Three Ships named USS Marblehead The 1st Marblehead Since the latter part of the 19th century, cruisers in the United States Navy have carried the names of U.S. cities. Three ships have been named after Marblehead, MA, the birthplace of the U.S. Navy, and all three had distinguished careers. The 1st Marblehead. The first Marblehead was not a cruiser, however. She Source: Wikipedia.com was an Unadilla-class gunboat designed not for ship-to-ship warfare but for bombardment of coastal targets and blockade runners. Launched in 1861, she served the Union during the American Civil War. First assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, she took part in operations along the York and Pamunkey Rivers in Virginia. On 1 MAY 1862, she shelled Confederate positions at Yorktown in support of General George McClellan's drive up the peninsula toward Richmond. In an unusual engagement, this Marblehead was docked in Pamunkey River when Confederate cavalry commander Jeb Stuart ordered an attack on the docked ship. Discovered by Union sailors and marines, who opened fire, the Confederate horse artillery under Major John Pelham unlimbered his guns and fired on Marblehead. The bluecoats were called back aboard and as the ship got under way Pelham's guns raced the ship, firing at it as long as the horse can keep up with it. The Marblehead escaped. Reassigned to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, she commenced patrols off the southern east coast in search of Confederate vessels. With the single turreted, coastal monitor Passaic, in early-FEB 1863, she reconnoitered Georgia’s Wilmington River in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the ironclad ram CSS Atlanta. Later that month, she took possession of a cargo of cotton which had been captured by schooners Caswell and Arago at the entrance of Georgia’s Tybee Creek while en route to Nassau. This Marblehead also periodically engaged in operations on the Stono River, South Carolina, to support Union defenders of James Island. On 16 JUL 1863, she came under fire from Confederate batteries at Grimball's Landing. Forced further down river, she continued to provide fire support and prevented Confederate reinforcements from reaching the main body of their attack force. She then joined in the bombardment of forts in Charleston, South Carolina harbor before heading north for repairs. Back on the Stono River with Pawnee by NOV 1863, she covered Union troops as they sank pile obstructions in the river above Legareville, South Carolina. On Christmas Day, to neutralize Marblehead and Pawnee, Confederate batteries opened fire on the two gunboats. Marblehead suffered 20 hits but still captured two enemy 8-inch howitzers. Four of her sailors, Contraband Robert Blake, Boatswain's Mate William Farley, Quartermaster James Miller, and Landsman Charles Moore, were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions that day. She operated with the North Atlantic Squadron, mostly in the Caribbean, for the next two years. On 18 AUG 1868, she returned to the New York Navy Yard for decommissioning and sale on 30 SEP 1868. A Stono River Medal of Honor. For his 25 DEC 1863 actions on the deck of the first USS Marblehead, Robert Blake earned the first Medal of Honor ever awarded to an African American. Born into slavery in Virginia, Blake had been at his owner's South Carolina plantation when it was burned during a Union naval expedition up the Santee River. About 400 slaves were liberated, including Blake. They were deemed “contraband”, put onto Union ships and sent to North Island in Winyah Bay, South Carolina, where Blake answered a call for twenty single men to serve on the USS Vermont. By Christmas 1863, Blake had transferred to the USS Marblehead, and was serving as a steward to Lt. Commander R. W. Meade. Early that morning, in the Stono River, the Marblehead came under fire from a Confederate howitzer at Legareville on Johns Island. Meade ran to the quarterdeck to order return fire and Blake followed, handed Meade his uniform, and urged him to change out of his night clothes. Blake then 1 of 7 went to the gun deck and was immediately knocked down by an exploding enemy shell which killed a powder-boy manning one of the guns. With no assigned combat role, Blake could have retreated to safety below decks. Instead, he stripped to the waist and began running powder boxes to the gun loaders. When Mead asked what he was doing, Blake replied "Went down to the rocks to hide my face, but the rocks said there is no hiding place here. So here I am, Sir." The Confederates eventually abandoned their position. For his actions, Blake was awarded the Medal of Honor on 16 APR 1864.1 Later promoted to seaman, he re-enlisted for second term and