Armistice of 11 November 1918
The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was the armistice that ended fighting on land and air in World War I between the Allies and their opponent, Germany. Previous armistices had been agreed with Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Known as the Armistice of Compiègne from the place where it was signed at 5:45 a.m. by the French Marshal Foch, it came into force at 11:00 a.m. Paris time on 11 November 1918 and marked a victory for the Allies and a defeat for Germany, although not formally a surrender; the actual terms written by the Allied Supreme Commander, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, included the cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of German forces to behind the Rhine, Allied occupation of the Rhineland and bridgeheads further east, the preservation of infrastructure, the surrender of aircraft and military materiel, the release of Allied prisoners of war and interned civilians, eventual reparations, no release of German prisoners and no relaxation of the naval blockade of Germany.
Although the armistice ended the fighting on the Western Front, it had to be prolonged three times until the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, took effect on 10 January 1920. On 29 September 1918 the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor, Count Georg von Hertling at Imperial Army Headquarters in Spa of occupied Belgium, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless. Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff fearing a breakthrough, claimed that he could not guarantee that the front would hold for another two hours and demanded a request be given to the Entente for an immediate ceasefire. In addition, he recommended the acceptance of the main demands of US president Woodrow Wilson including putting the Imperial Government on a democratic footing, hoping for more favorable peace terms; this enabled him to save the face of the Imperial German Army and put the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences squarely into the hands of the democratic parties and the parliament.
He expressed his view to officers of his staff on 1 October: "They now must lie on the bed that they've made for us."On 3 October, the liberal Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed Chancellor of Germany, replacing Georg von Hertling in order to negotiate an armistice. After long conversations with the Kaiser and evaluations of the political and military situations in the Reich, by 5 October 1918, the German government sent a message to President Wilson to negotiate terms on the basis of a recent speech of his and the earlier declared "Fourteen Points". In the subsequent two exchanges, Wilson's allusions "failed to convey the idea that the Kaiser's abdication was an essential condition for peace; the leading statesmen of the Reich were not yet ready to contemplate such a monstrous possibility." As a precondition for negotiations, Wilson demanded the retreat of Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and the Kaiser's abdication, writing on 23 October: "If the Government of the United States must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats of Germany now, or if it is to have to deal with them in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender."In late October, Ludendorff, in a sudden change of mind, declared the conditions of the Allies unacceptable.
He now demanded to resume the war. However the German soldiers were pressing to get home, it was scarcely possible to arouse their readiness for battle anew, desertions were on the increase. The Imperial Government stayed on course and Ludendorff was replaced by Wilhelm Groener. On 5 November, the Allies agreed to take up negotiations for a truce, now demanding reparation payments; the latest note from Wilson was received in Berlin on 6 November. That same day, the delegation led by Matthias Erzberger departed for France. A much bigger obstacle, which contributed to the five-week delay in the signing of the Armistice and to the resulting social deterioration in Europe, was the fact that the French and Italian governments had no desire to accept the "Fourteen Points" and President Wilson's subsequent promises. For example, they assumed that the de-militarization suggested by Wilson would be limited to the Central Powers. There were contradictions with their post-War plans that did not include a consistent implementation of the ideal of national self-determination.
As Czernin points out: The Allied statesmen were faced with a problem: so far they had considered the "fourteen commandments" as a piece of clever and effective American propaganda, designed to undermine the fighting spirit of the Central Powers, to bolster the morale of the lesser Allies. Now the whole peace structure was supposed to be built up on that set of "vague principles", most of which seemed to them unrealistic, some of which, if they were to be applied, were unacceptable; the sailors' revolt which took place during the night of 29 to 30 October 1918 in the naval port of Wilhelmshaven spread across the whole country within days and led to the proclamation of a republic on 9 November 1918 and to the announcement of the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II. However, in various areas soldiers challenged the authority of their officers and on occasion established Soldiers' Councils, thus for example the Brussels Soldiers' Council was set up by revolutionary soldiers on 9 November 1918. On 9 November, Max von Baden handed over the office of Chancellor to Friedrich Ebert, a Social Democrat.
