RED ROVER AND SINCE…

When early American naval forces fought in distant locales our Navy often had to supply her own hospital facilities.  In our earliest days this was accomplished by designating certain of the expeditionary warships as temporary hospitals.  As late as the Civil War, the storeship USS BEN MORGAN and the blockader USS HOME served intermittent stints as floating hospitals.  But the first US Navy vessel designated wholly and exclusively as a hospital ship was the Civil War side-wheel river steamer RED ROVER, converted after her capture from the Confederates.  She admitted over 2400 patients during the Mississippi River campaign of 1862-64.

Post-Civil War, the US Army maintained its own fleet of hospital ships.  For example, the Army converted the steel-hulled passenger liner John Englis for medical use, renamed her RELIEF, and sent her off Cuba for the Spanish-American War.  Four years later she was transferred to the Navy, where she rusted at Mare Island for several years while the Navy line and the Medical Department argued over who should command hospital ships.  Anticipating the “Great White Fleet’s” world cruise, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that a physician, Surgeon Charles F. Stokes, would skipper the Navy’s first modern hospital ship.  Thus, from February to November 1908 RELIEF accompanied the Fleet across the Pacific, seeing to the medical needs of the 14,000 servicemen.  But on 17 November she was heavily damaged in a typhoon and limped to Subic Bay.  Here she was declared unseaworthy but was retained as a floating hospital at Olongapo.  In April 1918 her name was changed to REPOSE to allow the first Navy ship built from the keel up as a hospital ship to bear the name RELIEF (AH-1).

AH-1 was a 500-bed facility that went to sea under the command of Richard C. Holcomb, CDR/MC/USN.  She and her WWI sisters SOLACE (AH-2), COMFORT (AH-3) and MERCY (AH-4) had been replaced before Pearl Harbor, an attack to which SOLACE (AH-6) was a witness.  WWII saw thirteen more hospital ships, COMFORT, HOPE, MERCY, BOUNTIFUL, SAMARITAN, REFUGE, HAVEN BENEVOLENCE, TRANQUILITY, CONSOLATION, REPOSE, SANCTUARY and RESCUE in order of ascending hull number.            CONSOLATION (AH-15) accepted the first direct helicopter medevac from the battlefield during the Korean Conflict.  Our most decorated hospital ship is REPOSE (AH-16) who served off Korea and Vietnam, earning 18 Battle Stars over her career.  In 1980, the Navy considered a fourth tour for the three-war veteran SANCTUARY (AH-17) to fill a Cold War maritime pre-positioning mission.  Instead, the Navy acquired two newer ships, the supertankers Worth and Rose City.  These were converted to the MERCY (T-AH-19) and COMFORT (T-AH-20) respectively.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  11 FEB 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1991, p. 310.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A-B”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1959, pp. 115-16.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 89, 152, 169.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 271-72, 296, 359.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, pp. 331-32.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, pp. 51-52, 60-61, 68-69, 77-78, 305-06, 543-44.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, pp. 256-57.

Navy Historical Foundation. “The Resignation of Admiral Brownson.”  NHF Publication Series II (20), Spring 1976.

Polmar, Norman.  The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 16^th ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, pp. 235-36.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:           Roosevelt’s decision to have a Medical Officer command RELIEF turned into a disaster.  Currently Staff Officers are barred from tactical command.

Our current system of hull numbering took effect in 1920.  Ships already in service on 17 July 1920 were retroactively numbered, the hull number AH-1 being assigned to the oldest hospital ship then in service, our second hospital ship named RELIEF.  Ships that had left service prior to 1920 never received a hull number, hence RED ROVER and the first RELIEF have no such designators.

The refitting costs for SANCTUARY (AH-17) in 1980 proved prohibitive, and this graceful lady was stricken from the NVR in 1989 and sold to a civilian humanitarian organization for $10.  She was never reactivated as a hospital ship, rather she rusted at the dock in Baltimore while ownership was transferred a half dozen times.  She was finally scrapped in 2011.

