SAN DIEGO LOST

Almost as our ten Pennsylvania and Tennessee-class armored cruisers entered service at the turn of the 20^th century they were rendered obsolete by advances in technology and dreadnaught design.  By the entry of the US into WWI in 1917, our armored cruisers were no longer being detailed to front-line missions.  For example, USS CALIFORNIA (ACR-6), newly renamed SAN DIEGO to allow the former name to be given to the battleship BB-13, was shepherding merchant ships from eastern seaboard ports to the convoy assembly points in Nova Scotia.

This morning found SAN DIEGO steaming alone south of Long Island, headed for New York City.  She was zig-zagging in calm seas with good visibility.  But at 1123, the morning routine was interrupted when a violent explosion lifted her port quarter.  Seawater flooded through a large hole blown in her port side just aft of amidships.  Two secondary explosions signaled the bursting of her port boiler and the detonation of a magazine.  Sailors clamored to their GQ stations–all eyes searching the seas for a periscope.  Guns opened on anything even remotely resembling a feather wake.

CAPT Harley H. Christy ordered the starboard engine full ahead even as a list to port rapidly developed.  He turned in the direction Fire Island Beach in the hope that the settling cruiser could reach shallow water.  All her guns were in action, firing at any wisp upon the surface.  Assuming they had been torpedoed by a lurking German U-boat, her port gunners fired until their stations went awash.  On the starboard side the firing ended when the advancing list pointed the guns skyward.  Men stayed at their posts until the starboard engine flooded, and CAPT Christy became convinced the ship would founder.  Christy himself was the last to leave, working his way from the bridge to the boat deck, then over the side to the exposed docking keel.  He jumped the last eight feet to the water to the cheers of his crew in the boats, who broke out singing The Star Spangled Banner.  SAN DIEGO rolled and sank.  All but six of her crewmen were rescued.

SAN DIEGO was the only major US warship lost to combat in WWI.  A survey of her wreck by hardhat divers in the days that followed reported her capsized on the bottom with severe hull damage.  A salvage effort by the Navy was not attempted.  Though the men on the scene were convinced she had been torpedoed, the exact nature of her demise was never determined.  The controversy persists today, however German records indicate she was most likely the victim of a floating mine laid by U-156.  Her wreck remains a popular sport diving site today.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  25 JUL 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Albert, George J.  “The U.S.S. San Diego and the California Naval Militia.”  AT: http://www.militarymuseum.org/usssandiego.html, 7 June 2007.

Berg, Daniel.  “The USS San Diego Shipwreck.”  AT:  http://www.aquaexplorers.com/sandiego.com, 7 June 2007.

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

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Though most of SAN DIEGO’s sailors were picked up by other ships in the area, four lifeboats full of sailors managed to row the 8 miles to shore, three landing at Bellport, and one at the Lone Hill Coast Guard Station.

          Though The Star Spangled Banner was often used for official occasions and ceremonies from as early as the 19^th century, it was not officially adopted by Congress as our National Anthem until 1931.

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                                WORLD WAR I AT OUR DOORSTEP

The bright sun and calm seas off Delaware’s coast this morning belied the sinister intent with which U-151 cruised the surface.  Germany and the US had been at war for a year, and U-151 had entered US waters with orders to lay mines in major American roadsteads.  On May 22^nd she had surfaced in the Chesapeake Bay and laid over 50 floating mines at its entrance.  While working on deck to do so, her crewmen had watched the lights of Virginia Beach and had listened to weather forecasts, sports news, and stock quotes from an Arlington radio station.  She then coursed north to the Delaware Bay, destroying the freighters SS Hattie Dunn, Hauppage, and Edna along the way.  More mines were laid inside Cape May, after which U-151 then shaped a course for New York City.  There the sub had dragged a cutting bar back and forth across the entrance to the harbor, severing two transatlantic telephone cables.

This day found U-151 prowling for unwary freighters off our coast.  Commercial ships of sail still operated in 1918, and a sail on the horizon turned out to be the merchant schooner Isabel B. Wiley, outbound from Philadelphia.  A shot across her bows halted the surprised schooner, but as her crew was coming to grips with a German submarine in US waters, another form appeared on the horizon.  U-151’s skipper, Korvettenkapitän Henrich von Nostitz und Jänckendorf, instructed Wiley to heave to and sped off after the steamer Winneconne.  The unarmed steamer’s crew had heard rumors of a U-boat in the area and once halted, accepted a prize crew.  Winneconne was conned back to Wiley, who had, curiously, stood by dutifully into the wind.  Both ships were destroyed with TNT.

