CSS WEBB’S RUN FOR THE SEA

The 206-foot sidewheel steamboat William H. Webb started her career as a coastal steamer in New York in 1856.  She fell into Confederate hands in 1861 and was converted to a ram a year later.  Lacking plate iron to protect her boilers, her outfitters “armored” her nevertheless with layers of cotton bales stacked around her mechanical spaces.  Her bow-mounted 130-pounder Rodman gun and two 12-pounder howitzers, along with a spar torpedo on a long pole from her bows, suited her for operations against Union gunboats on the Mississippi.  But after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863 the Union Navy completely controlled the Mississippi.  CSS WEBB found herself trapped in Louisiana’s Red River by Union gunboats waiting at its confluence with the Mississippi.

The Confederacy was in its waning months by the time LT Charles W. Read, CSN, volunteered himself to President Jefferson Davis.   Impressed with WEBB’s phenomenal 22 knots speed, Read arrived in early April in Alexandria, Louisiana, and labored for three weeks to muster a crew and provision the vessel for duty.  He became increasingly frustrated over news of the surrender of Lee at Appomattox and wrote to President Jefferson Davis of his plan tomake a last-ditch dash to the open sea.  On this afternoon of 23 April his preparations were complete.

Read’s departure from Alexandria was timed to arrive at the Mississippi after sunset, and at 2030 WEBB charged into the “Father of Waters” under a full head of steam.  The sudden arrival of the white-painted sidewheeler took the three blockading Union gunboats by surprise.  The confusion was deepened as Read displayed a Union ensign, correctly flown at half-mast out of respect for President Lincoln’s recent death.  By the time the Federals discerned the situation, WEBB had a considerable downstream lead.  Read charged down the Mississippi at frightful speed in a chase that followed, estimated by some at up to 25 knots.  He stopped only once to cut telegraph wires along the bank and outdistanced the Union ironclads USS TENNESSEE and MANHATTAN and the gunboats SELMA and QUAKER CITY that were overtaken by surprise.  He reached New Orleans in three hours, running this city at midnight against the fire of Union gunboats that had been forewarned.  The unshaken Read now broke the Confederate ensign and plunged onward.

But 25 miles further Read reached his bitter end.  Running upon the powerful guns of the Union screw frigate USS RICHMOND and leading a flock of pursuing gunboats, Read set WEBB ablaze and ran her aground.  He and his crew were quickly rounded up before sunrise, ending this last significant action of the Confederate Navy in home waters.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 APR 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Clark, Charles E.  My Fifty Years in the Navy.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1984, p. 65.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. V-92.

Luraghi, Raimondo.  A History of the Confederate Navy.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1996, pp. 339-40.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, p. 231.

Trudeau, Noah Andre.  Out of the Storm:  The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1994, 336-38.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  WEBB was hit only three times in this five-hour chase.  Her only noteworthy damage was to the rigging of her spar torpedo, which had to be jettisoned.  This loss of the spar torpedo may have influenced Read’s decision to scuttle the steamer rather than tackle USS RICHMOND.

Contemporary Union accounts of this episode downplay the surprise they experienced and concentrate rather on the speed of WEBB.  Ironically, despite accounts to the contrary, WEBB’s appearance had probably surprised RICHMOND as well, the latter being unprepared to offer resistance.

Charles William “Savez” Read graduated last in his US Naval Academy class of 1860.  A Mississippi native, he joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter.  His class rank at the Academy belies his conduct as a Naval officer.  His daring raids and surprising successes earned him the nickname “Seawolf of the Confederacy.”

Lee surrendered at Appomattox on 9 April, and by this date the Civil War was all but over.  Read’s men were captured and subjected to public display in New Orleans before being paroled to return to their homes.  Two days later, on 26 April, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the last Confederate force of consequence, the Army of Tennessee, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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                                        USCGC SPENCER vs. U-175

Ocean Escort Unit A-3, a multi-national collection of the US Coast Guard cutters SPENCER (WPG-36) and DUANE (WPG-33) along with the British corvette HMS DIANTHUS, the Canadian corvettes CHILLIWACK, ROSTHERN, TRILLIUM and DAUPHIN, and the Polish destroyer BURZA, was underway this day escorting Convoy HX-233 from Nova Scotia to England.  The two 327-foot, 2200-ton “Treasury”-class cutters of A-3 were some of the Guard’s newest and had been pressed into escort service since the opening of the war.  Having left St. Johns April 12^th, for five days the 57 merchantmen of Convoy HX-233 pitched through the rough North Atlantic to the longitude of Reykjavik.  The stormy Winter of 1942-43 had been a successful one for Hitler’s U-boats and SPENCER’s men had vowed not to shave until they had bagged “a hearse.”  By now CDR Harold Berdine, USCG, and his crew were looking pretty scruffy.  Then at noon on this day SPENCER recorded a contact inside the escort screen.