The post RED ROVER and since… appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                          DAISY CHAIN RESCUE

In 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, American freighters crossing the North Atlantic were being torpedoed by German U-boats as Hitler tried to starve England into submission.  By May, President Franklin Roosevelt declared an “Unlimited National Emergency” and detailed US Navy escorts for these convoys.  In addition, Patrol Wing 7 was hastily established and sent to Reykjavik, Iceland.  On 6 August 1941, the PBY Catalinas of PatWing 7, squadrons VP-73 and VP-74, became operational.

Seventeen months later, on 27 January 1943, one of PatWing 7’s PBYs operating out of Narsarssuak, Greenland, was en route to Ivigut to begin sweeping ahead of convoys.  She would report weather and ice conditions, and more importantly, German U-boat activity.  But thick fog set in as the plane droned on, and the pilot had increasing difficulty distinguishing the water’s surface.  Neither could the PBY climb over the soup.  Reluctantly the plane turned back.  Her pilot eased lower and lower in the deteriorating visibility, hoping to gauge the water’s surface until–with a sudden lurch–the flying boat’s belly scraped against ice and ground to a halt!

A radio call to Narsarssuak brought an Army plane to drop food, clothing, and spare parts, and for several days the Navy crew worked to repair their Catalina.  But the longer the heavy aircraft sat, the more deeply it sank into the newly forming crust.  Before too many days it became evident the plane was not going to be easily dislodged.  Now the most pressing concern became extracting the crew from Greenland’s frozen and forbidding wastes.

A rescue party of eight Army soldiers and a local cryolite mining operator who knew the area, Mr. Sinclair Adams, embarked on the seaplane tender USS SANDPIPER (AVP-9).  By the last of January, the tender had reached Arsuk Fjord, the nearest point to effect a landing of the rescue party.  Here the singular small beach was walled from the island’s plateau by cliffs.  After unloading the equipment, which included two motorized toboggans and a mobile base camp, it became apparent the cliff would present a considerable problem.  They grunted and strained in an attempt to lift their equipment to prominent ledges, but without much success.  Observing their plight, SANDPIPER’s skipper, LT H.T.E. Anderson, hatched an inventive idea.  Thirty sailors were sent ashore to scramble up the nearly vertical face and form a human chain.  One at time the party’s bundles were hoisted up, hand over hand, until all were safely atop the precipice.  The rescue party then set to their task.  The remainder of the evolution went well, and the party returned with the Navy fliers on the 3^rd of February.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  6 FEB 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare).  United States Naval Aviation 1910-1980.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, p. 109.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 1 The Battle of the Atlantic.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1947, pp. 77, 334.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  A successful rescue was not accomplished in every case of a downed aircraft in Greenland.  In fact, air operations in Greenland were complicated by clandestine German radio outposts who often broadcast sham distress calls, luring American fliers deep into the frozen Arctic.  From whence they often never returned.

SANDPIPER had barely completed this mission when a second rescue tasking was received.  On the early morning of the 3^rd, the Army transport USAT DORCHESTER was torpedoed in the Davis Strait, and the seaplane tender was asked to assist in searching for survivors.  By the time she arrived at the scene however, the 34^o water and 36^o air had left only bodies buoyed by their lifebelts.

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                                          VANISHING COLLIERS

The steam engine revolutionized naval architecture by freeing sea travel from slavery to the wind.  But steam engines require a source of heat to make steam, and for decades around the turn of the 20^th century that heat was generated by burning coal.  The job of supplying coal to the far-flung ships of the US Navy fell to a special flotilla of cargo ships, the colliers.  We had 24 such colliers in commission at the outbreak of WWI.  All bore the names of Greek and Roman mythological figures associated with the sea.  Twelve of these colliers were general cargo ships simply employed to carry coal, and twelve were purpose-built, having specific coal handling and coal safety equipment.  USS PROTEUS (AC-9) and NEREUS (AC-10) were sisters in this latter group, both commissioned into service in 1913.  With the US entry into World War I in 1917, both carried coal and supplies to US Navy ships in European waters.  Then, as part of post-WWI downsizing, NEREUS and PROTEUS were decommissioned in 1922 and 1924 respectively.  Both lay quietly in reserve in the James River ghost fleet.

