USS Tennessee (ACR-10)

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For other ships with the same name, see USS Tennessee and USS Memphis.

USS Tennessee (ACR-10), at anchor c. 1907
History
United States
Name
  • Tennessee (1903–1916)
  • Memphis (1916)
Namesake
Ordered1 July 1902
Awarded9 February 1903
BuilderWilliam Cramp & Sons, Philadelphia
Cost$4,035,000 (contract price of hull and machinery)
Yard number322
Laid down20 June 1903
Launched3 December 1904
Sponsored byMiss Annie K. Frazier
Commissioned17 July 1906
RenamedMemphis, 25 May 1916
Stricken17 December 1917
IdentificationHull symbol: ACR-10
Fate
  • Wrecked, 29 August 1916
  • Sold for scrap, 17 January 1922
General characteristics
Class and typeTennessee-class armored cruiser
Displacement
  • 14,500 long tons (14,733 t) (standard)
  • 15,712 long tons (15,964 t) (full load)
Length
  • 504 ft 5 in (153.75 m) oa
  • 502 ft (153 m) pp
Beam72 ft 10+1⁄2 in (22.212 m)
Draft25 ft (7.6 m) (mean)
Installed power
  • 16 ×
    Babcock & Wilcox boilers
  • 23,000 ihp (17,000 kW)
Propulsion
Speed
  • 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph)
  • 22.16 knots (41.04 km/h; 25.50 mph) (Speed on Trial)
Complement83 officers, 804 enlisted, 64 marines
Armament
  • 4 ×
    breech-loading rifles
    (2x2)
  • 16 ×
    6 in (150 mm)/50
    caliber Mark 8 breech-loading rifles (16x1)
  • 22 ×
    3 in (76 mm)/50
    caliber rapid-fire guns (22x1)
  • 4 ×
    saluting guns
  • 4 ×
    21 inch (533 mm) submerged torpedo tubes
Armor
  • Belt: 5 in (13 cm)
  • Deck: 1+1⁄2–4 in (38–102 mm) (amidships)
  • 3 in (76 mm) (forward & aft)
  • Barbettes: 4–7 in (100–180 mm)
  • Turrets: 5–9 in (130–230 mm)
  • Conning Tower: 9 in (230 mm)

The second USS Tennessee (ACR-10), also referred to as "Armored Cruiser No. 10", and later renamed Memphis, was a

class
.

Construction and commissioning

Tennessee was

Philadelphia Navy Yard on 17 July 1906, Captain Albert Gleaves Berry in command.[2]

Operational career

The new armored cruiser departed Hampton Roads on 8 November 1906 as escort for Louisiana in which President Theodore Roosevelt had embarked for a cruise to Panama to check on the progress of work constructing the Panama Canal. After a brief visit to Puerto Rico on the return voyage, the warships arrived back at Hampton Roads on 26 November.[2]

Following a yard period for repairs, Tennessee left Hampton Roads on 16 April 1907 for the Jamestown Exposition, held from 7 to 11 June 1907, to commemorate the tricentennial of the founding of the first English settlement in America.[2]

On 14 June, Tennessee sailed for Europe in company with

Pacific, where she became flagship for the second division of the Pacific Fleet.[2]

Tennessee then patrolled off the

Mardi Gras visit to New Orleans and a visit to New York City early in March, the ship steamed to Cuban waters for two months of operations out of Guantanamo Bay.[2]

Placed in reserve at the

New York Navy Yard.[2]

On 4 November, Tennessee arrived in Beirut, what was then Syria, to protect the Christian population there in case of attack by Syrian Muslims.