SPENCER charged this unseen contact, cris-crossing the spot with two trains of depth charges.  She then threaded her way between the columns of the convoy, maintaining contact and vectoring DUANE to the spot.  Meanwhile 38 fathoms below, the crew of U-175 had their hands full.  The depth charges had burst light bulbs, battered men and equipment, and ruptured pipes throughout the boat.  The crew worked feverishly to stem the flooding as the skipper maneuvered to escape his pursuers.  The continuing “pings” of the cutters reminded them of the immediacy of further attack.  And failing to stem the flooding after 48 minutes, U-175 had no choice but to surface.

The sub broached about a mile from SPENCER and was immediately spotted.  SPENCER, DUANE, and the Naval Armed Guard of nearby freighters fired every gun they had!  Germans who braved the deck to return a few shells were cut down in minutes.  The U-boat’s conning tower was mauled by 5-inch shells, and her hull was enveloped with splashes.  One return shell did hit SPENCER, fatally wounding USCG Radioman Julius Petrella, but rudder damage condemned the stricken sub to impotent circles.  SPENCER bore in to ram but turned away when the enemy was seen scrambling for their life rafts.

SPENCER had drilled for just such an occasion–a boarding party was immediately launched!  As the cutters picked up 41 enemy sailors, Berdine’s men entered the sub.  But they could not stop the flooding.  One giant wave washed completely over her, her stern rose, and it became obvious she was doomed.  The Allies would have to wait another 14 months for the successful capture of a U-boat, when the USS GUADALCANAL (CVE-60) escort group captured U-505 and the codebooks and ciphers she held.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  23 APR 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

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. 344-45.

Noble, Dennis L. and Truman R. Strobridge.  “Spencer vs. the Nazis.”  Sea Classics, Vol 48 (10), October 2015, pp. 10-21.

Scheina, Robert L.  U.S. Coast Guard Cutters & Craft 1946-1990.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1990, p. 28.

Walton, William.  “Scratch One Hearse!:  Spencer vs. U-175.”  Sea Classics, Vol 35 (3), March 2002, pp. 50-56.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  During WWII the US Coast Guard was a branch of the Treasury Department, having been created originally to stem smuggling.  The “Treasury”-class cutters were named for former Secretaries of the Treasury.  SPENCER was named for John C. Spencer who served President John Tyler between 1843-44.  DUANE was named for the Honorable William J. Duane, one of several Treasury Secretaries in the Andrew Jackson administration.  On 1 April 1967 the Coast Guard was transferred to the newly created Department of Transportation.  Then, after 9/11, the Coast Guard became part of the Department of Homeland Security.

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                                                    USS SANTEE

Even before the United States entered WWI, our Navy was assisting the British in combating Kaiser Wilhelm II’s U-boats.  This effort intensified after US entry in June 1917.  At the time, targets for the U-boats were so plentiful in the waters around Britain that U-boats had to return to port not for fuel or provisions, but for more torpedoes!  Indeed, U-boat skippers learned to save precious torpedoes by surfacing and attacking defenseless freighters with their deck gun.  An Allied counter measure was the Q-ship–a merchant freighter armed with hidden guns.  The Q-ship would cruise about, baiting a U-boat to surface, then unmask her guns to duel the enemy.  Our Navy toyed with the Q-ship concept as well, in both World Wars.

On 27 November 1917 the Royal Navy Q-ship HMS ARVONIAN was transferred to our Navy, “for war purposes.”  CDR David C. Hanrahan was placed in command of a crew drawn from other US warships in the theater.  As combat was assured, her crew included Medical Officer LT James P. Compton and Assistant Surgeon Thomas L. Sutton.  ARVONIAN was impressively armed with three 4″ guns, three 12-pounders, two .30 caliber machine guns and four 18″ torpedo tubes.  She fitted-out in Devonport, England, and on 18 December was commissioned as USS SANTEE,, after the river of central South Carolina.  The absence of an assigned hull number indicates the ad hoc nature of her service in American hands.  On this day she cruised south of Kinsale, Ireland.

At 2045, a lookout spotted the wake of an incoming torpedo!  Kapitänleutnant Victor Dieckmann in U-61 had sent the underwater missile at the innocent-looking freighter.  It struck to port, abaft of the engine room.  Electric power blinked, then SANTEE went dead in the water.  Hanrahan ordered his crew to battle stations and dispatched the “panic party,”–men who took to the boats in a ruse they hoped would entice the German skipper to the surface.  Indeed, Hanrahan later wrote that the boatmen exited in, fine panicy [sic] style.”  Meanwhile SANTEE’s concealed gun crews waited.

Moments ticked by.  Damage control temporarily stemmed the flooding but could not re-fire the engines.  Lookouts aloft strained to see into the darkening horizon but detected nothing.  Two and a half glasses slipped by.  No U-boat appeared.  Dieckmann had slinked away, whether he knew it or not, dodging a bullet!

Hanrahan now radioed for tugs while STERRET (DD-27) and CUMMINGS (DD-44) picked up the boat parties.  No sailors were lost in this, SANTEE’s only combat action with our Navy.  Her short service ended after repairs.  She was returned to the Admiralty for the remainder of the war, operating from Gibraltar as HMS BENDISH.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  3 JAN 26

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. 414.