Ebert's SPD and Erzberger's Catholic Centre Party had enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the Imperia
USS S-1 (SS-105)
USS S-1 was the lead boat of the S class of submarines of the United States Navy. The Navy had awarded contracts for the first three S boats under the same general specifications but of different design types. S-1 was what was known as a "Holland-type", while S-2 was a "Lake-type" and S-3 a "Government-type". S-1's prime contractor, the Electric Boat Company, subcontracted her construction to the Fore River Shipbuilding Company of Quincy, Massachusetts, her keel was laid down on 11 December 1917. She was launched on 26 October 1918 sponsored by Mrs. Emory S. Land, commissioned on 5 June 1920, with Lieutenant Commander Thomas G. Berrien in command. S-1 began her service operations in July 1920 with a cruise to Bermuda attached to Submarine Division 2, with subsequent operations out of New London, cruising the New England coast until 1923. On 2 January 1923, she shifted to SubDiv Zero, a division created for experimental work, conducted winter maneuvers in the Caribbean Sea; as a single-ship division, SubDiv Zero, she returned to New London in the spring to continue experimental duty.
As part of a series of studies conducted by the United States Navy after World War I into the possibility of submarine-borne observation and scouting aircraft, S-1 became the experimental platform for this project late in 1923. She was altered by having a steel capsule mounted abaft the conning tower. After surfacing, this plane could be rolled out assembled, launched by ballasting the sub until the deck was awash; these experiments were carried out into 1926 using the Martin-built plane, constructed of wood and fabric, the all-metal Cox-Klemin versions, XS-1 and XS-2. The first full cycle of surfacing, launching, retrieving and submergence took place on 28 July 1926, on the Thames River at New London. Following the aircraft experiments, S-1 served as flagship for SubDiv 2 until July 1927, when she was transferred to SubDiv 4. While attached to this division, she made operational cruises to the Panama Canal Zone in 1928–1930, during the spring months, she visited ports at Canal Zone. January 1931 found her at Pearl Harbor.
She remained there into 1937. She was returned to SubDiv 7 in August, remained with that division until departing in May 1937 for Philadelphia. S-1 commenced overhaul for deactivation, she was decommissioned on 20 October. On 16 October 1940, S-1 was recommissioned at Philadelphia, she made two cruises to Bermuda, training submariners, returned to Philadelphia from the second cruise on 7 December 1941. There, she prepared for transfer to Britain under the Lend-Lease program, she was decommissioned and turned over to the British on 20 April 1942. Her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 24 June. S-1 served the Royal Navy as HMS P.552 as a training vessel for anti-submarine warfare. In poor condition after arriving in Durban, South Africa, she was in repair and she was declared unseaworthy in January 1944, she was returned to the U. S. Navy at Durban on 16 October 1944, where she was stripped of vital parts and machinery, her hull was sold for local scrapping on 20 July 1945 and she was scrapped there on 14 September of that year
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, it is sometimes used or colloquially to refer to remotely operated vehicles and robots, as well as medium-sized or smaller vessels, such as the midget submarine and the wet sub. Although experimental submarines had been built before, submarine design took off during the 19th century, they were adopted by several navies. Submarines were first used during World War I, are now used in many navies large and small. Military uses include attacking enemy surface ships, attacking other submarines, aircraft carrier protection, blockade running, ballistic missile submarines as part of a nuclear strike force, conventional land attack, covert insertion of special forces. Civilian uses for submarines include marine science, salvage and facility inspection and maintenance. Submarines can be modified to perform more specialized functions such as search-and-rescue missions or undersea cable repair. Submarines are used in tourism, for undersea archaeology.
Most large submarines consist of a cylindrical body with hemispherical ends and a vertical structure located amidships, which houses communications and sensing devices as well as periscopes. In modern submarines, this structure is the "sail" in American usage and "fin" in European usage. A "conning tower" was a feature of earlier designs: a separate pressure hull above the main body of the boat that allowed the use of shorter periscopes. There is a propeller at the rear, various hydrodynamic control fins. Smaller, deep-diving and specialty submarines may deviate from this traditional layout. Submarines use diving planes and change the amount of water and air in ballast tanks to change buoyancy for submerging and surfacing. Submarines have one of the widest ranges of capabilities of any vessel, they range from small autonomous examples and one- or two-person vessels that operate for a few hours, to vessels that can remain submerged for six months—such as the Russian Typhoon class, the biggest submarines built.
