USS NINA
15 MARCH 1910
USS NINÀ
The expansion of our fleet during the Civil War necessitated a supporting infrastructure that included a variety of yard craft. In the latter years of that war, our Navy contracted for the construction of nine iron hulled, screw steam yard tugs. Each displaced about 400 tons and stretched nearly 140 feet. Most in this series were named for famous non-military ships from history, such as SPEEDWELL, PINTA, MAYFLOWER, and FORTUNE. The fourth in this series remembered Christopher Columbus’ smallest vessel, NINÀ. Officially classed as a “4th rate” steamer, NINÀ was launched in the month following the surrender at Appomattox and reported to the Washington Navy Yard 6 January 1866. Here she skillfully executed the, albeit inglorious, duties of a yard tug.
Interest in developing auto-mobile underwater torpedoes drove the Navy to convert NINÀ and several of her sister tugs for duty as torpedo boats. She arrived at our new torpedo research station at Newport, Rhode Island, 14 April 1870. This duty continued for 21 years, broken only occasionally, as in her assistance in the salvage of the gunboat USS TALLAPOOSA off Martha’s Vineyard, and for a stint at the New York Navy Yard. Then in 1892 she underwent another modernization, for a return to her tugboat duties.
NINÀ’s ten-knot speed gave her, and her sisters that remained in service, utility in a variety of tasks over the next decade. She was modified in late 1892 with two 3-pounder guns and assigned as a tender and supply vessel for our new Torpedo Boat Flotilla during Caribbean training operations. She was loaned to the Lighthouse Department for verifying and repairing navigational aids and to the Board of Inspection and Survey in Maine. Then in 1905, she underwent yet another conversion, this time to a submarine tender. Our Navy was in the initial phases of our submarine program, and NINÀ tended these initial boats as well as the 1st Torpedo Boat Flotilla of our Atlantic Fleet. In early 1909, when the Great White Fleet staged its review at Hampton Roads, NINÀ participated. She lingered in Norfolk into 1910, when she was ordered to return to New England.
On 9 February that year she set a course for Boston. But in an age before accurate weather forecasting, NINÀ cruised directly into the jaws of a nor-easter. She was spotted by a passing ship off the Chesapeake Capes in the midst of that gale. She failed to show at her scheduled arrival in Boston, and a search failed to discover any trace. NINÀ is one of a dozen or so US Navy vessels to vanish without a trace. On this day, now a month overdue, she and her officer and 30 crewmen were declared a loss. For 68 years her disappearance remained a mystery.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 20 MAR 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 95.
Henry, Neil. “Divers Find the NINÀ in 15 Fathoms.” Washington Post, 8 October 1978, AT: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1978/10/08/divers-find-the-nina-at-15-fathoms/744cd573-4f90-4491-bd0d-8210fc8c3e96/, retrieved 2 March 2023.
Silverstone, Paul H. Warships of the Civil War Navies. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, p. 112.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: NINÀ’s wreck was found in 1978. She lies upright in 90 feet of water 11 miles north-northeast of Ocean City, Maryland. Disappearances at sea were not rare in the age before satellite navigation. Despite the lore of the mythical Bermuda Triangle, such disappearances occurred in all Seven Seas. Perhaps NINÀ’s disappearance along with that of her 31 crewmen might be better remembered today had it chanced to occur several hundred miles to the south!
Shortly before midnight 24 August 1884 the sidewheel gunboat USS TALLAPOOSA, also a Civil War veteran, collided with the civilian schooner J.S. Lowell and sank off Martha’s Vineyard. She was successfully salvaged, repaired, and returned to service until 1892.