Helgason, Guömundur.  “Ships Hit during WWI: Q-Ship SANTEE.”  U-boat.net website.  AT: http://uboat.net/wwi/ships_hit/5437.hmtl, retrieved 16 March 2018.

“Victor Dieckmann.”  U-boat.net website.  AT: http://uboat.net/wwi/men/commanders/51.html, retrieved 16 March 2018.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  ARVONIAN ultimately served in two world wars with three nations.  After changing hands multiple times between wars, she ended up in Latvia as SS Spidola.  She fell into German hands with Hitler’s July 1941 invasion of the Baltic States and carried freight for the Nazis throughout WWII. 

Dieckmann was one of the more successful U-boat “aces” of WWI.  His two commands, UB-27 and U-61 totaled 43 Allied ships sunk, 11 damaged, one captured, and included USS CASSIN (DD-43) (damaged), the British Q-ship HMS WARNER (sunk), and the French Q-ship HMS JEANNE et GENEVIEVE (damaged).  He is twice the recipient of the Iron Cross.

          Time can be kept at sea using sandglasses, also known as clepsammia (“thief of sand”).  Nautical sandglasses came in three denominations, 4 hours (duration of a watch), 30 minutes, and 28 seconds (for measuring ship speed).  Two and a half glasses equals 75 minutes.

          SANTEE above was the second of three US warships to bear this name.  The first was a Civil War sail frigate.  The last was an escort carrier from WWII.

The post USS SANTEE appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                 24 OCTOBER-14 NOVEMBER 1995

                                     THE LAST CRUISE OF DIXON

At 1600 on the sunny Tuesday afternoon of 24 October 1995 the L.Y. Spear-class submarine tender USS DIXON (AS-37) cast off from middle pier at SubBase Point Loma and was eased by tugs into the channel.  This still fit 25-year-old Cold War veteran, built to service nuclear attack subs, was bound for Norfolk to await scrapping in the James River ghost fleet.  Her normal 1200-man crew had been pared down to 400-odd essentials.  Her repair shops, boats, and much of her loose gear had already been off-loaded.  A sheared pin in a circulating pump delayed her departure eight hours but her skipper, CAPT David W. Hearding, still planned her twilight cruise to be one of her best.

Calm seas and fine weather cooperated in keeping the lightened tender from rocking too badly as she steamed south.  The weather held on the 28^th when, in a solemn ceremony, the ashes of CWO3 Frazier Russell were committed to the deep by MACS(AW) Francisco M. Aguinot.  In keeping with the retired Warrant’s wishes after his death the previous June, he was intombed from the deck of the ship aboard whom he had proudly served.

DIXON, who held the speed record for tenders at that time, cruised well, allowing a detour so far south that on Halloween, Davy Jones appeared on the bridge requesting the ship lay to for an audience with King Neptune and his Court.  Subsequently 251 polliwogs successfully endured a traditional initiation into the realm of Neptunus Rex.  Turning north again, DIXON steamed to within 40 miles of the Panamanian coast to begin operations with US Army “Dustoff Panama” helicopter units from the Canal Zone.  Throughout that day US Army UH-60 “Black Hawk’s” made a total of 71 touch-and-go approaches to the after flight deck.  And during lulls in this excitement, the crew was treated to a mid-ocean swim call.  The participation of DIXON in helo operations was noteworthy–on 6 November 1984 she had become the Navy’s only sub tender with helo deck certification.

Her passage through “the ditch” coincided with Panamanian Independence Day festivities.  The occasion was celebrated under steamy tropical heat with that which had become a regular during the tenure of CAPT Hearding–a steel-beach picnic.  On the Caribbean side the waters proved rougher and hotter, hampering only mildly the last leg of the 4950 mile transit to West Palm Beach.  Following liberty call here, DIXON arrived at Norfolk Naval Shipyard on November 10^th.  In an august affair on 15 December 1995 USS DIXON decommissioned.  Taken out of service as part of post-Cold War “right” sizing, her crew wondered at the wisdom of scrapping a vessel with so much service left to give.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  7 NOV 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Oral history of CAPT James Bloom, aboard for the cruise.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  During the ’90s the breakup of the Soviet Union brought a revised op-tempo, during which fixed shore facilities like Bangor, Washington, and Kings Bay, Georgia, assumed a greater role in supporting submarine operations.  As a result, many of our fleet of tenders fell under the budget axe.  DIXON was named for LT George M. Dixon, the Confederate Army officer who piloted H.L. HUNLEY on her historic mission against the Union frigate HOUSATONIC near Charleston Harbor in 1864.

DIXON lay in the James River Reserve Fleet until the summer of 2003, when she was towed to sea and, on 21 July, expended as a target.  She rests today in 17,000 feet of water 360 miles southeast of Charleston.

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                                        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.

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                                                  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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