After freight to passenger conversion 1911 and before Navy conversion. See SS Bunker Hill at New York in 1908 for ship as freighter. | |
History | |
---|---|
Name | Bunker Hill |
Owner |
|
Ordered | 1906 |
Builder | William Cramp & Sons, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
Yard number | 343 |
Launched | 26 March 1907 |
Identification |
|
Fate | Converted to passenger service & fuel oil, 1911 |
General characteristics [1] [2] | |
Tonnage | |
Length | 375 ft (114.3 m) Registered |
Beam | 52.2 ft (15.9 m) |
Depth |
|
Installed power | 5,000 ihp |
Crew |
|
USS Aroostook in harbor | |
History | |
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United States | |
Name |
|
Acquired | 12 November 1917 |
Commissioned | 7 December 1917 |
Decommissioned | 10 March 1931 |
Renamed | Aroostook, 15 November 1917 |
Reclassified |
|
Stricken | 5 February 1943 |
Fate | Sold for scrap in October 1947 |
Notes | Navy purchase price of $1,350,000 (hull and machinery) [3] |
General characteristics | |
Type | Minelayer |
Displacement | 3,800 long tons (3,900 t) |
Length | 395 ft (120 m) |
Beam | 52 ft 2 in (15.90 m) |
Draft | 16 ft (4.9 m) |
Speed | 20 kn (23 mph; 37 km/h) |
Complement | 313 |
Armament | 1 × 5 in (130 mm)/51 cal gun, 2 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 cal dual-purpose guns, 2 × .30 in (7.6 mm) Colt machine guns |
USS Aroostook (ID-1256/CM-3/AK-44) was the Eastern Steamship Company's Bunker Hill converted for planting the World War I North Sea Mine Barrage. Bunker Hill was built in 1907 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for passenger service between Boston and New York City. Bunker Hill was one of three sister ships, the others being Massachusetts and Old Colony, delivered as passenger/cargo ships by William Cramp & Sons in 1907. [4] [5] [6] They were among the eight ships acquired by the U.S. Navy in November 1917. Bunker Hill and Massachusetts were converted to minelayers at the Boston Navy Yard. [5] Old Colony was used as a district scout until sent across the Atlantic and turned over to the British in 1919. [6]
Three new ships for the New England Navigation Company, controlled by the New Haven railroad interests, were designed to compete with the Metropolitan Line vessels Yale and Harvard using the outside, offshore passage yet be capable of using the inside passage through sounds. The three vessels were designed by the Quintard Iron Works Company of New York with heavy construction for offshore operation and characteristics necessary for inshore operation. The main deck, with the exception of machinery was designed for 1,500 tons of cargo. The second deck had officers quarters and a few passenger staterooms with more officers quarters on the upper deck. Massachusetts and Bunker Hill had reciprocating engines driving twin screws while the later Old Colony, otherwise identical, was designed with Parsons turbines driving triple screws. [7]
Bunker Hill was laid down as hull number 343 by William Cramp & Sons, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and launched 26 March 1907. [8] [9] The proposed name Commonwealth had been changed to Bunker Hill at the request of Boston's mayor whose daughter christened the ship. [9] The ship was registered with U.S. Official Number 204264, signal KWDT and home port of New London, Connecticut. [1]
Bunker Hill and Massachusetts underwent conversion in 1911 from primarily freight to passenger service. The conversion changed registered tonnage from 4,029 GRT, 1,724 NRT to 4,779 GRT, 2,575 NRT and depth of hold from 31.6 ft (9.6 m) to 30.2 ft (9.2 m). Registered crew size went from 38 to 167. [1] [2] [10] [note 1]
On 2 October 1907 the tug Transfer No. 3 was sunk while assisting Bunker Hill when Bunker Hill's propeller slashed her hull, in the New York City area. [11]
After a brief shakedown cruise in mid-June 1918, Aroostook took on board a load of mines and then began a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in the company of her sister minelayer, USS Shawmut. This voyage, aided by the novel technique of refueling at sea, took her to Scotland, where in July she participated in laying the North Sea Mine Barrage, laying thousands of mines across the mouth of the North Sea in order to create a barrier for German U-boats trying to depart from German seaports to the open Atlantic. Aroostook laid a total of 3,180 mines in this operation:
This effort, nearly completed, was the major operation of the U.S. Navy in European waters during World War I, and it came to an end on 11 November 1918 with the Armistice with Germany and the end of fighting in World War I. USS Aroostook steamed home to the East Coast in December 1918
During the spring of 1919, USS Aroostook was refitted as an "aircraft tender" to support the attempt by U.S. Navy naval aviators to make the first transatlantic crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by air. The Navy had four huge Curtiss NC floatplanes built for the project. These aircraft were twice the size of contemporary aircraft. The route for this attempt used southeastern Newfoundland and the Portuguese Azores Islands as stopping-off points for refueling and maintenance work on the new planes, and for rest and mess periods for their aviators. In the event of the attempt, mechanical problems and lack of replacement parts necessitated the cannibalization of one of the aircraft, leaving three "Nancys" for the attempt.
