1.
USS Michigan (BB-27)
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USS Michigan, a South Carolina-class battleship, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the 26th state. She was the member of her class, the first dreadnought battleships built for the US Navy. She was laid down in December 1906, launched in May 1908, sponsored by Mrs. F. W. Brooks, daughter of Secretary of the Navy Truman Newberry, and commissioned into the fleet 4 January 1910. Michigan and South Carolina were armed with a battery of eight 12-inch guns in superfiring twin gun turrets. Michigan spent her career in the Atlantic Fleet and she frequently cruised the east coast of the United States and the Caribbean Sea, and in April 1914 took part in the United States occupation of Veracruz during the Mexican Civil War. After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Michigan was employed as a convoy escort, in January 1918, her forward cage mast collapsed in heavy seas, killing six men. In 1919, she ferried soldiers back from Europe, the ship conducted training cruises in 1920 and 1921, but her career was cut short by the Washington Naval Treaty signed in February 1922, which mandated the disposal of Michigan and South Carolina. Michigan was decommissioned in February 1923 and broken up for scrap the following year, Michigan was 452 ft 9 in long overall and had a beam of 80 ft 3 in and a draft of 24 ft 6 in. She displaced 16,000 long tons as designed and up to 17,617 long tons at combat load. The ship was powered by two-shaft vertical triple-expansion engines rated at 16,500 ihp and twelve coal-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers, the ship had a cruising range of 5,000 nmi at a speed of 10 kn. She had a crew of 869 officers and men, the ship was armed with a main battery of eight 12-inch /45 caliber Mark 5 guns in four twin gun turrets on the centerline, which were placed in two superfiring pairs forward and aft. The secondary battery consisted of twenty-two 3-inch /50 guns mounted in casemates along the side of the hull, as was standard for capital ships of the period, she carried a pair of 21-inch torpedo tubes, submerged in her hull on the broadside. The main armored belt was 12 in thick over the magazines,10 in over the machinery spaces, the armored deck was 1.5 to 2.5 in thick. The gun turrets had 12 inch thick faces, while the supporting barbettes had 10 inch thick armor plating, ten inch thick armor also protected the casemate guns. The conning tower had 12 inch thick sides, Michigan was laid down on 17 December 1906 at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation. Her completed hull was launched on 26 May 1908, she was christened after the 26th state by Mrs. F. W. Brooks, fitting out work was completed by 4 January 1910, when she was commissioned into the US Navy. After entering service, she was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet and she then began a shakedown cruise down to the Caribbean Sea that lasted until 7 June. Michigan joined training maneuvers off New England beginning on 29 July, a training cruise to Europe followed, she departed Boston, Massachusetts on 2 November and stops included Portland in the United Kingdom and Cherbourg, France
2.
USS Massachusetts (BB-2)
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USS Massachusetts was an Indiana-class battleship and the second United States Navy ship comparable to foreign battleships of the time. Authorized in 1890 and commissioned six years later, she was a battleship, though with heavy armor. The ship class also pioneered the use of an intermediate battery and she was designed for coastal defense and as a result, her decks were not safe from high waves on the open ocean. Massachusetts served in the Spanish–American War as part of the Flying Squadron and took part in the blockades of Cienfuegos and she missed the decisive Battle of Santiago de Cuba after steaming to Guantánamo Bay the night before to resupply coal. After the war she served with the North Atlantic Squadron, performing training maneuvers, during this period she suffered an explosion in an 8-inch gun turret, killing nine, and ran aground twice, requiring several months of repair both times. She was decommissioned in 1906 for modernization, in 1917 she was recommissioned to serve as a training ship for gun crews during World War I. She was decommissioned for the time in March 1919 under the name Coast Battleship Number 2 so that her name could be reused for USS Massachusetts. In 1921 she was scuttled in shallow water off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, the ship was never scrapped and in 1956 it was declared the property of the state of Florida. Since 1993 the wreck has been a Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserve and is included in the National Register of Historic Places and it serves as an artificial reef and diving spot. Massachusetts was constructed from a version of a design drawn up by a policy board in 1889 for a short-range battleship. The original design was part of a naval construction plan to build 33 battleships and 167 smaller ships. The ships were limited to defense due to their moderate endurance, relatively small displacement and low freeboard, or distance from the deck to the water. They were however heavily armed and armored, Conways All The Worlds Fighting Ships describes their design as attempting too much on a very limited displacement, the total cost of the ship was almost twice as high, approximately $6,000,000. The contract specified the ship had to be built in three years, but slow delivery of armor plates and guns caused a delay and her keel was laid down on 25 June 1891 and she was launched two years later on 10 June 1893. The launching ceremony was attended by thousands of people, including Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert and her preliminary sea trial did not take place until March 1896 because of the delays in armor and gun deliveries. At this point Massachusetts was almost complete, and her trial was held a month later. Massachusetts was commissioned on 10 June 1896 with Captain Frederick Rodgers in command and she had her shakedown cruise between August and November 1896, followed by an overhaul at the New York Navy Yard. In February 1897 she made a voyage to Charleston, South Carolina
3.