U-151 left US waters in July having avoided the US Navy.  Her first such contact occurred on her return to Germany when she spotted a familiar silhouette, the former Norddeutsche Lloyd liner Kronprinz Wilhelm, then serving the US Navy as the troop transport USS VON STEUBEN (SP-3017).  A torpedo attack missed.

None of the seven German U-boats that operated off the American coast from May through October 1918 were originally built to be combatants.  Rather they were designed as submersible blockade runners, a novel innovation of the German Merchant Marine.  They smuggled sorely needed supplies from America to Germany past the British blockade.  U-151 had started her career as the merchant sub SS Oldendorf.  But after the US entered WWI and the Kaiser’s ships were no longer welcome in US ports, the German Merchant Marine converted the “U-cruisers” for military use.  The seven are credited with sinking 44 American freighters totaling 110,000 tons.  And a mine, probably sown by U-156, sank the only US Navy capital ship to be lost in WWI, the armored cruiser USS SAN DIEGO (ACR-6).

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

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Harding, Stephen.  Great Liners at War.  Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1997, p. 45.

Scheck, William.  “Under the British Blockade:  The Cruise of the Deutschland,”  Sea Classics, Vol 28 (9), September 1995, pp. 58-63, 67-69.

Tarrant, V.E.  The U-Boat Offensive 1914-1945.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 70-71.

Thomas, Lowell.  Raiders of the Deep.  New York, NY: Award Books, 1964, pp. 254-93.

van der Vat, Dan.  Stealth at Sea:  The History of the Submarine.  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1994, pp. 105-06, 119.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The story of Germany’s unarmed merchant subs is an interesting twist of naval history.  WWI occurred at the dawn of the age of submarines, and this was only one of several novel German experiments into methods of U-boat deployment.  The most famous of these merchant subs was SS Deutschland, who made two successful cargo voyages between the US and Germany in 1916-17.  When sailing as unarmed merchantmen these “U-cruisers” were not commissioned into the Kaiser’s Imperial Navy and of course flew the German Tricolor (black, white and red vertical bars) rather than the Kaiser’s Eagle war ensign.

The fact that the Germans used submarines to mine the Chesapeake, Delaware, and New York waterways in both WWI and WWII was not widely publicized.  The fact that several American ships were destroyed by these mines continues to be poorly appreciated today.

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                   THE “UNITED STATES FLEET”

Since the Revolution, our national security interests had concentrated on the Atlantic Ocean, and our Navy operated the majority of her warships in those waters.  Only a handful of frigates or cruisers patrolled such far-flung locations as the Pacific, the Mediterranean, or the West African coast.  The Atlantic-based operations of subsequent conflicts, such as the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, reinforced our Atlantic orientation.  By the decade of the 1920s, 180 of our Navy’s finest ships, including 16 battleships, were in the Atlantic Fleet.  The titular Pacific Fleet was squadron-sized at best, with vessels nearing the end of their service life.

But Japan’s post-WWI mandate over Germany’s former Pacific island possessions, indeed their militarization of these islands, spurred US planners to consider a threat from that direction.  The opening of the Panama Canal eight years earlier facilitated rapid movement between the two oceans, and strategists decided to shift our naval defenses whence they could readily address what was then conceived to be our most credible threat.  On this day, CNO ADM Robert Coontz merged the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets into the “United States Fleet,” and the bulk of our warships were moved to bases along our Pacific coast.  The single fleet mentality prevailed–only a small cruiser/destroyer training squadron remained in the Atlantic.

At the time, our major west coast facilities were in San Francisco and Puget Sound, but neither was robust enough to service the entire US Fleet.  San Pedro, near Los Angeles, offered a harbor deep enough for battleships, while San Diego’s shallow, curving channel could accommodate destroyers and gunboats.  This latter harbor, by virtue of its position as the first American port north of Panama, received immediate improvements and would eventually grow to its modern size.  San Pedro persisted as a base for battleships into the 1990s; the last Pacific battleships in active service during Vietnam and Desert Storm were homeported at nearby Long Beach.

