26 September 2010
Walnut and Brass
(USS Olympia at Manila Bay. Lunets of Admirals Montojo, left, and Admiral Dewey, right. Image )
The saying was, in my steel Navy, that the sailors of old were “Iron men in wooden boats.”
I couldn’t help but think about that as I followed the wiry frame of Captain Harry Burkhardt up the ladder that first led to the black deck of ex-USS Becuna (SS-319), an interesting Balao-class diesel submarine that I did not have time in which to be interested.
There are several of these old pig-boats left in the world, and there are those who love them. Becuna rests inboard of the much deeper draft ex-USS Olympia (C-6), whose imposing steam-punk bulk dominated the immediate horizon. Harry was anxious to get started on the tour.
“I am done with formal work for the day,” he said. “I am doing this one for love of the ship.”
A second ladder from the sub’s deck led to the quarterdeck of the ancient mariner, which was crossed without ceremony. I flinched a bit on that, because Olympia is the middle of everything. She is a steel and wood physical manifestation of technologic, military and geopolitical change all in one now fragile hull.
She is in great peril, for a variety of reasons, and that is why I was here under these blue skies on this gray-brown brackish Delaware River.
Harry advanced aft and took up a station at the rich walnut paneling between the officer staterooms that flanked the powerful steel supports to the aft twin 8” gun turret on the deck above.
(Captain Harry and the paneling on Officer’s Row. Photo Socotra.)
“You know what these are,” he said, fingering a brass ring mounted at the top of each panel. I nodded, though I had no clue and was frankly overwhelmed by the highly polished wooden deck beneath my feet, and the notion that this had been a fighting ship, first of her kind, and one of the most powerful instruments of national power afloat in her time.
Harry nodded back, as if I understood, based on my time in a Navy of steel. “They were placed there to enable the sailors to pull them down quickly and throw the wood overboard when they went into combat. They would literally strip-ship.”
I remembered stories of that from World War II, when the tile and linoleum was banned in the Fleet, and the shiny buffed and inflammable surfaces were banned for the duration.
“Before the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spring of ‘98,” Harry continued, “the Revenue Cutter McCulloch was delayed in following Admiral Dewey’s Squadron out of Mirs Bay, China. She did not have a problem following the fleet. She just followed the jetsam of walnut paneling that floated on the waves as Dewey’s sailors prepared for battle.”
(Wardroom of the USS Olympia. Photo Socotra)
The public spaces of Olympia gleamed with waxed wood. She would be a tinder-box in combat, so stripped to steel was the only way she could fight.
The whole thing that made her invincible and obsolete in the course of two decades had me reeling. Commissioned in 1895, Olympia represented a fundamental change in the way the United States thought of herself in the world.
When the first Cleveland Administration came to power in 1885, SECNAV William Collins Whitney was committed to continue the naval modernization program started during the administration of Chester Arthur. The Navy of the time was composed mostly of river-gunboats that dated to the inland struggle of the Civil War, and the Anaconda blockade strategy that starved the South.
Naval policy was focused on commerce raiding, which implied a hybrid offense-defense strategy of Commerce Raiding similar to that of the wild global exploits of CSS Alabama, Florida and Shenandoah. The last of which dodged Union forces for six months after Lee’s surrender in a final voyage to sanctuary in Liverpool after a 58,000 mile cruise.
If the Civil War engagement of CSS Virginia and USS Monitor had at a stroke made the wooden navies of the world obsolete, America had no stomach for more war. It took until 1887 for Congress to appropriate the funds for two modern coastal defense battleships, Texas and Maine. President Grover Cleveland was defeated in the election of 1888, but before leaving office, Whitney managed to have Congress authorize two additional cruisers. One of these was a large, 5,300-ton protected cruiser, which was to become Olympia.
These three ships defined the Age of Transition, and of the dawn of the American Century. Maine exploded on the night of Feb. 15, 1898, in Havana. Her Captain survived, telegraphing the Navy Department:
"Maine blown up in Havana Harbor at 9:40 tonight and destroyed. Many wounded and doubtless more killed or drowned. Wounded and others on board Spanish Man-of-War and Ward Line Streamer. Send Light House Tender from Key West for crew and a few pieces of equipment above water. No one has clothing other than that upon him. Public opinion should be suspended until further notice."
(USS Maine (ACR-1) as she appeared prior to the explosion in Havana Harbor)
Her mast, similar to that of Olympia’s now stands in Arlington cemetery, in the midst of the graves of her sailors.
New York publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer came to the conclusion that the Spanish were to blame, and they publicized this theory as fact in their newspapers using sensationalistic and astonishing accounts of "atrocities" committed by the Spanish. American sentiment was prepared to agree. By the end of April, Commander of the Asiatic Squadron Admiral George Dewey had his orders and stood out from China. He steamed for Manila Bay in Olympia, accompanied by cruisers Boston, Baltimore, and Raleigh; gunboats Concord and Petrel; cutter McCulloch and store ships Nanshan and Zafire.
Captain Harry was warming to his task as we paced through the senior offer wardroom and the smaller one for the JO’s. We continued aft, through Officer’s country, to the heads, secured behind Plexiglas and, and then to the office where Captain Harry stopped to secure the blowers on the engine-room ventilation.
“Can’t stand the noise,” he said producing a ring of metal of astonishing dimensions, the keys to the cruiser.
Mentally, I was with Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón, the hapless Spaniard who had been dispatched in a last gesture of empire against the insurgent Americans. It was little more than a face-saving measure for Madrid, who had stripped Asia to reinforce the Caribbean.
Admiral Montojo directed his ships to be anchored far from the supporting batteries around the city, and his intent in retrospect appears to have been to spare Manila from bombardment and to allow survivors of his fleet to swim to safety.
(Admiral Dewey on the bridge of USS Olympia (C-6))
“You may fire when ready, Gridley,” I murmured as Captain Burkhardt fiddled with a large brass padlock on the gate to a ladder that led to a ladder down into the bowels of the ship.
“I’m a toy guy,” he said with a smile. “And now I am gong to show you some toys. I have been working on this ship since I was a teenager. Started when the engine room was coated in Cosmoline preservative, and it took six hours to get a two-foot clean. They had painted over the walnut and brass, the bastards. This has been a labor of love, I will tell you.”
He went down the ladder. “This is new, from 1919,” he said, He pointed at the white-painted bulkhead. “You can see the remnants of the old steel ladder. Only the officers were allowed to use it. I will show you what the Black Gang had to use to get to the boilers.”
I was a little slower on the ladder, trying to avoid banging the camera on steel. I could see brass gleaming under the lights below, and the gleam of polished walnut.
Captain Harry stood in front of brass gauges and the astonishing steam plant. He was beaming with pride. “I have been here so long that the ghosts call me ‘The Kid.””
I was just bringing the camera up when I processed what he had said.
“The ghosts?” I said. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Twenty-two feet below the surface of the Delaware River and I was walking into a haunted engine room, 125 years old, and fitted in walnut and brass.
Tomorrow: EVP on C-6
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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