On 6 August, Tennessee sailed from New York for duty in Europe through the first half of 1915 supporting the American Relief Expedition by carrying gold bullion and other resources to assist in the extraction of American refugees from war-ravaged Europe. In August, she transported the 1st Regiment, Marine Expeditionary Force, and the Marine Artillery Battalion to Haiti. From 28 January-24 February 1916, the cruiser served as flagship of a cruiser squadron off Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In March, she embarked a group of dignitaries at Hampton Roads for a two-month, round trip cruise to Montevideo, Uruguay.[2]

On 25 May 1916, Tennessee was renamed Memphis, honoring the city of Memphis, Tennessee, so that the name "Tennessee" could be reassigned to the new battleship Tennessee (BB-43).[2]

In July 1916, under the command of Captain

the Caribbean arriving at Santo Domingo on 23 July for peace-keeping patrol off the rebellion-torn Dominican Republic.[2]

Loss

Memphis was at anchor .5 nmi (0.58 mi; 930 m) off a rocky beach in 45 ft (14 m) of water in the harbor of Santo Domingo on the afternoon of 29 August 1916 with two of her 16 boilers operating in case she needed to get underway; the gunboat Castine also was anchored in the harbor. Shortly after 12:00, Memphis began to roll heavily and Captain Beach observed an unexpected heavy swell developing. Memphis and Castine both made preparations to leave the harbor and began to raise steam; Memphis expected to be able to get underway at about 16:35.

The wreck of Memphis at Santo Domingo on 29 August 1916.

Conditions in the harbor had deteriorated badly by 15:45, when Memphis sighted an approaching 75 ft (23 m) wave of yellow water stretching along the entire horizon. By 16:00, the wave was closer, had turned ochre in color, and had reached about 100 ft (30 m) in height; at the same time, Memphis was rolling 45°, so heavily that large amounts of water cascaded into the ship via her gun ports and water even was entering the ship via ventilators 50 ft (15 m) above the waterline. By 16:25, water began to enter the ship via her funnels, 70 ft (21 m) above the waterline, putting out the fires in her boilers and preventing her from raising enough steam to get underway. She began to strike the rocky harbor bottom at 16:40, damaging her propellers just as she was raising enough steam to begin moving, and her engines lost steam pressure.

At about this time, the giant wave Memphis had seen approaching over the past hour arrived; she rolled into a deep trough and was struck immediately by what proved to be three very large waves in rapid succession, the highest of them estimated by the crew to have been 70 ft (21 m) in height, completely swamping her except for her highest points, and washing crewmen overboard. The waves rolled her heavily, caused her to strike the harbor bottom, then pushed her to the beach .5 nmi (0.58 mi; 0.93 km) away. By 17:00, she had been driven under cliffs along the coast of the harbor and was resting on the harbor bottom. She was battered into a complete wreck in 90 minutes. Castine, meanwhile, managed to reach safer waters by getting underway and putting to sea through the large waves, although damaged by them and at times in danger of capsizing.[4]

Memphis's casualties numbered 43 men dead or missing – 10 of them washed overboard by the waves or killed by steam as the ship's powerplant broke up, another 25 lost as they returned from

Machinist's Mate George William Rud, Lieutenant Claud Ashton Jones, and Machinist Charles H. Willey were awarded the Medal of Honor
.

  • George Rud
    George Rud
  • Claud Jones
    Claud Jones
  • Charles H. Willey
    Charles H. Willey

Alternative explanations for the wreck

In his 1966 account of the incident, The Wreck of the Memphis, Captain Beach's son, Edward L. Beach Jr., ascribed her loss to an unexpected tsunami exceeding 100 ft (30 m) in height,[6] and this explanation has been carried forward by most sources discussing her loss.[7] More recent research, however, has called this explanation into question. No record of any seismic event in the Caribbean on 29 August 1916 that could have triggered a tsunami has been found, and the rate of advance of the large wave Memphis reported – about an hour to cross the distance from the horizon to the ship – matches that of a wind-generated ocean wave (possibly a rogue wave); a tsunami, in contrast, would have covered the distance in only a few minutes. The periods of the three large waves that struck Memphis also are characteristic of large wind-generated waves rather than tsunamis.[8]