But Germany’s aggressions in the late 1930s forced American planners to consider simultaneous threats from two directions.  On 17 June 1940, CNO ADM Harold R. Stark introduced the (then) novel concept of a “Two-Ocean Navy” to Congress, and a month later President Franklin Roosevelt signed a $4 billion Naval Expansion Act into law.  On 1 February 1941, the Pacific-based United States Fleet was re-divided into separate Atlantic and Pacific Fleets, this time of more equitable strength.  This dual fleet orientation is that which we take for granted in the 21^st century.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  13 DEC 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Baer, George W.  One Hundred Years of Sea Power:  The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990.  Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996, p. 106.

Love, Robert W.  History of the US Navy, Vol 1  1775-1941.  Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992, 524-26, 541-43.

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, 2002, pp. 133, 142, 143, 146, 149.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Despite this re-division of the fleets on 1 February 1941, the “United States Fleet” continued as an administrative umbrella overseeing both arms.  ADM Ernest J. King was the last independent CINCUSFLEET, appointed on 20 December 1941 after Pearl Harbor.  Then on 12 March 1942, the duties of CNO and CINCUSFLEET were combined under ADM King.

The Naval Expansion Act of 1940 also expanded the 1^st and 2^nd Marine Brigades into the modern 1^st and 2^nd MarDiv’s, headquartered in Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune, respectively.

Though in hindsight one might criticize the single fleet mentality, it had one under-appreciated benefit.  The shifting of the single fleet from coast to coast required robust basing facilities on both coasts.  As a result, the infrastructure necessary to support the dual fleet re-organization, and indeed the “Two-Ocean War,” was already in place in 1941.

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                    FORT STOCKTON, SAN DIEGO

On the morning of 29 July 1846, the sloop USS CYANE, 20, dropped anchor in the quiet Mexican harbor of San Diego, whose peacefulness belied the war then raging between the US and Mexico.  Navy LT Stephen C. Rowan and a Marine party under a LT Maddox were sent ashore to take possession of the Presidio (in modern Old Town).  This was accomplished without a fight, and the Marines held the town for eleven days until being relieved by troops of John C. Fremont’s Bear Flag battalion on August 9^th.  CYANE then departed, and all was well until October, when a Mexican force under Serbulo Varela moved to recapture San Diego.  Fremont’s outnumbered 15-20-man garrison fled to the safety of Stonington, a whaler lying in San Diego Harbor under US charter.  As US Army CAPT Ezekiel Merritt watched the Mexican flag being run up over San Diego’s Presidio, he began to worry that the Mexicans would use the two cannon that had been left in haste to bombard Stonington.  A request for help was sent to Navy Commodore Robert F. Stockton in San Pedro, who dispatched the 54-gun frigate CONGRESS.

Meanwhile Merritt took matters into hand locally.  A volunteer soldier, Albert B. Smith, was put ashore at La Playa (Point Loma), and using a circuitous route, he succeeded in sneaking into the Presidio and spiking the two cannon.  A heartened Merritt then re-landed his small force and attacked.  The routed Mexicans fled to the hill immediately overlooking Old Town while Smith climbed the courtyard’s staff himself and returned the American flag.  Over the next weeks the Mexicans were reinforced with 100 men and a cannon from Los Angeles.  A tense siege developed.

On this day, Stockton arrived in CONGRESS to a sorry situation.  Most of San Diego’s civilians had abandoned the town, and those who remained were nearly starving.  Stockton promptly sent Army CAPT Samuel Gibson in Stonington to Ensenada, from whence 200 head of cattle were driven north.  Next a brigade of Marines, bluejackets, and local volunteers stormed the Mexican siegeworks in a bold frontal assault.  The lone cannon was captured and turned on the enemy, who were driven from their trenches and up the valley toward Mission San Diego.

Stockton’s sailors now began speedy improvements to the breastworks above Old Town.  A perimeter ditch was dug, behind which were placed casks filled with earth at two-foot intervals.  Twelve guns from CONGRESS were landed to command the approaches from Los Angeles and Mission Valley.  Remnants of these fortifications, named Fort Stockton in the Commodore’s honor, can still be seen above Old Town today.  The American ensign has flown uninterrupted over San Diego since.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 NOV 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Site visit.  Old Town (Fort Stockton) Historical Site, San Diego, California, 15 July 1995.