It was during WWI that another of the Navy’s purpose-built colliers, USS CYCLOPS, touched at Barbados on a return voyage from Rio de Janeiro, where she had coaled British warships to the thanks of our State Department.  Upon departing Barbados, CYCLOPS was lost without a trace in what would later become the infamous “Bermuda Triangle.”

In the 1920s, our Navy began the conversion from coal to more efficient oil-burning boilers.  We found we no longer needed the once-busy colliers by the late 1930s.  On this date, both NEREUS and PROTEUS were struck from the Naval Vessels Register and sold to Saguenay Terminals, Ltd., a Canadian shipping firm based in Ottawa.  Saguenay retained their US names and converted these ships to carry bauxite (aluminum ore).  Proteus departed St. Thomas in the Caribbean on 23 November 1941 fully loaded, followed just over two weeks later by the similarly laden Nereus.  Neither ship was ever seen again.

Their course would have taken them through the same area in which CYCLOPS had been lost three decades earlier.  Contemporary presumptions held that both had fallen to sabotage or to German U-boats then active in the Atlantic.  However, records captured after the war indicate no U-boat attacks were made in this area at this time.  Such news might engender Bermuda Triangle fanaticism however the most plausible theory suggests that nearly twenty years in mothballs allowed acid corrosion from coal dust to weaken the colliers’ frames.  This predisposed the freighters to catastrophic hull collapse in rough seas.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  12 DEC 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy.  “World War I Era Colliers–Organized by Type.”  Naval Historical Center on-line.  AT: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/onlinelibrary/photos/usnshtp/ac/w1ac-1.htm, retrieved 21 April 2012.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 226.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, pp. 45, 394.

Grover, David H.  “Strange Mystery of the Vanished Sister Ships.”  Sea Classics, Vol 39 (11), November 2006, pp. 18-24, 46-47.

Naval Museum of Manitoba.  “Canadian WWII Merchant Ship Losses.”  AT: http://www.naval-museum.mb.ca/merch/mership.htm, retrieved 21 April 2012.

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                                   HMS DEVONSHIRE vs. ATLANTIS

One of the Royal Navy’s early successes in WWII was the effort against German surface raiders.  Indeed, KMS ATLANTIS had accumulated some impressive statistics by November 1941.  Converted from the freighter SS Goldenfels, she had escaped the British blockade in March of 1940 to become the first of several dozen auxiliary cruisers to raid Allied merchant shipping.  She had sunk or captured 22 freighters totaling 144,387 tons.  In doing so, she remained at sea longer than any German surface ship, her 622 consecutive days of cruising eclipsing the previous 445-day record of the WWI raider WOLF.  She had circumnavigated the globe eastwardly, and after rounding Cape Horn again this month toward Germany, her crew was anticipating Christmas with their families.  But on her way north, ATLANTIS was called upon to resupply several U-boats.  This morning, ATLANTIS met U-126 350 miles northwest of Ascension Island.  A fuel hose was passed to the sub and small boats began ferrying food and supplies.  While the U-boat skipper, Kapitänleutnant Ernst Bauer, called on CAPT Bernhard Rogge of ATLANTIS, the raider shut down her port engine for repairs.  All seemed to be going well for the moment.

By 1941, the Royal Navy had redoubled anti-submarine efforts.  U-boats replenishing from tenders on the open sea were particularly vulnerable if they could be located.  This morning, ATLANTIS’ deck watch spotted the three-funneled silhouette of a British cruiser.  U-126 capped her fuel port and crash dove, stranding her skipper on ATLANTIS.  The raider jettisoned the fuel hose, leaving a tell-tale oil slick and threw her starboard engine to full power.  But her limping ten-knot speed was no match for the cruiser’s.  DEVONSHIRE opened from ten miles, straddling ATLANTIS, then hitting her amidships.  At that great range ATLANTIS’ smaller guns were useless; the raider could only hope to draw the cruiser across the path of the lurking U-boat.  But the panicked submarine had dived deeply and was not positioned to assist.  Rogge laid a smoke screen which provided momentary cover, but DEVONSHIRE continued to bombard from beyond ATLANTIS’ range.  After a 90-minute running battle ATLANTIS was left crippled and burning.