Submarines can work at greater depths than are practical for human divers. Modern deep-diving submarines derive from the bathyscaphe, which in turn evolved from the diving bell. Whereas the principal meaning of "submarine" is an armed, submersible warship, the more general meaning is for any type of submersible craft; the definition as of 1899 was for any type of "submarine boat". By naval tradition, submarines are still referred to as "boats" rather than as "ships", regardless of their size. In other navies with a history of large submarine fleets they are "boats". According to a report in Opusculum Taisnieri published in 1562: Two Greeks submerged and surfaced in the river Tagus near the City of Toledo several times in the presence of The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, without getting wet and with the flame they carried in their hands still alight. In 1578, the English mathematician William Bourne recorded in his book Inventions or Devises one of the first plans for an underwater navigation vehicle.
A few years the Scottish mathematician and theologian John Napier wrote in his Secret Inventions the following: "These inventions besides devises of sayling under water with divers, other devises and strategems for harming of the enemyes by the Grace of God and worke of expert Craftsmen I hope to perform." It's unclear whether he carried out his idea. The first submersible of whose construction there exists reliable information was designed and built in 1620 by Cornelis Drebbel, a Dutchman in the service of James I of England, it was propelled by means of oars. By the mid-18th century, over a dozen patents for submarines/submersible boats had been granted in England. In 1747, Nathaniel Symons patented and built the first known working example of the use of a ballast tank for submersion, his design used leather bags. A mechanism was used to cause the boat to resurface. In 1749, the Gentlemen's Magazine reported that a similar design had been proposed by Giovanni Borelli in 1680. Further design improvement stagnated for over a century, until application of new technologies for propulsion and stability.
The first military submarine was the Turtle, a hand-powered acorn-shaped device designed by the American David Bushnell to accommodate a single person. It was the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement, the first to use screws for propulsion. In 1800, France built a human-powered submarine designed by the Nautilus; the French gave up on the experiment in 1804, as did the British when they considered Fulton's submarine design. In 1864, late in the American Civil War, the Confederate navy's H. L. Hunley became the first military submarine to sink an enemy vessel, the Union sloop-of-war USS Housatonic. In the aftermath of its successful attack against the ship, the Hunley sank because it was too close to its own exploding torpedo. In 1866, the Sub Marine Explorer was the first submarine to dive, cruise underwater, resurface under the control of the crew; the design by German American Julius H. Kroehl incorporated elements that are still used in modern submarines.
In 1866, the Flach was built at the request of the Chilean government, by Karl Flach, a German engineer and immigrant
Deck gun
"Deck gun" can mean a type of big water nozzle used for firefighting. A deck gun is a type of naval artillery mounted on the deck of a submarine. Most submarine deck guns were open; the main deck gun was a dual-purpose weapon used to sink merchant shipping or shell shore targets, or defend the submarine on the surface from enemy aircraft and warships. A crew of three operated the gun, while others were tasked with supplying ammunition. A small locker box held a few'ready-use' rounds. With a well-drilled, experienced crew, the rate of fire of a deck gun could be 15 to 18 aimed shots per minute; some submarines had additional deck guns like auto-cannons and machine guns for anti-aircraft defense. Similar unenclosed guns are found on surface warships as secondary or defensive armament, although the term "deck gun" refers only to submarine-mounted guns. Although technically not a deck gun, USS Holland, the first American submarine, was equipped with a pneumatic dynamite gun built into the bow in 1900.
The deck gun was first used by the Germans in World War I, proved its worth when the U-boat needed to conserve torpedoes or attack enemy vessels straggling behind a convoy. Submarine captains considered the deck gun as their main weapon, using torpedoes only when necessary, since many World War I submarines carried ten or fewer torpedoes and fired several to increase the probability of hitting the target. Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière used a dynamiting team on 171 of his 194 sinkings; the deck gun was introduced in all submarine forces prior to World War I. The three British M-class submarines mounted a single 12 inch /40 caliber naval gun intended to be fired while the submarine was at periscope depth with the muzzle of the gun above water, principally in a shore bombardment role; this World War I design was found unworkable in trials because the submarine was required to surface to reload the gun, problems arose when variable amounts of water entered the barrel prior to firing. The French submarine Surcouf was launched in 1929 with two 203mm/50 Modèle 1924 guns in a turret forward of the conning tower.
