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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                                               10 OCTOBER 1913

                                           THE PANAMA CANAL

At 1401 this afternoon, in a media event, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button in the Executive Building of downtown Washington DC.  Two thousand miles to the south, dynamite charges blasted the last construction dike in the Culebra Cut, the final section of the Panama Canal joining the Atlantic and Pacific.  The largest single Federal expenditure to that day, $352 million, had resulted in the removal of 262 million cubic yards of earth, three times the volume of the Suez Canal.  Ten more months of finishing work was necessary before the first grand crossing by the civilian steamer SS Ancon on 15 August 1914.

Between 1883-89, the French tried and failed in an ambitious attempt at a sea-level canal.  Though the route across Panama was only some 40 miles in distance, the terrain featured a central mountain range, the lowest point of which, the Culebra Pass, reached 275 feet above sea level.  There was the raging Chagres River with which to contend, and the jungles were plagued with dreaded diseases.  Unlike the French experience with the Suez Canal, there was no native labor force nor infrastructure in Panama to tap.  Unanticipated costs, both in francs and in human life, ran the French Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique into bankruptcy.  Ironically, they might have succeeded had they listened to Baron Godin de Lepinay of the French Department of Bridges and Highways.  He proposed a plan the Americans would later pursue–the damming of the central highlands to create an artificial lake, with locks ascending from each coast.

In the US previously, Theodore Roosevelt had seen an inter-ocean canal as key to US leadership in the Western Hemisphere.  He endorsed RADM Alfred T. Mahan’s call for a strong Navy with easy mobility from Atlantic to Pacific.  Roosevelt too, had winced in 1898, when the Pacific based battleship OREGON (BB-3) was delayed in reaching the Caribbean during the Spanish American war by having to cruise 67 days ’round the Horn.  In 1902, Roosevelt’s drive led to our purchase the rights to the French excavations.  And, once the political roadblocks had been removed, the able engineer John Stevens was sent south with orders to “make the dirt fly!”

San Diego, the first American port north of the canal, stood as a major benefactor and staged the gala Exposition of 1914-15 to coincide with the canal’s opening.  (Many of the buildings constructed for this exposition still stand in Balboa Park today).  Plans to inaugurate the canal justly with a transit by the aging OREGON complete with retired RADM Charles E. Clark at the helm, fell through.  The first Navy ship to cross was the collier USS JUPITER (AC-3), on 10-12 October 1914.

Watch the POD for more “Today in Naval History”  16 OCT 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

McCullough, David.  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1870-1914.  Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, pp. 589-615, 1977.

Minter, John Easter.  The Chagres:  River of Westward Passage.  New York, NY: Rinehart & Co. 1948.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, p. 117, 2002.

The post The Panama Canal appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                 LT STRAIN’S EXPEDITION (cont.)

After six weeks of indescribable tribulation, with his men now unable to continue, LT Strain bedded his party and selected three of the strongest to accompany him further.  On they pressed until finally on March 12^th, a naked, starved, torn, and bleeding Strain stumbled alone into a native village near the Pacific coast.  In spite of his condition, he turned immediately and led local natives back along his path.

Only 16 survivors were found strung along the trail.  When examined by a British physician after their 49-day ordeal this “wretched set of human beings” was described as, “living skeletons, covered with foul ulcers… In nearly all, the intellect was in a slight degree affected, as evinced by childish and silly remarks, although their memory, and the recollection of their sufferings, were unimpaired.”  Strain himself weighed only 75 pounds.  Indeed, he never fully recovered.  His health prevented his travel out of Darien, and he died in Colon a few years later at age 36.

Our nation shared our Navy’s shock at LT Strain’s experience.  Enthusiasm for a trans-isthmus canal immediately cooled.  Cullen’s claims fell under question when it was learned that Strain’s party had had to climb as high as 1000 feet to clear the central mountains.  For his part, Cullen stuck to his story.  From his new posting in a British military hospital in the Crimea, he claimed Strain had been horribly mislead in his search.

