12 August 1945 when 67.8 percent completed.

Today, with the final Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers in active service slated to decommission sometime in 2027, and no more “C” hull numbers inbound, the line started with Newark in 1888 is set to close after a glorious 139 years.

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Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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