The raider hove to and set scuttling charges.  Pummeled further by the cruiser, she sank by the stern, leaving 305 men drifting in open boats.  DEVONSHIRE disappeared over the horizon.  U-126 resurfaced later in the afternoon and took the lifeboats under tow.  For nearly two days ATLANTIS’ crewmen endured daytime heat and nighttime chill in crowded open boats that constantly shipped water as they were dragged behind the sub.  It took nearly two days to reach the nearby supply ship PYTHON.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 NOV 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Frank, Wolfgang and Bernhard Rogge.  The German Raider Atlantis.  New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1956, pp. 136-45, 151-54.

Hoyt, Edwin P.  Raider 16.  New York, NY: World Publishing, 1970, pp. 208-28.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  After spending two days splashing behind the sub in open boats, the crew of ATLANTIS was still not out of danger.  PYTHON fell under the attack of HMS DORSETSHIRE while refueling U-68 seven days later.  Her fate was the same as ATLANTIS’, leaving 414 sailors re-stranded in her open lifeboats.  Again, the shipwrecked crews endured insuperable conditions as their open boats were towed behind two submarines.  After several more days of this treatment the party was met by additional U-boats that ferried the shipwrecked sailors to occupied France.

One American was party to this adventure.  Frank Vicovari, a civilian who had been a passenger aboard the Egyptian freighter Zam Zam, and who was wounded when ATLANTIS sank that freighter on 17 April 1941.  He had been held aboard ATLANTIS for medical treatment.  He survived the two subsequent sinkings above to return to America.

Ernst Bauer survived this encounter and returned to command U-126 on three more successful cruises.  He is regarded as one of Germany’s U-boat “aces” and is a recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, Germany’s highest military award of WWII.  He left U-126 before her 6^th cruise, a cruise upon which the U-boat was lost with all hands in an attack by British aircraft.  Bauer died in March of 1988 at his home in Germany.  He was 74.

The post HMS DEVONSHIRE vs. ATLANTIS appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                                  LOST H-BOMB

Considering the pace of Cold War activities in the 1960s, accidents were bound to happen.  Such was the case on 17 January 1966 when an Air Force B-52 collided with a KC-135 tanker during an aerial refueling operation 30,500 feet over Spain.  Eight airmen were killed, and four unarmed B28 thermonuclear hydrogen bombs plummeted from the bomber’s bay.  Three came to rest on land and were recovered.  The fourth plunged into the sea off Costa del Sol near Palomares, Spain.  Fear of nuclear annihilation immediately gripped the European community, fueled by Communist propaganda.  Extremists exploited the event, predicting an accidental rain of nuclear weapons from “friendly” skies.  In the face of public animosity, and as the Soviets were sure to mount their own attempt to recover the submerged bomb, the US Navy was called.

The 14-ship, 2500-man Task Force 65, including USNS MIZAR (T-AGOR-11) and the deep submersibles DEEP JEEP, CUBMARINE, ALUMINAUT, and the capable research sub, ALVIN, was on-scene by 17 February.  RADM William S. Guest commanded the operation, though incredibly, he was not permitted to show pictures of the bomb to his submersible crews!  A local fisherman, Francisco Simo-Orts, pinpointed the spot he had seen a large splash, an area that was divided into two zones, Alfa I and Alfa II.  The shallower Alfa II area was searched by divers and yielded much crash debris.  The submersibles worked the deeper, more rugged Alfa I, thought to be the more likely area for success.

