“A flock of Uncle Sam’s peace doves at the Brooklyn navy yard”
(From Harper’s Weekly, 1907 Dec. 7, p. 1792) Click to big up
From left to right: Battleship USS Indiana (BB-1), armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania (ACR-4), armored cruiser USS Colorado (ACR-7), battleship USS Alabama (BB-8), armored cruiser USS Maryland (ACR-8), with armored cruiser USS West Virginia (ACR-5) in foreground. (LC-USZ62-66021.) These ships were preparing to sortie as part of the Great White Fleet.
All of these ships were virtually brand new at the time with the 4 cruisers all completed, remarkably, within weeks of each other in 1905. The “old man” of the photo is 10,500-ton Indiana being commissioned in 1895 just 12 years before. The 11,500-ton Alabama came into the fleet in 1900, making her about 7 when this image was snapped.
Ironically, the four cruisers were bigger than the older battleships by a good measure, weighing in at over 13,500-tons each but with smaller caliber batteries and lighter armor plate. Steaming in formation the best possible speed of these six peace doves was 15-knots as handicapped by the old man although the cruisers could race ahead at over 22-knots if needed. The big guns of this force amounted to a quartet of 13-inch/35 cal guns in Alabama, two more of the same in Indiana, and over 70 8-inch and 6-inch guns in the battlewagon’s secondary armament and on the cruisers.
Even though still fresh, every ship in this photo was obsolete at the time it was taken, as proven by the dismal performance by armored cruisers in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the launch of the modern battleship HMS Dreadnought (21,000-tons, 10×12-inch guns) in 1906 and the fast (25.5-knot/20,000-ton) battlecruiser HMS Invincible in 1907.
Of limited utility, these ships, with the exception of Pennsylvania, were off the Naval List by 1920 even though they were still quite serviceable. Renamed USS Pittsburgh to allow her name to be used for a new battleship (BB-38), the old-school armored cruiser spent her last decade in flagship duty with the Asiatic Fleet and was sold for scrapping under the terms of the London Naval Treaty in December 1931.
Brooklyn Naval Yard itself closed in 1966 and its famous “Admiral’s Row” is the subject of controversy over should or shouldn’t it be saved as a historic site.