During the first half of May 1919, Aroostook was waiting at the port of Trepassey, Newfoundland, to serve as a floating base for the three medium-sized Curtiss NC floatplanes that took off from the New York City area on 16 May. After taking care of the Curtiss NCs and their crews, and seeing them off towards the Azores, Aroostook next steamed to England, where she rendezvoused with the NC-4 , the only airplane to complete the transatlantic flight, at the end of May. The crewmen of Aroostook then disassembled the NC-4 and loaded her onto the ship for the voyage back to United States.
In August and early September, Aroostook carried a cargo of naval mines and supplies to California via the Panama Canal. She spent the rest of the year on the West Coast carrying out transportation missions and also as the aviation flagship for the Pacific Fleet.
Though she continued to be classified as a "minelayer", and she received the warship designation CM-3 (minelayer) in mid-1920, Aroostook's remaining active service was as an aircraft tender. Throughout the 1920s, she mainly served on the Eastern Pacific Ocean, but she made occasional voyages to the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Seaboard to take part in the annual, massive "fleet problem" exercises.
Aroostook also steamed to Hawaii and back in 1925 and 1928, including on the first occasion as the support aircraft tender for a pioneering attempt to fly two patrol planes from the West Coast to Hawaii.
Taken out of commission in March 1931 at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington, Aroostook was laid up in reserve for the next decade. With World War II raging in Europe, and the war threatening to spread worldwide soon, she was considered for reactivation as a cargo ship, and in May 1941, she was re-designated AK-44. However, her age and her limited capabilities kept her inactive. In February 1943, Aroostook was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register and then transferred to the War Shipping Administration. Regaining the name Bunker Hill, she stayed in port for the rest of the war. Although she was sold in 1946 to a firm headed by Anthony Cornero that planned to use her as a floating casino off of Malibu. [13] The old ship was seized by the U.S. Coast Guard as a "gambling ship" on 17 September 1946. The ship was turned over to the U.S. Maritime Commission on 24 July 1947. On 17 October 1947 the ship was sold to Basalt Rock Co., Inc. for $18,000 for scrapping. [14]
William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Company of Philadelphia was founded in 1830 by William Cramp, and was the preeminent U.S. iron shipbuilder of the late 19th century.
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USS Bunker Hill (CG-52) was a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser of the United States Navy constructed by Litton-Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation at Pascagoula, Mississippi and launched on 11 March 1985. The Ticonderoga-class cruisers are equipped with the Aegis Combat System and Bunker Hill is the first of the class to be equipped with the Mark 41 Vertical Launching System (VLS) in place of the previous ships' twin-arm Mark 26 missile launchers, which greatly improved the flexibility and firepower of the ships by allowing them to fire BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles for land attack missions. Other missions include ballistic missile defence and capital ship escort for anti-aircraft defense. The ship was commissioned on 20 September 1986 and was homeported at Naval Base San Diego in San Diego, California.
A minelayer is any warship, submarine or military aircraft deploying explosive mines. Since World War I the term "minelayer" refers specifically to a naval ship used for deploying naval mines. "Mine planting" was the term for installing controlled mines at predetermined positions in connection with coastal fortifications or harbor approaches that would be detonated by shore control when a ship was fixed as being within the mine's effective range.
USS Oglala (ID-1255/CM-4/ARG-1) was a minelayer in the United States Navy. Commissioned as Massachusetts, she was renamed Shawmut a month later, and in 1928, was renamed after the Oglala, a sub-tribe of the Lakota, residing in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
USS Pruitt (DD-347/DM-22/AG–101) was a Clemson-class destroyer in the United States Navy following World War I. She was named for Corporal John H. Pruitt, USMC, World War I Medal of Honor recipient.
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The North Sea Mine Barrage, also known as the Northern Barrage, was a large minefield laid easterly from the Orkney Islands to Norway by the United States Navy during World War I. The objective was to inhibit the movement of U-boats from bases in Germany to the Atlantic shipping lanes bringing supplies to the British Isles. Rear Admiral Lewis Clinton-Baker, commanding the Royal Navy minelaying force at the time, described the barrage as the "biggest mine planting stunt in the world's history." Larger fields with greater numbers of mines were laid during World War II.
USS Monadnock (ACM-10) was a coastal minelayer in the U.S. Navy, the third vessel named after Mount Monadnock, a solitary mountain (monadnock) of more than 3,100 feet in southern New Hampshire close to the border of Massachusetts. The ship was built as the cargo vessel Cavalier for the Philadelphia and Norfolk Steamship Company by Pusey and Jones Corporation, Wilmington, Delaware in 1938. The Navy purchased the ship 9 June 1941 for wartime use. After decommissioning the ship was sold in June 1947 for commercial use then sold to a Panamanian company in 1949 to be renamed Karukara. In 1952 the ship became Monte de la Esperanza for a company in Bilbao, Spain transporting bananas to the United Kingdom from the Canary Islands for more than 20 years. She was later sold to the Marine Institute of Spain for operation as a hospital ship for more than 10 years serving the fishing fleet of the Canary Islands as Esperanza del Mar until becoming an artificial reef off Spain in 2000.
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