These were the second largest guns carried by any submarine after the British HMS M1 during the Second World War. The London Naval Treaty of 1930 restricted submarine guns to a maximum of 155 mm. In early World War II, German submarine commanders favored the deck gun because of the unreliability of torpedoes; the deck gun became less effective as convoys became larger and better equipped, merchant ships were armed. Surfacing became dangerous in the vicinity of a convoy because of improvements in radar and direction finding.. German U-boat deck guns were removed on the order of the supreme commander of the U-boat Arm during World War II, those deck guns that remained were no longer manned. For a few months in 1943, some U-Boats operating in the Bay of Biscay were equipped with enhanced anti-aircraft guns, being known as "U-Flak" boats to be deployed as service escorts for regular U-Boats. After the Royal Air Force modified their anti-submarine tactics which made it too dangerous for a submarine to stay on the surface to right, the U-Flaks were converted back to standard U-boat armament configuration.
Japanese submarine cruisers used 14 cm/40 11th Year Type naval guns to shell California, British Columbia and Oregon during World War II. Two notable deck guns from German U-boats used in World War II were the 8.8 cm SK C/35 and the 10.5 cm SK C/32. The 88 mm had ammunition, of the projectile and cartridge type, it had the same controls on both sides of the gun so that the two crewmen that were in charge of firing it could control the gun from either side. The 105 mm evolved from the 88 mm in the sense that it was more accurate and had more power due to the 51 lb ammunition it fired. In the US Navy, deck guns were used through the end of World War II, with a few still equipped in the early 1950s. Many targets in the Pacific War were other small vessels that were not worth a torpedo; the unreliability of the Mark 14 torpedo through mid-1943 promoted the use of the deck gun. Most US submarines started the war with a single 3-inch /50 caliber deck gun, adopted in the 1930s to discourage commanders from engaging armed escorts.
However, the aging S-boats were equipped with a 4-inch /50 caliber gun, used to re-equip 3-inch-gunned submarines as the S-boats were transferred to training duties beginning in mid-1942. By 1944 most front-line submarines had been refitted with a 5-inch /25 caliber gun, some were equipped with two 5-inch guns; the cruiser submarines USS Argonaut and Nautilus were each fitted with two 6"/53 caliber guns Mark 18 as built in the 1920s, the largest deck gun to be fitted on any United States submarine. In the Royal Navy, the Amphion-class submarine HMS Andrew was the last British submarine to be fitted with a deck gun. HMS Andrew was decommissioned in 1974 and the deck gun is now in the Royal Navy Submarine Museum; the last submarines in service in any navy to mount a deck gun were two of the four Abtao-class submarines of the Peruvian Navy in 1999. Naval artillery List of naval guns Friedman, Norman. U. S. Submarines Through 1945: An Illustrated
San Francisco
San Francisco the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fourth-most populous in California, with 884,363 residents as of 2017, it covers an area of about 46.89 square miles at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, the fifth-most densely populated U. S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area; as of 2017, it was the seventh-highest income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $119,868. As of 2015, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $154.2 billion, a GDP per capita of $177,968. The San Francisco CSA was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2017, with a GDP of $907 billion.
Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the US, the San Francisco CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2017, at $93,938. San Francisco was ranked 14th in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of September 2018. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, all named for St. Francis of Assisi; the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.
It became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, its Chinatown district. San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Gap Inc. Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Reddit, Inc. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Weather Underground.
It is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences. As of 2019, San Francisco is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings; the earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay. Seven years on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís, established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system ended, its lands became privatized.
In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography; the California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849; the promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.
Some of these 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels.
Union Iron Works
Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The Donahue Brothers and James, Irish immigrants, founded Union Iron Works in the south of Market area of San Francisco in 1849. After years as the premiere producer of mining, railroad and locomotive machinery in California, Union Iron Works, led by I. M. Scott, entered the ship building business and relocated to Potrero Point where its shipyards still exist, making the site on the north side of the Potrero the longest running owned shipyard in the United States. After Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation bought the works in 1905, the consolidated company came to include the Alameda Works Shipyard, located across the San Francisco Bay in Alameda and the Hunter's Point shipyard to the south. In 1885, the Union Iron Works launched the first steel hulled ship on the west coast, the Arago, built with steel from the Pacific Rolling Mills.
