Jun 21
A buoy caught in the paddle of the steamship Great Eastern, by Henry Clifford, 1865
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A buoy caught in the paddle of the steamship Great Eastern, by Henry Clifford, 1865
State Ship Series: USS Alabama
There have been six ships commissioned named after the state of Alabama in the US Navy. The state of Alabama was admitted into the United States on December 14, 1819.
1. USS ALABAMA (1819)
North Carolina class, 74 gun ship of the line.
Class: Type: Ordered: Laid down: Christened/Launched: Commissioned: Nicknamed: Motto: Decommissioned: Fate:
Laid down in 1819 as part of the "nine ships to rate not less than 74 guns each authorized by Congress on April 29, 1816, and was laid down by the Portsmouth Navy Yard, Maine, in June 1819, the year the State of Alabama was admitted to the Union. Though ready for launch by 1825, she remained on the stocks for preservation; an economical measure that avoided the expense of manning and maintaining a ship of the line." She was launched in 1864 as a receiving ship and renamed USS New Hampshire. In 1904 renamed USS Granite State to free the name for USS New Hampshire (BB-25). She was destroyed by fire in 1921.
2. USS ALABAMA (1838)
[no photo or image]
Class: Type: Ordered: Laid down: Christened/Launched: Commissioned: Nicknamed: Motto: Decommissioned: Fate:
a sidewheel steamer, unknown commissioning date but served under the Navy from 1846 to 1848 during the Mexican-American War.
3. USS ALABAMA (1850)
a sidewheel steamer merchant vessel, in commission from 1861 to 1865.
Class: Type: Ordered: Laid down: Christened/Launched: Commissioned: Nicknamed: Motto: Decommissioned: Fate:
Fought in the Civil War. She returned to merchant service until she caught fire in 1878.
4. USS ALABAMA (BB-8)
Illinois Class, predreadnought battleship, in commission from 1900 to 1920.
Class: Type: Ordered: Laid down: Christened/Launched: Commissioned: Nicknamed: Motto: Decommissioned: Fate:
5. USS ALABAMA (BB-60)
South Dakota Class, battleship, nicknamed "Lucky A", in commission from 1942 to 1947. Became a museum ship in 1964. She earned 9 battle stars during WWII.
Class: Type: Ordered: Laid down: Christened/Launched: Commissioned: Nicknamed: Motto: Decommissioned: Fate:
USS ALABAMA (SSBN-731)
Class: Type: Ordered: Laid down: Christened/Launched: Commissioned: Nicknamed: Motto: Decommissioned: Fate:
Ohio Class, nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine, in commissioned from 1985 to present.
Ship acquired by the Navy named Alabama.
USS ALABAMA (SP-1052)
69-foot motor boat.
Class: Type: Ordered: Laid down: Christened/Launched: Commissioned: Nicknamed: Motto: Decommissioned: Fate:
Inspected by the Navy in the summer of 1917 and assigned the designation SP-1052 but it most likely never commissioned.
Note: there's the infamous CSS Alabama of the CSA but I'm not including her or any confederate ships in my lists.
source, source, source, source
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command: NH 99171
Library of Congress: LC-DIG-det-4a15345u
State of Maine, Engine Room
State of Maine was a coastal sidewheel steamship built by the New England Shipbuilding Co. of Bath, Maine in 1882
The 'Solent Queen', by James Scott Maxwell (British, 1845-1922)
The anti seasick ship SS Bessemer Saloon Steamship
The SS Bessemer Saloon Steamship- SS Bessemer for short - was an experimental Victorian passenger side wheel steamer designed to counteract seasickness and operated between Dover and Calais. Her inventor was Sir Henry Bessemer.