Smythe, William E.  History of San Diego, 1542-1907.  The History Company, San Diego, CA, pp. 201-06, 1907.

Fort Stockton in modern times

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                   THE GUN FROM USS SHUBRICK

               (outside the NMCSD Command Suite)

RADM William Branford Shubrick’s Navy career was long and distinguished.  Born on 31 October 1790, Mr. Shubrick received his midshipman’s warrant in the Spring of 1806 at the age of 15.  During the Barbary Wars, he served aboard WASP, 18, and ARGUS, 16.  During the War of 1812, he served aboard the ship-sloop HORNET, 18, and CONSTELLATION, 36.  It was during this latter tour that he distinguished himself by leading a party of bluejackets in the defense of Craney Island, near Norfolk, on 22 June 1813.  Serving subsequently aboard CONSTITUTION, 44, he won a Congressional gold medal for his actions in that frigate’s engagement with HMS LEVANT and HMS CYANE.  The Mexican War found him overseeing the capture of Mazatlan, Guaymas, and San Blas and later commanding the Navy’s Pacific Squadron.  He retired in December of 1861 and was appointed to the rank of Rear Admiral (Ret) on 19 July 1862.

During Shubrick’s career he also served several tours on loan to the US Lighthouse Service, a branch of the Treasury Department whose vessels were often captained by Navy officers.  From 1859-71 he chaired this service’s governing body, the Lighthouse Board, and for this effort was honored with the naming of a Lighthouse Service wooden sidewheel frigate.  Early in the Civil War, on 23 August 1861, USLHS SHUBRICK was transferred to the US Revenue Cutter Service (now US Coast Guard) to patrol the Puget Sound area.   Confederate commerce raiders were then operating in the north Pacific, exacting a heavy toll on merchant shipping.  Indeed, when the Russian Telegraph Company planned to survey the Bering Strait, they recruited an American agent, COL Charles S. Buckley, to petition our government for an escorting warship.  USRCS SHUBRICK was re-assigned to the Navy for 90 days of special duty beginning 15 February 1865, to protect this Russian survey party.  No records of USS SHUBRICK’s brief Navy career survive.  Like many wooden steamers then in military service, she probably mounted both traditional smooth-bore naval guns as well as more advanced artillery pieces.  We know she mounted at least one of the latter, for a 30-pounder Parrott rifle from her battery is currently mounted outside the Command Suite of Naval Medical Center San Diego.

RADM Shubrick has since been honored with the nameplates of three other Navy vessels.  After WWI the Blakley-class torpedo boat SHUBRICK (TB-31) was renamed COAST TORPEDO BOAT No. 15 to allow the Clemson-class destroyer DD-268 to assume the Shubrick name.  Still later the WWII Gleaves-class destroyer DD-639, commissioned 7 February 1943, carries on the Admiral’s name.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  20 MAR 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 164-65.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 492.

Reynolds, Clark G.  Famous American Admirals.  New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978, pp. 310-11.

Tucker, Spencer.  Arming the Fleet:  U.S. Navy Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 228-30.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The Parrott rifle was developed in 1860 by Robert P. Parrott, a former US Army CAPT then in charge of the West Point Foundry Association.  The cast iron, muzzle-loading rifle was reliable, reasonably durable and relatively inexpensive, and thus became popular with the Navy and the Army.  By January 1864 the Navy had about 650 Parrott rifles in service, about 20% of the total that had been manufactured to that date.

The 30-pounder identifier indicated the weight of the projectile it fired.  The gun weighs about 3500 pounds and had a range of 4800 yards.  The Parrott’s characteristic feature is the reinforcing band about the breech.  The higher gas pressures in the firing chambers of rifles caused conventionally constructed cannon to burst.  Parrott’s technique strengthened the breech by pounding a red-hot band into place, then allowing it to cool and contract even more tightly around the gun.  SHUBRICK’s Parrott rifle is the most modern of the three guns currently displayed on the NMCSD compound.

In 1915, the US Coast Guard was created by combining two splintered services then in existence, the US Lifesaving Service (seaborne rescue) and the US Revenue Cutter Service (anti-smuggling and customs enforcement).  Then on 7 July 1939 the US Lighthouse Service (aids to navigation) was merged with the Coast Guard, hence their three modern missions.

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