In 1886, UIW was awarded a $1,000,000 contract to build a Naval cruiser, the Charleston, which they completed in eighteen months. From the completion of the Arago in 1884 to 1902, UIW built seventy-five marine vessels, including two of the most famous vessels of the Spanish–American War, the Olympia and the Oregon. An 1892 description of the yards stated that between 1200 and 1500 men were employed and the yearly gross revenue was between $2,000,000 and $4,000,000. By the turn of the century, the shipyard had expanded in area and employment had more than doubled to 3,500; these industrial facilities used five types of power, distributed throughout. Union Iron works built a number of ships for the United States Navy; these ships include the USS Oregon laid down in 1891, Adder-class submarines Grampus and Pike which were launched in 1902 and 1903, respectively. The latter two were subcontracted from the Holland Torpedo Boat Company, were the first submarines built on the West Coast. In 1902, the Union Iron Works was absorbed into a combine called the United States Shipbuilding Company and was mired in three years of litigation.
In 1905, the entire 40-acre shipyard was purchased by Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation for one million dollars. Charles M. Schwab stood on the steps of the UIW office building on 20th Street during the auction. At this point, he was the only bidder. Schwab was believed to have engineered the demise of the U. S. Shipbuilding Corporation in order to gain control of the industry. Whether or not, true, he benefited from the collapse of the US Shipbuilding combine. At the time of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the coastal passenger liner Columbia of the San Francisco and Portland Steamship Company had been undergoing a refit at the yard's hydraulic drydock; the earthquake caused the iron hulled Columbia to shift off her supports and roll onto the drydock on her starboard side. This rendered a key feature of the yard, damaged beyond economic repair; the Columbia on the other hand, despite being flooded and damaged, was repaired and returned to service in January 1907. In 1908, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation bought the Hunters Point, San Francisco, California drydocks.
In the pre-World War I era, Union Iron Works built several navy ships that became internationally famous due to the Spanish–American War including Commodore Dewey's flagship the Olympia. After 1905, the shipyard operated as part of Bethlehem Steel, produced both warships and merchant ships; the named locomotives built by Union Iron Works were: "California" for the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad "Atlantic" for the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad "A. A. Sargent" for the Central Pacific Railroad "Mt. Diablo" for the Pittsburg Railroad "Boston" for the Pittsburg Railroad "Union" for the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad "Sampson" for the Pittsburg Railroad "D. O. Mills" for the Black Diamond Coal Mining Railroad "Calistoga" for the California Pacific Railroad "Lyon" for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad "Ormsby" for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad "Storey" for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad "J. G. Downey" for the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad "W. C. Ralston" for the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad "Geyser" for the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad "Santa Rosa" for the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad "John D. Hall" for the Battle Mountain and Lewis Railroad "S. H. Harmon" for the Gualala Railroad "Starr Grove" for the Battle Mountain and Lewis Railroad "F. Camacho" for the Acajutla and Sonsonate Railroad "Ukiah" for the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Some of the ships and ferries built by Union Iron Works include: El Primero launched in 1893 USS Oregon launched in 1893 USS Wisconsin launched in 1898 Berkeley, 1898 Southern Pacific Railroad ferry, constructed with the USS Wisconsin in an adjacent drydock.