Battleship
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A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the battleship was the most powerful type of warship, the word battleship was coined around 1794 and is a contraction of the phrase line-of-battle ship, the dominant wooden warship during the Age of Sail. The term came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship. In 1906, the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought heralded a revolution in battleship design, subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought, were referred to as dreadnoughts. Battleships were a symbol of naval dominance and national might, the launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced a new naval arms race. Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in the war, the Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. The value of the battleship has been questioned, even during their heyday, there were few of the decisive fleet battles that battleship proponents expected, and used to justify the vast resources spent on building battlefleets. Battleships were retained by the United States Navy into the Cold War for fire support purposes before being stricken from the U. S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. A ship of the line was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns, from 1794, the alternative term line of battle ship was contracted to battle ship or battleship. The sheer number of guns fired broadside meant a sail battleship could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull, knocking down masts, wrecking her rigging, and killing her crew. However, the range of the guns was as little as a few hundred yards. The first major change to the ship of the concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system. Steam power was introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft. The French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850—the first true steam battleship, Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 knots, regardless of the wind condition. This was a decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships, the adoption of steam power was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of the line was overtaken by the ironclad, powered by steam, protected by metal armor, and armed with guns firing high-explosive shells. In the Crimean War, six ships and two frigates of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853
4.
Bridge (nautical)
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The bridge of a ship is the room or platform from which the ship can be commanded. When a ship is underway the bridge is manned by an OOW aided usually by an AB acting as lookout. During critical maneuvers the captain will be on the bridge supported, perhaps, by an OOW as a set of hands. Wheelhouses are the small enclosed parts of a bridge that historically held the ships wheel, today, ships bridges do not have a separate wheelhouse, the term wheelhouse or pilothouse is used nowadays to refer to the smaller bridges of small vessels, such as tugs. Traditionally, sailing ships were commanded from the quarterdeck, aft of the mainmast, with the arrival of paddle steamers, engineers required a platform from which they could inspect the paddle wheels and where the captains view would not be obstructed by the paddle houses. A raised walkway, literally a bridge, connecting the houses was therefore provided. When the screw propeller superseded the paddle wheel, the bridge was retained, helm orders would be passed to an enclosed wheel house, where the coxswain or helmsman operated the ships wheel. Engine commands would be relayed to the engineer in the room by an engine order telegraph that displayed the captains orders on a dial. The engineer would ensure that the combination of steam pressure. Iron, and later steel, ships also required a compass platform and this was usually a tower, where a magnetic compass could be sited far away as possible from the ferrous interference of the hulk of the ship. Depending upon the design and layout of a ship, all of these terms can be variously interchangeable, larger ships, particularly warships, often had a number of different bridges. A navigation bridge would be used for the conning of the ship. A separate admirals bridge could be provided in flagships, where the admiral could exercise control over his fleet without interfering with the Captains tactical command of the vessel. In older warships, an armored conning tower was often provided. Modern advances in remote control equipment have seen progressive transfer of the control of the ship to the bridge. The wheel and throttles can be operated directly from the bridge, aboard modern warships it is common that actual commanding is carried out on the bridge while weapon systems are controlled from a room usually deep inside the vessel. This also enables a redundant setup in which the vessel is able to fight in case one of the command instances has been hit or destroyed. On a commercial vessel, the bridge will contain the equipment necessary to navigate a vessel on passage
5.
Floating battery
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A floating battery is a kind of armed watercraft, often improvised or experimental, which carries a heavy armament but has few other qualities as a warship. An early appearance was in 1782 at the Great Siege of Gibraltar, a purpose-built floating battery was Flådebatteri No. 1, designed by Chief Engineer Henrik Gerner in 1787, it was 47 m long,13 m wide and armed with 24 guns, and was used during the 1801 battle of Copenhagen under command of Peter Willemoes. The British made limited use of floating batteries during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, with the two-vessel Musquito and Firm-class floating batteries, and some individual vessels. The most notable floating batteries were built or designed in the 19th century, and are related to the development of the first steam warship, demologos, the first steam-propelled warship, was a floating battery designed for the protection of New York Harbor in the War of 1812. In the 1850s, the British and French navies deployed iron-armoured floating batteries as a supplement to the wooden steam battlefleet in the Crimean War, the role of the battery was to assist unarmoured mortar and gunboats bombarding shore fortifications. The French used their batteries in 1855 against the defenses at Kinburn on the Black Sea, the British planned to use theirs in the Baltic Sea against Kronstadt, and may have been influential in causing the Russians to sue for peace. Floating batteries were implemented by both the Union and the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The first was the Confederate Floating Battery of Charleston Harbor, which took a part in the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861. Experimental ironclad vessels that proved too cumbersome or were underpowered were often converted into floating batteries and posted for river, here too, Civil War batteries and even ironclads such as the famed monitors, were acutely vulnerable to mines protected in turn by forts. As a result, the defences of Charleston, South Carolina
6.
French ironclad Gloire
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The French ironclad Gloire was the first ocean-going ironclad, launched in 1859. She was designed by the French naval architect Henri Dupuy de Lôme as a 5 and her 12 cm-thick armour plates, backed with 43 cm of timber, resisted the experimental firing of the strongest guns of the time at full charge, at a distance of 20 metres. Her official top speed was 13.1 knots but other reports suggested no more than 11.75 knots had been reached, as was common for the era, Gloire was constructed with sails as well as a steam-powered screw. The original rigging was a barquentine rig providing 1,096 sq. m of surface area. This was later increased to a full rig providing 2,508 sq. m of surface, Gloire was launched at the arsenal of Mourillon, Toulon, on 24 November 1859, and entered service in August 1860. She was struck from the French fleet registry in 1879, as the first ocean-going ironclad, Gloire rendered obsolete traditional unarmoured wooden ships-of-the-line, and all major navies had no choice but to build ironclads of their own. The French Navy of Yesterday, Ironclad Frigates, Part I, chesneau, Roger & Kolesnik, Eugene M. eds. Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships 1860–1905, gardiner, Robert, ed. Steam, Steel and Shellfire, The Steam Warship 1815–1905. Dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours,1671 –1870, silverstone, Paul H. Directory of the Worlds Capital Ships
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