Birth of the American Battleship

Soon after the turn of the last century, USS Indiana (BB-1) in repose at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. BIRTH OFTHE the United States abandoned a policy of isolationism and embarked on a building program, which ultimately AMERICAN led to supremacy on the world’s oceans. But the seas were anything but calm from the very beginning BATTLESHIP BY JON M. NIELSON merican sailors lined the old rival, Great Britain, or the and iron-hulled vessels, both steam decks or stood by still- rising naval strength of Germany, (coal fired) and sail powered, and it Asmoking turrets aboard Italy, Japan, France, or Russia, for continued to base its strategy upon USS Olympia, Boston, Concord, command of the world’s oceans. theories of coastal and harbor Baltimore, and other ships of The problems the Navy faced as defense and commerce raiding as it Commodore George Dewey’s battle the 19th Century gave way to the had in the Civil War and in the War squadron and watched as Spanish 20th were those of obsolesence in of 1812 before that. As late as 1887, Adm. Patricio Montojo Y Pasaron ships, conservatism in doctrine, aging Adm. David Dixon Porter had hoisted the white flag above the and a combination of legislative recommended speeding-up Islo de Cuba’s damaged bridge. provincialism and Congressional construction of the double-turret The Battle of Manila Bay was over. fiscal tight-handedness — all of monitor-type ironclad, and even In less than four-hours that 1st of which placed the Navy at a repairing the aged and rotting May 1898, American “protected” decided disadvantage and single-turret monitors of the Civil cruisers and gunboats, armed with reflected a backwardness, which War era, while advising the 6- and 8-in breech-loading rifles, had induced Thomas Brassey, the building of as many monitors destroyed the inferior Spanish fleet English editor of the authoritative and cruisers as possible. in the first naval action of the Brassey’s Naval Annual (1886), to The continued vogue of Spanish-American War, and omit any mention of the the monitor-type immediately justified the controver- American Navy prior to 1899! warship, together sial naval construction programs The American Navy of the with an amazing which, first authorized in 1883, had 1880s was a combi- presaged the era of the “New Navy.” nation of wooden- However spectacular Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay and the even-more decisive action by Adm. William Sampson and Commodore W.S. Schley at Santiago de Cuba Shipyard workers install one of the massive bow 12-in main the following July, by European cannons on the Connecticut at the New York Navy Yard on standards of naval architecture 31 January 1906. and theory, the American Navy had yet to completely shed its In what seemed a nearly instantaneous turn-around, the United States Navy suddenly took control of a good post-Civil War lethargy and portion of the world’s oceans with an entirely new fleet internal factionalism to emerge as of battleship “dreadnoughts.” This new power is well- a first-rate combat force, represented in a photograph of USS Connecticut. She was the lead ship in her class of six. Her keel was laid on capable of 10 March 1903, launched on 29 September 1904 and challenging commissioned on 29 September 1906 — becoming the her most advanced ship in the US Navy. 24 SEA CLASSICS/November 2017 seaclassicsnow.com 25.

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