First complete ferry built by Union Iron Works San Pablo, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad passenger ferry. 1899. Sold for scrap in 1937. Hull became first fish reduction plant on San Pablo Bay Tamalpais, 1900 Northwest Railroad passenger ferry. Burned for scrap 1947 USS Ohio launched in 1901 USS Monterey launched in 1891 USS Wyoming launched in 1900 USS Wheeling launched in 1897 USS Marietta launched in 1897 USS Charleston launched in 1888 USS San Francisco launched 26 October 1889 USS Olympia launched in 1892. Admiral Dewey's flagshi
Polish Navy
The Polish Navy is a military branch of the Polish Armed Forces responsible for naval operations. The Polish Navy about 12,000 commissioned and enlisted personnel; the traditional ship prefix in the Polish Navy is ORP. The Polish Navy has its roots in naval vessels that were used on Poland's main rivers in defense of trade and commerce. During the Thirteen Years' War, this small force of inland ships for the first time saw real open sea combat. At the battle of Vistula Lagoon, a Polish privateer fleet defeated the Teutonic Knights Navy and secured permanent access to the Baltic Sea; the Second Peace of Thorn acquired for Poland the strategic naval city of Danzig, with it the means of maintaining a large fleet on the Baltic. In 1561, following a victory over Russian Naval forces in the Baltic, the Polish Navy acquired a second key port at Riga, in modern-day Latvia. At that time, as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became involved in conflicts in Livonia, Polish king Sigismund II Augustus organized a Sea Commission operating in the years 1568–1572 and supported the operations of privateers, but that met with opposition of the Poland's primary port, Gdańsk, which saw them as a threat to its trade operations.
This led to the development of a privateer port in Puck. Around the start of the 17th century, Poland became ruled by the House of Vasa, was involved in a series of wars with Sweden. Vasa kings attempted to create a proper fleet, but their attempts met with repeated failures, due to lack of funds in the royal treasury. During the reign of Sigismund III of Poland, the most celebrated victory of the Commonwealth Navy took place at the Battle of Oliwa in 1627 against Sweden, during the Polish–Swedish War; the victory over Sweden fleet secured for Poland permanent access to the Atlantic, laid the foundations for expeditions beyond Europe. The plans for the independent fleet fell through shortly afterwards due to a badly executed alliance with the Habsburgs who in 1629 took over the fleet; the Commission of Royal Ships was created in 1625. This commission, along with the ultimate allocation of funds by the Sejm in 1637, created a permanent Commonwealth Navy. Władysław IV Vasa, Sigismund's son and successor who took the throne in 1632, purchased 12 ships and built a dedicated port for the royal navy called Władysławowo.
The Fleet, was destroyed in 1637 by Denmark, without a declaration of war. Support for this navy was weak and it withered away by the 1640s. A small privateer navy was created by Augustus II the Strong in 1700 during the Great Northern War; the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, though the dominant force in Central and Eastern Europe during the 16th–18th centuries, never developed its navy to its full potential. The proportionally small Polish coastline and the limited access to the Atlantic never allowed for a massive buildup of naval forces to the level of colonial powers such as England and France; the Partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century brought an end to the independent Polish Navy. Following World War I, the Second Polish Republic on 28 November 1918, by the order of Józef Piłsudski, commander of the Armed Forces of Poland, founded the modern Polish Navy; the token naval force was placed under the command of Captain Bogumił Nowotny as its first chief. The first ships were acquired from a division of the Imperial German Navy.
In the 1920s and 1930s the Polish Navy underwent a modernisation program under the leadership of Vice-Admiral Jerzy Świrski and Rear-Admiral Józef Unrug. A number of modern ships were built in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom. Despite ambitious plans, the budgetary limitations placed on the government by the Great Depression never allowed the navy to expand beyond a small Baltic force; the building of one submarine, ORP Orzeł, was funded by a public collection. One of main goals of the Polish Navy was to protect the Polish coast against the Soviet Baltic Fleet, therefore it put emphasis on fast submarines and armed destroyers and mine warfare. By September 1939 the Polish Navy consisted of 5 submarines, 4 destroyers, big minelayer and various smaller support vessels and mine-warfare ships; this force was no match for the larger Kriegsmarine, so a strategy of harassment and indirect engagement was implemented. The outbreak of World War II caught the Polish Navy in a state of expansion.
Lacking numerical superiority, Polish Naval commanders decided to withdraw main surface ships to Great Britain to join the Allied war effort and prevent them from being destroyed in a closed Baltic. On 30 August 1939, 3 destroyers sailed to the British naval base at Leith in Scotland, they operated in combination with Royal Navy vessels against Germany. Two submarines managed to flee from the Baltic Sea through the Danish straits to Great Britain during the Polish September Campaign. Three submarines were interned in Sweden, while remaining surface vessels were sunk by Ge
United States Navy