Bessemer Saloon Steamer, 1874
In 1868, Bessemer, who suffered from severe seasickness, developed the idea of a ship whose passenger cabin - the saloon - was to be suspended on a gimbal and mechanically held horizontally, thus levelling out the swell and sparing the occupants from the ship's movements. Sounded too good to be true, but more on that later. He patented this ingenious idea in December 1869 and after successful trials with a model in which the levelling was carried out by hydraulics controlled by a helmsman observing a spirit level, Bessemer founded a limited company, the Bessemer Saloon Steamboat Company Limited, which was to operate steamships between England and France. Capital of 250,000 pounds was used to finance the construction of a ship, the SS Bessemer, whose chief designer was the naval architect Edward James Reed.
SS Bessemer, by Henry Spernon Tozer 1874
And so she was built by Earle's Shipbuilding in Hull. She bore the shipyard number 197 and was launched on 24 September 1874. As already mentioned, she was a paddle steamer with four buckets (two buckets each on port and starboard, one forward and one aft). She had a length of 106.68 m (350 feet), a width on deck of 12.19 m (40 feet), an outside width over the bucket boxes of 19.81 m (65 feet), a draught of 2.26 m (7 feet 5 inches) and a gross register tonnage of 1974 tonnes. What also characterised her was that she was completely identical fore and aft, she had two bridges and two wheels, which simply made her faster and more manoeuvrable in both directions. Her maximum speed was about 17.4 knots.
The inner saloon was a room 70 feet long (21 metres) and 30 feet wide (9.1 metres), with a ceiling 6.1 metres above the floor, Moroccan-covered seats, partitions and spiral columns of carved oak and gilded panels with hand-painted murals. The press liked to call it the floating clubhouse. However, the swinging saloon was only intended for first class passengers. The second class, on the other hand, did not enjoy this and had to make do with cabins on the sides of the hull.
Harper's Weekly Interior Pages showing the newly building ultra Luxury Bessemer Channel Steam-Ship, 1874
The disaster begins
On 21 October 1874, the Bessemer had her first misfortune. She had just arrived in Hull to be fitted out when she was driven ashore in a storm. She was refloated and found to be undamaged, which was not entirely true, as would later become apparent.
In March 1875, the ship sailed on a private trial voyage from Dover to Calais. During this voyage she is said to have steered well and even had a top speed of 18 knots. Her swinging saloon is also said to have worked excellently. However, things didn't go so smoothly because on arrival in Calais, a paddle wheel was damaged when she crashed into the pier because it didn't react to the rudder at slow speed.
The first and only public voyage took place on 8 May 1875, with the ship sailing with her revolving cabin locked (some observers suggested this was due to the ship's severe instability, but Bessemer attributed this to lack of time to repair the previous damage). The ship was operated by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. After two attempts to enter the harbour, it again crashed into the Calais pier, this time destroying part of it. Calais billed the company £2800 for the damage.
The Bessemer Saloon-Ship running foul of Calais Pier. Illustrated London News, 1875
Due to the poor performance, investors lost confidence and the company was dissolved in 1876. On 29 December 1876, the Bessemer ran aground on Burcom Sand in the Humber upstream of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, after the removal of the swivelling saloon and other extensive alterations. She was refloated and taken to Hull. The Board of Trade's investigation into the grounding found that the captain was at fault. His certificate was suspended for three months.After removal, the designer Reed had the saloon cabin taken to his home, Hextable House, Swanley, where it was used as a billiard room. When the house was later converted into a women's college, Swanley Horticultural College, the saloon was used as a lecture theatre, but was destroyed by a direct hit when the college was bombed during the Second World War.
The Saloon as a lecutre theatre
The ship was then docked in Dover until it was sold for scrapping in 1879.
Wreck of the Comet, Kingston, Lake Ontario
A beautiful side-wheel steamer, the Comet was built in Kingston in 1848 and sank on May 14, 1861, after colliding with another ship. The most notable features of this wreck are the twin paddle wheelers on either side of the vessel that remain fully intact. The Comet is about 53 metres long and lies about 25 metres below the surface. Although much of the ship has collapsed, the intact wheels on either side create an almost other-worldly effect.
A ship running before the wind, by James Gale Tyler (1855-1931)
White Cliffs of Dover, by Johan Jacob Bennetter, 1867