On March 1^st, after weeks of frustration and after repeated requests to search beyond the Alfa II area for a slide track, ALVIN’s crewmen Valentine Wilson and Marvin McCamas (intentionally) wandered off course.  As they had predicted, along the edge of the Alfa II area they quickly located a furrow in the muddy slope made by the sinking bomb.  Fourteen days later the weapon itself was located at 2550 feet, draped in its parachute and resting at the edge of a 500-foot gorge.  Recovery from beyond the steep walls of that gorge would have been impossible.  However, after several accidental nudges by ALVIN’s dexterous arm,a line was secured to the errant weapon.  With ALUMINAUT assisting, the device was dragged toward the surface–until the line parted!  Happily, the bomb settled onto an underwater plateau 300 feet deeper than its original location.  The Cable-controlled Underwater Research Vehicle (CURV) was next employed, but she became hopelessly entangled in the parachute lines.  Not until this day was the ensnared CURV, with the H-bomb bundled therewith, hoisted aboard PETREL (ASR-14).  It was transferred to CASCADE (AD-16) for the trip home.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  12 APR 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Bartholomew, C.A.  Mud, Muscle, and Miracles:  Marine Salvage in the United States Navy.  Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 1990, pp. 378-83.

Davies, Roy.  “Lost H-Bomb.”  London. England: Nautilus Video Productions, BBC Television, 1995.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 277.

Middleton, Drew.  Submarine:  The Ultimate Naval Weapon–Its Past, Present & Future.  Chicago, IL: Playboy Press, 1976, pp. 162-63.

Pierson, David S.  “Lost in the Sky, Found in the Sea.”  Naval History, Vol 23 (3), June 2009, pp. 50-54.

Polmar, Norman, et.al.  Chronology of the Cold War at Sea 1945-1991.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1998, p. 104.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  In terms of US Navy salvage operations, this endeavor was larger than the 1963 search for the lost submarine THRESHER (SSN-593) and was the first that successfully combined divers, submersibles, and remotely operated vehicles.

Though retarded in their fall by safety parachutes, one of the H-bombs that struck land suffered a cracked casing.  Radioactive material leaked, and the Air Force was forced to undertake a large clean-up and removal of thousands of cubic yards of contaminated Spanish earth.

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                                            NAVY ICEBREAKERS

The 1950s was a decade of scientific endeavor in such far reaching environments as outer space, the deep ocean, and Antarctica.  With respect to the latter, the US Navy cooperated with the International Geophysical Year 1955 by establishing a research station at Kainan Bay at the Ross Ice Shelf.  This facility, “Little America,” would be supported by NAS McMurdo Sound 400 miles to the west.  Our Navy contracted Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi in 1954 to construct an icebreaker of sufficient strength to negotiate these Antarctic waters.  On 25 May 1955 USS GLACIER (AGB-4) was commissioned, armed with a twin 5″ bow mount and seven smaller guns.  Her maiden voyage supported Operation “Deep Freeze I” that was already underway.

GLACIER arrived in extreme southern waters in December 1955 (Antarctic summer) and broke a harbor in Kainan Bay for ships delivering equipment, supplies, and fuel.  Construction at Little America began as GLACIER departed to open McMurdo Sound.  GLACIER continued in the Antarctic until May 1956.

“Deep Freeze II” in October 1956 saw GLACIER leading a seven-ship Navy convoy for the two new bases.  In January of that summer, she led two ships into Vincennes Bay, where the third and last US base was to be built.  During “Deep Freeze III” the following summer, GLACIER launched “rockoons,” high altitude balloons deploying rockets in experiments involving our Explorer space program.  And in yet the following year, she helped disestablish Little America, taking time out to rescue the Belgian research ship Polarhav in the Ross Sea.

