Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, July 12, 2023: Mr. Gallatin’s Shallow Water Angel
Halftone photo from “War in Cuba,” 1898. Official U.S. Navy Photograph. NH 191
Above we see the fine Harlan & Hollingsworth-built schooner-rigged steam yacht Almy, with her summer of 1898 warpaint on, as the gunboat USS Eagle during the Spanish-American War. Late of the New York Yacht Club and rushed into naval service, she won what would turn out to be an unexpected victory over the much larger and better-armed Compañía Trasatlántica Española (CTE) steamer Santo Domingo some 125 years ago today.
Fine lines and good bones
In addition to making steam engines and railcars, Wilmington’s Harlan & Hollingsworth were one of the earliest iron shipbuilders. Constructing 347 hulls between 1844 and 1904 when they were acquired by Bethlehem Steel, besides their bread and butter fare like barges, ferries, and tugs, they also won a few Navy contracts (the monitors USS Patapsco, Napa, Saugus, and Amphitrite; the sloop USS Ranger, destroyers USS Hopkins and Hull, and torpedo boat USS Stringham).
Starting in the 1870s, they began a string of more than 30 fine hermaphrodite steam yachts including Dr. William Seward Webb’s Elfrida, William Astor’s Nourmahal, H W Putnam’s Ariadne, W. K. Vanderbilt’s Alva, Cass Canfield’s magnificent Sea Fox, Florida shipping magnate H. M. Flagler’s Alicia, and William DuPont’s Au Revoir.
Another of these yachts was contracted from H&H by New York attorney Frederick Gallatin. A resident of 650 Fifth Avenue (now a 36-story office tower adjacent to Rockefeller Center), he was a grandson of early Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin and from old Hamptons money. Married to Almy Goelet Gerry (daughter of Tammany Hall “Commodore” Elbridge Thomas Gerry, with the title coming as head of the NYC Yacht Club) it was only logical that Gallatin would order a yacht from H&H named for Almy.
Hull No. 256 was 177 feet long overall with a 24-foot beam, she had a nice stiletto-like 7.5:1 length-to-beam ratio and had a draft of just 7 feet with a 14-foot depth of hold. Powered by a single-ended cylindrical boiler pushing a T.3 Cy (18″,23″ & 42-33″) steam engine with a nominal 101 NHP (850ihp) venting through a single stack, she had an auxiliary two-mast sail rig and was good for a stately 12 knots although on her trials she made 15.5 knots. Coal stowage was 85 tons.
View of the engine room, of USS Eagle, built as yacht Almy, at Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. 31 August 1916. Note the builder’s plaque on the bulkhead and disassembled engine parts on the deck. NH 54333
Steel-hulled with a 364 GRT displacement, she carried electrical lighting in every compartment as well as topside and was reportedly very well-appointed. Her normal crew, as a yacht, was four officers and 20 mariners.
Delivered to Gallatin in August 1890– just in time to catch the end of “the season”– the New York Times mentioned Almy in its yachting news columns more than a dozen times in the next eight years including one mention in 1895 of an epic blue fishing trip to Plum Gut where “he landed some of the finest fish captured this season.”
Typically, Gallatin would ply her during the summer and, every October, send her back down to winter at the builder’s yard where she would be drydocked and freshly painted every spring, ready to do it all again.
Then came war
As part of the general rush to avenge the lost USS Maine on 15 February, the scions of the NY Yacht Club soon offered up their yachts to be converted to fast dispatch boats and scouts. Ultimately, the Navy bought no less than 28 large yachts, including 13 that topped 400 tons, in addition to almost 70 other auxiliaries for support duties to the fleet.
Several yachts took part in fights with Spanish forces including three, USS Gloucester, Hist, and Vixen, which were present during the Battle of Santiago. Among the former NYYC H&H-built yachts that went to the Navy for the war with Spain were Flagler’s Alicia (renamed USS Hornet after purchase for $117,500) and Dr. Webb’s Elfrida (which was taken in service as USS Elfrida for $50,000).
The 28 yachts converted to armed auxiliaries in 1898. Via The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, click to big up.
While negotiations continued with a Navy purchasing agent, Gallatin allowed Almy to go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 26 March to begin her conversion to an armed picket ship. Eventually, he let Almy go for $110,000 on 2 April 1898 and the Navy renamed her USS Eagle, the fourth such vessel to carry that name.
Given a coat of dark paint and armed with a quartet of 6-pounder 57mm deck guns (two forward, two aft) and two Colt machine guns forward of the deck house, her early admission to BNY allowed her to be commissioned three days later under the command of LT William Henry Hudson Southerland (USNA 1872).
Other changes from her civilian life, as detailed by The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, included:
- Magazines for supplying ammunition to the above battery were built under berth deck, just forward of the fireroom bulkhead, with ammunition cranes to the hatches, directly over.
- Steel plating 7/8 inch thick and 8 feet wide was worked on outside of the vessel for the length of the engine and boiler space.
- Her foremast was cut down and made a signal mast, while the mainmast and fittings were entirely removed.
- The ornate dining room was cleaned out and fitted up as crew space while extensive wood and brass works were removed.