Not all in the Navy were willing to give up the search for a workable route across Darien.  LT (later RADM) Daniel Ammen, himself an explorer on the Water Witch expedition in Paraguay, perused the journal kept by LT Strain on his trek and discovered what he believed was evidence supporting the existence of Cullen’s trail.  Days after Strain had departed the coast his log records that his party heard the evening gun of CYANE being fired.  Ammen reasoned that by then, Strain should have been well beyond earshot of the coast, and the ability to hear the gun indicated the presence of a yet undiscovered low valley which conducted the sound inland.  Ammen was steadfast in this delusion, but in truth Strain’s party probably wandered for weeks near the coast.

The Civil War intervened in the next decade to distract American attention from the Panama canal project.  It was the persistence of Ammen, CDR Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr. and RADM Charles H. Davis that led to the embarkation of a canal surveying expedition sixteen years later.  This expedition surveyed three separate sites but was unable to locate Ammen’s illusive valley.  When the canal was eventually built 40 years later, the chosen route was 150 miles up the coast from Caledonia Bay.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  26 JAN 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

McCullough, David.  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1879-1914.  New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 22-24.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 2^nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, pp. 60-61.

The post LT Strain’s Expedition (cont.) appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                     LT STRAIN’S EXPEDITION

In 1513, the Spanish explorer Balboa took 190 well-supplied troops and enlisted the aid of local natives as guides to make his famous march of discovery across Isthmus of Darien.  Since, the concept of a trans-Central American canal connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific had repeatedly arisen.  By the 19^th century, Darien, the land that would eventually become Panama, was a province of New Granada, the Spanish colony that would eventually become Colombia.  Its remote location, its wild, malaria-infested jungles, and the towering central mountains of the Continental Divide frustrated schemes for a canal.  Then in 1850, an Irish physician and member of the Royal Geographic Society, Dr. Edward Cullen, returned to England with startling news.  From Caledonia Bay on the Caribbean coast, Cullen claimed to have personally walked the 40 miles across the narrowest part of the isthmus several times.  At no point along this easy walk, he claimed, was the elevation greater than 150 feet above sea level.  Furthermore, he had plainly marked the trail for future reference.  The news electrified the Western public, and in 1853 a joint expedition was undertaken by England, France, the United States, and New Granada to explore this miracle route.

The United States’ contingent, aboard the sloop CYANE, 20, arrived at Caledonia Bay ahead of the others in the third week of January 1854.  Eager to capitalize on the discovery and unwilling to wait, LT Isaac Strain led a party of 12 officers and 13 bluejackets into the jungle this day.  Fully expecting to uncover an easy, well-marked trail, his party entered this forbidding jungle only lightly equipped, with food enough for only a few days.

As you might imagine they ran into trouble from the start.  Local natives, coerced by the guns of CYANE, allowed the party to pass but refused to act as guides.  Cullen’s trail was nowhere to be found.  The party quickly became lost in the heat, rain, insects, and constant twilight of the jungle canopy.  Their weapons rusted after the first week.  The food ran out.  With events conspiring against them, Strain now discovered a river which he began to follow in the sure hope that it led to the Pacific.  In truth he had discovered the Chucunaque River, which runs for miles up the center of the isthmus, parallel to the coast.  When natives along the river tried to convince Strain he was mistaken, he reasoned they were trying to delude and subvert him and pressed onward.

For weeks the party struggled.  Short rations forced them to eat anything they could find, including toads and strange nuts and fruits, some of which proved toxic.  Disease, starvation, exhaustion, and depression began to tell; men began dying and one went insane.  Strain’s discipline and strong personal fortitude had sustained them thus far, but as the month of February faded into March even that was flagging…

Continued tomorrow….

McCullough, David.  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1879-1914.  New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 22-24.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 2^nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, pp. 60-61.

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