Her fifth Antarctic season in 1959-60 saw her serving as a platform for research in the Bellingshausen Sea.  It was during this evolution on 1 March 1960 that GLACIER received a distress call.  The Danish supply ship Krista Dan had become trapped in the ice along the Palmer Peninsula near Marguerita Bay.  GLACIER got underway immediately, reaching the stranded freighter this day.  With Danish sailors standing helplessly on the freighter’s fo’csle, GLACIER proceeded to circle Krista Dan.  She made several closer passes, converting the solid ice trapping the Dane into crushed slush.  It took less than a few hours to free the freighter, and both turned north for open water.  Yet another emergency arose, this time to free the trapped Argentine icebreaker General San Martin.  Here, GLACIER fouled a prop, shearing off one of the blades.  Detached to Boston for repairs, she called first at Rio de Janeiro, where she provided humanitarian relief in a flood disaster.  GLACIER continued in Navy Antarctic service until 1966 when she was transferred to the US Coast Guard.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  13 MAR 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooney, David M.  A Chronology of the U.S. Navy:  1775-1965.  New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965, p. 448.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 102-03.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The fouled prop prevented GLACIER from freeing the Argentine icebreaker, who eventually accomplished her own rescue.  GLACIER is no longer with us.  She served the Coast Guard at WAGB-4 until 1987 then was broken up in 2012.

At one time our Navy had four icebreakers in addition to GLACIER in active commission:  BURTON ISLAND (AGB-1); EDISTO (AGB-2); ATAK (AGB-3); and STATEN ISLAND (AGB-5)–all built during WWII.  All five were transferred to the Coast Guard on 30 June 1966, the last day of the 1965-66 fiscal year.  Icebreaker services remain a Coast Guard tasking today.

AGB-4 was the fourth and last Navy vessel to carry the name Glacier.  The first was the food stores ship AF-4, who served from the turn of the 20^th century into the 1920s.  The second, CVE-33, was transferred to Great Britain in 1943, leaving the cargo ship AK-183 to carry the name during the remainder of WWII.

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                           TROUBLE AT LOCKWOOD FOLLY INLET

Lockwood Folly Inlet is a two-mile-wide break in the North Carolina coast south of Cape Fear.  It provides access to the Intercoastal Waterway and the Lockwood Folly River.  Its sand bars shift, making it a difficult passage even today.

On 26 September 1863 the sidewheel blockade runner Elizabeth ran aground at the inlet while trying to skirt the breakers past Union blockaders.  She was set ablaze to prevent her capture.  Two moonless flood tides later, a second runner, the 162-foot, iron-hulled, paddlewheel, Bendigo, attempted the same run northward from Nassau.  She sighted a Union blockader at the inlet and hugged even closer to the shore.  The blockader turned out to be the still visible wreck of Elizabeth, and the mistake proved fatal.  Bendigo ran aground as well.

She was indeed fast, and the next morning local Confederates lightered her where she rested.  When the Union supply ship, USS FAHKEE, was spotted passing south with coal and freight for the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, the rebels set fire to Bendigo.  FAHKEE was a new ship, a 163-foot screw steamer built for the China trade in 1862 and acquired by our Navy the following year.  She usually served the inglorious role of running supplies to other warships, but this morning her 73 sailors saw an opportunity to join the fighting!  They spotted the smoke and closed the wreck to investigate.  Small arms fire erupted from Confederates ashore that FAHKEE answered with her single 10-pounder rifle and twin, 24-pounder Dahlgren howitzers.  Finding the runner’s hull yet intact, FAHKEE passed a line and attempted to tow the runner free.  But the supply ship’s modest engine and single screw were not equal to the task.  She held station for the next few days while help cruised north from the squadron’s headquarters.  On January 9^th the Union warships; FORT JACKSON, IRON AGE, DAYLIGHT, and MONTGOMERY arrived to survey the situation.  IRON AGE’s skipper, LCDR Edward Stone, agreed it was worth salvaging the runner and renewed efforts to free her.  They worked until the afternoon of January 10^th, when IRON AGE and MONTGOMERY likewise grounded!  The latter was soon freed, but the 144-foot screw steamer IRON AGE could not be lifted.  Stone lightened his warship as much as possible and awaited the next high tide, yet still she was fast.  Finally at 0400 this morning IRON AGE was fired.  She exploded not two hours later when the flames reached her magazine.  FAHKEE and the other warships pummeled Bendigo to a worthless wreck, then departed.