- The vessel was drydocked, cleaned, and painted throughout. All plumbing, drainage system, and auxiliaries were overhauled and put in order. The entire exterior of the vessel, including spars and metal deck fittings, was thickly painted a “lead color.”
She carried 75 men to war, drawn largely from the Naval Militia, when she left New York on 17 April headed for duty with the North Atlantic Squadron on blockade and dispatch duty in Cuban waters. She was at sea when war was declared on 25 April.
By 28 April, Eagle, along with the gunboat USS Nashville and the Montgomery-class unprotected cruiser USS Marblehead, established a blockade off Cienfuegos. The next morning, Nashville seized the Spanish steamer Argonauta which had Col. Corijo of the Third Cavalry Regiment (Regimiento de Caballería “Montesa” N.º 3) and 19 men of its headquarters troop aboard. This sparked a 25-minute naval gunfire duel between Eagle and Montgomery versus three Spanish torpedo boats coming out of the river to contest the affair under cover from a shore battery.
Southerland reported to RADM William T. Sampson that Eagle fired 59 rounds of No.4 shell in the engagement and suffered no casualties, although, ” Two of the enemies shot passed close over this vessel, another close astern, and another within a few feet of the bowsprit.”
On 29 June, Eagle shelled the Spanish battery at Rio Honda, showing that, while her little six-pounders were small, they could still breathe fire.
On 5 July, while Eagle was on the blockading route in the vicinity of the Isle of Pines, she sighted the provision-laden Spanish schooner Gallito five miles to the South and immediately gave chase.
As detailed by James Otis in “The Boys of ’98”:
The schooner ran in until about a quarter of a mile from the shore, when she dropped her anchor, and those aboard slipped over her side and swam ashore. Ensign J. H. Roys and a crew of eight men from the Eagle were sent in a small boat to board the schooner. They found her deserted, and while examining her were fired upon by her crew from the beach. Several rifle shots went through the schooner’s sails, but no one was injured. The Eagle drew closer in and sent half a dozen shots toward the beach from her 6-pounders, whereupon the Spaniards disappeared. The Gallito was taken into Key West.
A week later, on 12 July, Eagle came across her biggest prize yet. The Govan-built iron-hulled CTE screw steamer Santo Domingo, some 344 feet in length. Formerly the D. Currie & Co’s Dublin Castle (which carried British troops during the Zulu War), she had been sold in 1883 to Spanish interests and by 1886 was sailing for CTE on a regular Havana to New York service.
Santo Domingo
Otis describes the event:
The auxiliary gunboat Eagle sighted the Spanish steamer Santo Domingo, fifty-five hundred tons, aground near the Cuban coast, off Cape Francis, and opened fire with her 6-pounders, sending seventy shots at her, nearly all of which took effect.
While this was going on, another steamer came out of the bay and took off the officers and crew of the Santo Domingo. When the men from the Eagle boarded the latter, they found that she carried two 5-inch and two 12-pounder guns, the latter being loaded and her magazines open. The steamer had been drawing twenty-four feet of water and had gone aground in twenty feet.
The men from the Eagle decided that the steamer could not be floated, and she was set on fire after fifty head of cattle, which were on board, had been shot.
The Santo Domingo carried a large cargo of grain, corn, etc. While the steamer was burning, the vessel which had previously taken off the crew emerged from the bay and tried to get off some of the cargo, but failed. The Spanish steamer burned for three days and was totally destroyed.
It made big news back home.
On 30 July, Eagle supported the gunboat USS Bancroft with the seizure (twice) of a small Spanish schooner in Sigunea Bay. I say twice because, once taken by two rifle-armed sailors from Bancroft’s steam launch and tied near the wreckage of Santo Domingo devoid of crew, the Spanish promptly sailed out in two small boats to reclaim her, an event that ended with Eagle and Bancroft, by this time joined by the gunboat USS Maple, in a chase and possession of all three small enemy vessels.
Hostilities ceased on 13 August, capping the 16-week conflict.
Continued peacetime service
Post-war, Eagle was painted white, two of her four 6-pounders landed, and she was retained for survey work, a role she was suited for with her extremely shallow 7-foot draft. She then spent much of the next two decades working to compile new charts and corrected existing ones for the waters surrounding Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti– all central to American interests. In this task, she typically had a team of civilian engineers and surveyors aboard.
USS Eagle (1898) at anchor off Norfolk, VA. Jan. 19, 1899. UA 461.33 Henry Bundy Collection
As detailed by DANFS:
Troubled conditions throughout the Caribbean often interrupted Eagle’s surveying duty and she gave varied service in protecting American interests.
She patrolled off Haiti in January and February 1908 and again in November and December and off Nicaragua in December 1909.
In June 1912 she transported Marines to Santiago de Cuba and Siboney to protect American lives and property during a rebellion in Cuba and continued to investigate conditions and serve as base ship for the Marines until 1914.
She also had gunboat duty with a cruiser squadron during the Haiti operation of July 1915 to March 1916 and was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for her creditable performance of widely varied duty.
She then headed back home for a much-needed dry docking and overhaul.