served again on the USS Vermont.2 The 2nd Marblehead. The second Marblehead, C11, launched in 1892 in The 2ND Marblehead Boston, MA, carried hull number C-11. She was a Montgomery-class cruiser which served in the Spanish American War and in the First World War. At the outbreak of the Spanish American War, the Spanish were using undersea cables at Cienfuegos, Cuba to communicate with the rest of the rest of the island and with the Spanish command. These cables had to be severed and cruiser USS Marblehead, gunboat USS Nashville, and cutter USS Source: Wikipedia.com Windom were assigned the talk. Under ever-increasing enemy fire, two of the three cables were cut, and for their actions that day, 52 sailors and marines received the Medal of Honor, usually for “setting an example of extraordinary and coolness under fire.” Thirty of them hailed from the Marblehead. During WWI, the then 25-year-old ship was employed on convoy, patrol, and survey duty, first off Mexico and California in search of possible German raiders and later performing similar duties in the Caribbean.3 The 3RD Marblehead The 3rd Marblehead. The third Marblehead, CL-12, was an Omaha-class light cruiser launched in Philadelphia, PA in 1923. She and her crew are the subject of www.ussmarblehead.com and she would become the most famous of the three ships. During the period between the world wars, this Marblehead, fondly referred In San Diego harbor, 10 Jan 35 to as Marby by her crew, covered much of the globe. After commissioning in Source: Wikipedia.com SEP 1924, the nearly-two-football-fields-long Marblehead left Boston for shakedown cruises in the English Channel and Mediterranean. In 1925, she visited Australia, stopping en route in the Samoan and Society Islands and in the Galápagos Islands on her return. A year after her return, Marblehead was underway again on an extended voyage. In early 1927, she aided American occupation of Nicaragua. Through the summer of 1927, she joined USS Richmond and USS Trenton in Shanghai, China in a show of force aimed at protecting American and other foreign nationals in that city’s international settlement during China's civil war. She later spent two months up the Yangtze River at Hankow and visited several Japanese ports before leaving the Far East in MAR 1928 again stopping in Nicaragua to assist in the preparations for elections there. During the next decade, Marby operated with both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets until late-1938 when she was permanently assigned to the Asiatic Fleet. Home ported at Cavite, Philippines, she cruised the Sea of Japan and the South and East China seas, wintering in the Philippines and summering in China, as, political and military tensions rapidly escalated across the region. Exotic locales such as British-controlled, Rangoon, Burma (today’s Yangon, Myanmar) and Hong Kong; Saigon, French Indo-China (today’s Vietnam), and other ports in East Asia and Southeast Asia drew Marby visits. In addition to the ebbs and 1 Earlier Medal of Honor actions by African American and former slave William Harvey Carney preceded those of Blake, but Carney did not receive his medal until 1900. In an assault on Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina on 18 JUL 1863, after his color guard was killed, Sergeant Carney retrieved the U.S. flag and marched forward with it despite multiple serious wounds which would ultimately leave him disabled. Source: Wikipedia.com 2 Source: Wikipedia.com 3 Source: Wikipedia.com 2 of 7 flows of the Chinese Civil War, during this period, Marby crews witnessed historic events such as Japan’s invasion of Amoy (China) in the late-1930s during which Marby landed Marines to protect American missionaries and other interests. On the lighter side, her crews also watched the landing of the Pan Am China Clipper in Cavite Navy Yard on 31 MAR 40 on one of its visits to the Philippines before the war. However, in late-SEP 40, when the ship left Tsingtao (the city after which the famous beer is named), Marby’s long association with China ended as the Empire of the Rising Sun progressively took control of all major Chinese ports except Hong Kong and set the stage for WW II in the Pacific. Other than a cruise to Guam in January, Marby spent nearly all of 1941 in Philippine waters. By then, like most of her sister ships in the Asiatic Fleet, Marby was obsolete by naval standards of the early 40s, particularly when compared to Japanese ships in her class. For years, the Japanese had been cheating on the various post-WWI treaties that limited the size and power of navies, whereas America had complied. Underweight and out of date, Marby was no match for her likely adversaries except perhaps in one respect – her crew.