Today the wrecks of Elizabeth, Bendigo, and IRON AGE continue to hazard boaters and fishermen off southern North Carolina.  As a Federal archeological site, the wrecks cannot be disturbed.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  15 JAN 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 383.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977. p. 459.

“Lockwood Folly Inlet and the Civil War Wrecks.”  Saltwater Central website.  AT: https://saltwatercentral.com/modules.php?name= content&pa=showpage&pid=3, retrieved 3 December 2023.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 92, 110.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  “Fahkee” might seem a strange name for an official Navy vessel.  “Fahkee” was her intended civilian name meaning “flowery flag” in Cantonese, which is a Chinese nickname for the United States.  That name was retained by our Navy after her acquisition in 1863.  She survived the war and was ultimately sold to a Canadian merchant firm in August 1865.

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                                                  CONVOY RB-1

In the decades before practical automobile transportation, Americans traveling between cities of the eastern United States often did so by way of intercoastal steamer.  Numerous private steamship companies offered passenger service on 200-400-foot, shallow draft screw steamers in the Chesapeake, Delaware, and Long Island estuaries.  With the coming of WWII, the British requested under the Lend-Lease program any fast, shallow draft steamers that might be useful for transporting men and supplies across the English Channel.  Thus, several intercoastal packet steamers were transferred to the British Ministry of War Transport in June of 1942.  These included the SS Yorktown and President Warfield of the Old Bay Line, Boston and New York of the Eastern Steamship Line, the Chesapeake packets Northland and Southland, and the Nantucket steamers Nashuon and New Bedford.  All assembled in St. Johns, Newfoundland, to await British crews and escorts for the trans-Atlantic crossing.  Not having been built for the open ocean, the wait was used to shore their bows and superstructures against the boarding seas expected in the U-boat infested North Atlantic.

On this day the eight flat-bottomed steamers formed Convoy RB-1 (River Boat-1) and departed for England.  Shepherded by the destroyers HMS VETERAN and HMS VANOC, the first three days were uneventful.  Then suddenly, around noon on the 25^th Boston (convoy flagship) disappeared in the fireball of a German torpedo.  Panic struck the rest of the convoy as sailors darted for guns that had been hastily bolted to the decks in St. Johns.  For several hours the steamers zig-zagged, and would-be periscope wakes were riddled by nervous gunners.  President Warfield and VETERAN even teamed up to prosecute a sonar contact, claiming a probable kill.  But at dusk a second steamer, New York, was hit and rolled over.  HMS VETERAN, her decks already crowded with survivors from Boston, slowed to begin fishing sailors from the oily waters, but was quickly torn apart by third torpedo from U-404.  She rolled and went down with all hands.

Aboard Yorktown the tension was palpable as she steamed into the evening.  Then just before sundown her steering engine failed.  The rest of the convoy disappeared over the horizon, leaving her a “sitting duck” while repairs were effected.  She was underway again the next morning, having apparently gone unnoticed by prowling U-boats.  Then, about 0900 a violent explosion broke her back.  Her survivors were rescued two days later.  German radio crackled in the days that followed with reports of the sinking of several “Queen Mary-class liners” in a “fierce battle” with an “American troop convoy.”

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  27 SEP 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. 375.

Holly, David C.  Exodus 1947, (rev ed).  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1995, pp. 21-29.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 1 The Battle of the Atlantic.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1947, pp. 323-24.

Wynn, Kenneth.  U-Boat Operations of the Second World War  Vol 1: Career Histories, U1-U510.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, p. 267.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The loss of 4 of 10 ships from this convoy was not unusual for North Atlantic convoys in 1942, so effective was the German U-boat effort.  And the outlandish German claims in no way diminish the sacrifice of the 131 British merchant mariners who died bringing this convoy to England.  The Germans claimed two of the “liners” sunken to be Duchess of Bedford and the Spanish Reina del Pacifico.  Both of these liners had indeed been converted for troop transport, but in truth, both survived the war.