In dry dock at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. in September 1916. Note bt this time she had her second mast reinstalled. NH 54334
Then came another war
Eagle as she appeared in early 1917. NH 64949
Once America entered the Great War, Eagle returned to Cuban waters as part of the American Patrol Detachment, Atlantic Fleet, and throughout 1917 and 1918 was continually on patrol off Cuba and the southern coast of the U.S. This was while the Ford-built “Eagle boats” were being cranked out in Detroit.
Eagle in Havana Harbor, Cuba, October 1917 NH 54335
At one point, Eagle was detailed to protect an American-owned sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in early 1917, and did so by putting ashore a modest landing force including hauling one of the ship’s 6-pounders and machine guns ashore– half her armament. It was thought the mill would be an easy target for a German U-boat. A machinist’s mate among the crew, John G. Krieger, had a small portable camera and captured a great array of snapshots during this period.
Men from the Eagle with a mail bag and flag, at Manati, Cuba, in 1917, when the ship’s crew was protecting a local sugar mill. Note the sailors’ crackerjacks are whites that have been “tanned” via the use of coffee grounds. The officer is Ensign Hubert Esterly Paddock, who was with Eagle as Surveying Officer. The donor comments that Paddock surveyed with a motorboat and took regular watches at sea. Of note, Paddock would go on to command the destroyer tender USS Dobbin (AD 3) in WWII and retire post-war, passing in 1980, one of the last U.S. Navy officers left from the Great War. Photographed by John G. Krieger. NH 64955
Mounted Guard furnished by USS Eagle to protect a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba in 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Note the motley uniforms and M1903 Springfields. The officer is the ship’s XO, LT (JG) Jerome A. Lee, a skilled electrician who had served on Arctic expeditions before his time on Eagle and would continue to serve through WWII. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64957
Ford Automobile armed with a Colt M1895 “potato digger” machine gun complete with AAA shoulder rests, staffed by members of the Eagle’s crew, who were guarding a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64958
Eagle crew members with machine gun-equipped “Gas Car” railway work wagon, assigned to the protection of a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in 1917. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger and donated by him in 1966-67. NH 64959
A six-pounder gun mounted in a tower at Manati, Cuba, in 1917 by Eagle’s crew. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64960
Her 1916-17 skipper, LT Henry Kent Hewitt (USNA 1906), seen ashore on service in Cuba with Eagle’s landing party and on the bridge of his gunboat. He would go on to earn a Navy Cross commanding the destroyer USS Cummings escorting Atlantic convoys in 1918 and command the amphibious landing forces for the Torch, Husky, and Dragoon Landings in WWII. After chairing a post-war Pearl Harbor investigation, he would retire as a full admiral. The Spruance class destroyer USS Hewitt (DD-966) was named in his honor, christened at Pascagoula by his daughters. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64953/64952
The entire landing party, about 40 strong– half the crew– posed for Krieger. NH 64956
Eagle in the Ozama River, Santo Domingo, in July 1917. U.S. Navy Coal Barges Nos. 300 and 301 are in the foreground. NH 64948
Post-war, with that Navy no longer needing a 30-year-old converted yacht with a pair of 6-pounders, Eagle was detached from her southern climes and ordered to Portsmouth Navy Yard in April 1919 to pay off, being decommissioned there on 23 May 1919.
Epilogue
Disarmed and sold by the Navy on 3 January 1920, the former pride of the NYC Yacht Club soon appeared as the tramp coaster Reina Victoria owned by one M.F. Kafailovich, sailing out of Santiago de Cuba.
She was listed in Lloyds as such from 1921 to 1927 and then disappeared.
Her final fate is not known.
As far as relics from Eagle, I can’t find any that exist other than the pennant and ensign of the Santo Domingo which were installed among the 600 banners installed in the United States Navy Trophy Flag Collection in 1913.
Gallatin? His dear Almy passed in 1917 and their $7 million estate was subsequently divided among their six adult children. After this, he withdrew to the Hotel Plaza where he passed in 1927, aged 86. His NYT obit memorialized him by saying “he was well known as a yachtsman.”
Eagle’s Span-Am War skipper, LT William Henry Hudson Southerland, would go on to serve as hydrographer of the Navy from 1901 to 1904, commanding the gunboat USS Yankee as well as the battleship New Jersey (BB-16), taking part in the Great White Fleet’s circumnavigation. Appointed rear admiral in 1910, he later became commander of the Pacific Fleet and was the final Civil War naval veteran (he was a 12-year-old powder monkey in 1865 before becoming a naval apprentice and attending Annapolis) still in active service.
Captain William H. H. Southerland, USN. A circa 1907 photograph was taken at the time he served as Commanding Officer of New Jersey (BB-16). NH 45029
RADM Southerland retired in early 1914 after 49 years of service, just missing the Great War, and passed in 1933. The Allen M. Sumner– class destroyer USS Southerland (DD-743) was named in his honor.
Curiously, other than a WWII Q-ship, USS Eagle (AM-132), which was quickly renamed USS Captor during her construction, the Navy has not elected to use further use the name USS Eagle.
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
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