A likely source for such large, wind-generated waves in Santo Domingo Harbor on 29 August 1916 does exist, in that three

hurricanes active in the Caribbean between 12 August and 2 September 1916 passed westward just to the south. Waves generated from these storms could well have combined to create a large wave like those that struck and wrecked Memphis. Such a circumstance appears to explain the loss of the ship better than the tsunami theory.[8] Oceanographer Dr. George Pararas-Carayannis in particular published an extensively detailed rebuttal demonstrating that a tsunami could not have caused the foundering of Memphis, but that the last of the three hurricanes, category 1 Hurricane Eight, likely did, creating a 59 ft (18 m) wave that reached a breaker height of 90 ft (27 m) as it approached Memphis. This swamped the cruiser, anchored in only 55 ft (17 m) of water, and would have done so even had the ship been at full maneuvering power. Pararas-Carayannis concluded that had Memphis been anchored in 100 to 120 ft (30 to 37 m) of water, she would have ridden out the swells, including the killer wave.[9][10]

Salvage efforts

Wreck of Memphis after being stripped of essentials, 1922

Although Memphis came to rest upright and appeared relatively undamaged above the waterline, it was apparent as early as the day after the disaster that she was not worth repairing; she was outdated by 1916, she had suffered the destruction of her propulsion plant and severe distortion of her hull structure, and her bottom had been driven in. Accordingly, the United States Department of the Navy assigned the crew of the battleship New Hampshire, or the wrecking vessel Henlopen, to strip her of her guns, supplies, and equipment for use on other ships. New Hampshire's crew left Memphis without her guns, with much of her topside gear missing, and with her gun turrets rotated off the centerline.[11][12]

Memphis's ship's bell was presented to a local church as a gesture of thanks to citizens of Santo Domingo who had helped to rescue the ship's crew.[11]

Final disposition

Memphis was struck from the

Denver, Colorado, on 17 January 1922 for scrapping for the sum of $3,000 (US$ 84,000 in 2024). Scrapped on site, her wreck proved difficult to dismantle, and the last of it did not disappear from the Santo Domingo shoreline until 1938.[11]

Her bronze bow scrollwork, removed approximately 1909, is on display on a concrete mockup of her bow in Nashville, Tennessee's Centennial Park.[13]

References

  1. ^ "Ships' Data, U. S. Naval Vessels". US Naval Department. 1 January 1914. pp. 24–31. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Tennessee (Armored Cruiser No. 10) iv". Naval History and Heritage Command. 8 June 2015. Retrieved 11 November 2015.
  3. ^ The Navy, pp. 24–5
  4. ^ For a description of the loss of Memphis, see Smith, pp. 67–70.
  5. ^ DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER Online Library of Selected Images -- EVENTS -- The 1910s -- 1916 Loss of USS Memphis, 29 August 1916
  6. ^ Beach, The Wreck of the Memphis.
  7. ISBN 0-8317-0302-4
    , p. 149, for another citation of the 100-foot tsunami explanation.
  8. ^ a b For a discussion of the lack of evidence for a tsunami and the more compelling evidence for freak wind-generated waves having wrecked Memphis, see Smith, pp. 68–69.
  9. ^ "The Loss of the USS Memphis on 29 August 1916 – Was a Tsunami Responsible? Analysis of a Naval Disaster" by Dr. George Pararas-Carayannis
  10. ^ heinonline.org 4 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 520 (1935–1936) Annotations of Opinions of the Attorney General of the United States
  11. ^ a b c DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER Online Library of Selected Images -- EVENTS -- The 1910s -- 1916 Loss of USS Memphis, 29 August 1916 -- Salvage Efforts on the Ship's Wreck
  12. ^ "American Marine Engineer January, 1917". National Marine Engineers Beneficial Association of the United States. Retrieved 3 October 2020 – via Haithi Trust.
  13. ^ Yarnall, Paul. "USS TENNESSEE - MEMPHIS (Armored Cruiser No. 10/CA 10)". NavSource Online: Cruiser Photo Archive. Navsource.org. Retrieved 15 February 2016.

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to USS Tennessee (ACR-10).


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