At least three of the above steamers, President Warfield, Southland and Northland, served the British only temporarily.  They were transferred back to the US Navy in 1944 and participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy.  PRESIDENT WARFIELD (IX-169) was to earn even greater fame following the war.  She was purchased by a secret organization smuggling Jewish immigrants to Palestine.  Her name in this role changed to Exodus 1947 and she became the titular inspiration for the Leon Uris novel.

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                                                      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 “4^th 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 1^st 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.

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                USS PORCUPINE AND THE IX-TANKERS

The Allied island-hopping drive across the Pacific in WWII created logistical problems for our Navy.  Not the least was the need to fuel our massive naval and air fleets.  Rather than build fixed tank farms ashore that would become targets for enemy action, the Navy elected to pre-position stores of fuel aboard old tankers, converted for duty as mobile storage facilities.  Approximately 40 tankers, some from civilian WWI vintage, were purchased and filled with bunker oil or avgas.  These were anchored in strategic Pacific island harbors and moved forward as the fighting progressed.  All were given IX hull numbers, signifying the “miscellaneous” category.  The seventeen Armadillo­-class (IX-110 to 128) tankers were converted from Liberty ship hulls purchased from the Maritime Administration–all named for small American animals.

USS PORCUPINE (IX-126) had served at Noumea, New Guinea and the Admiralty Islands before moving forward with the invasion of the Philippines in late 1944.  After the successful recapture of Leyte Allied attention shifted to Mindoro, a large island just south of Luzon.  On 15 December US forces landed near the town of San Jose on Mindoro with the hope of establishing an airbase there.  The last week in December a major supply convoy of over 100 vessels departed Leyte for the Mindoro landing beaches.  Among the ships was PORCUPINE carrying thousands of gallons of 120 octane aviation gasoline.  The overcast weather hampered US air cover efforts, and the enemy kamikaze pilots flying from Cebu plagued the convoy all the way into Mangarin Bay.

Here at 1540 this day a low-flying Val bomber approached PORCUPINE off her port beam.  Her quills bristled, but PORCUPINE’s gunners could not knock this kamikaze out of the sky.  It released a bomb just before crashing into the after main deck.  Avgas tanks erupted in a giant mushroom cloud, the engine room flooded, and the entire after section was engulfed in flames.  The engine of the attacking plane crashed completely through the ship, blowing a large hole in the hull below the waterline.  Seven sailors disappeared in the explosion and fire; the rest abandoned ship.  The nearby destroyers GANSEVOORT (DD-608) and PRINGLE (DD-477) were hit by kamikazes as well, but when the forward section of PORCUPINE was in danger from the fires, the wounded GANSEVOORT was ordered to torpedo PORCUPINE’s  flaming stern in hopes the explosion would blow-out her fires.  But Mangarin Bay proved too shoal for torpedoes and despite one hit, PORCUPINE’s forward tanks exploded.  She burned to the water line as spreading flames chased the rest of the convoy from the bay.  PORCUPINE was the only IX-tanker to fall to enemy action in WWII.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  4 JAN 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. 353.

Grover, David B.  “IX Ships:  The Navy’s Forgotten Flotilla.”  Sea Classics, Vol 40 (8), August 2007, pp. 44-49, 67.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol XIII  The Liberation of the Philippines: Luzon, Mindinao, the Visayas.  Little Brown and Co., Boston, MA, 1959, pp. 42-47.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The convoy of which PORCUPINE was a member was called “Uncle plus 15.”  “Uncle” was code for the Mindoro D-Day, and “plus 15” was the date the convoy was to arrive off the landing zone.

Duty aboard such tankers as PORCUPINE was filled with thankless heavy labor, punctuated by long periods of boredom.  Such is illustrated well in the Hollywood movie Mr. Roberts, about an officer aboard a similar pre-positioned supply ship in the Pacific.

PORCUPINE was abandoned where she lay and struck from the Navy list on 19 January 1945.

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