| Act of 10 June 1896: |
"._._. The President
is hereby authorized to have constructed by contract three seagoing coastline
battle ships designed to carry the heaviest armor and most powerful ordnance
upon a displacement of about eleven thousand tons, to have the highest
practicable speed for vessels of their class, and to cost, exclusive of armament,
not exceeding three million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars each;
._._. Not more
than two of said battle ships
._._. shall
be built in one yard or by one contracting party,
._._. Premiums
._._. are not
to be offered, In all their parts said vessels shall be of domestic manufacture;
._._. Not more
than one seagoing battle ship shall be built on or near the coast of the
Pacific Ocean
._._." |
| The second Alabama (BB-8) was laid down on 1 or 2 December
1896 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by the William Cramp and Sons Ship and
Engine Building Co.; launched on 18 May 1898; sponsored by Miss Mary Morgan,
daughter of the Honorable John T. Morgan, United States Senator from Georgia;
and commissioned on 16 October 1900, Capt. Willard H. Brownson in
command. |
| Though assigned to the North Atlantic Station, Alabama
did not begin operations with that unit until early the following year. The
warship remained at Philadelphia until 13 December when she got underway
for the brief trip to New York. She stayed at New York through the New Year
and until the latter part of January 1901. Finally, on 27 January, the battleship
headed south for winter exercises with the Fleet at the drill grounds in
the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Florida. Alabama's Navy career
began in earnest with her arrival in the gulf early in February. With a single
exception in 1904, each year from 1901 to 1907, she conducted Fleet exercises
and gunnery drills in the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indies in the wintertime
before returning north for repairs and operations off the northeastern coast
during the summer and autumn. The exception came in the spring of 1904 after
the conclusion of winter maneuvers when she departed Pensacola in company
with Kearsarge (BB-5), Maine (BB-10), Iowa (BB-4),
Olympia (C-6), Baltimore (C-3) and Cleveland (C-19)
on a voyage to Portugal and the Mediterranean. After a ceremonial visit to
Lisbon honoring the entrance of the Infante into the Portuguese naval school,
she then cruised the Mediterranean with the three battleships paying goodwill
calls at Corfu, Trieste and Fiumeuntil. She next steamed to Phaleron Bay,
Greece, where she celebrated the Forth of July with the King, Prince Andrew
and Princess Alice of Greece. From 3 August to 20 June the USS
Abarenda filled the bunkers of the four battleships. Ending
the Mediterranean cruise in mid-August, the squadron returned by way of the
Azores arriving in Newport, Rhode Island, on 29 August. |
| Late in September, the warship entered the League Island Navy
Yard for repairs. Early in December, Alabama left the yard and resumed
cruising with the North Atlantic Fleet. |
| Near the end of 1907, Alabama set out on a special mission
with Captain Ten Eyck DeW. Veeder in command. On 16 December 1907,
as the flagship of Rear Admiral Charles S. Sperry, Second Squadron, Fourth
Division, the battleship stood out of Hampton Roads in the company of what
became known as the Great White Fleet. She accompanied the Fleet on its voyage
around the continent of South American as far as San Francisco. On 18 May
1908 when the bulk of the Fleet headed toward the Pacific Northwest,
Alabama remained at San Francisco for repairs at the Mare Island Navy
Yard. As a consequence, the warship did not participate in the celebrated
visit to Japan. |
| Instead, Alabama and Maine departed San Francisco
on 8 June to complete their own, more direct, circumnavigation of the globe.
Steaming by way of Honolulu and Guam, the two battleships arrived at Manila
in the Philippines on 20 July. In August, they visited Singapore and Colombo
on the island of Ceylon. From Colombo, the two battleships made their way,
via Aden on the Arabian Peninsula, to the Suez Canal. Through the canal early
in September, Alabama and Maine made an expeditious transit
of the Mediterranean Sea, pausing only at Naples at mid-month. Following
a port call at Gibraltar, they embarked upon the Atlantic passage on 4 October.
They made one stop, in the Azores, on their way across the Atlantic. On 19
October as they neared the end of their long voyage, the two battleships
parted company. Maine headed for Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and
Alabama steered for New York. Both reached their destinations on the
20th. |
| Alabama was placed in reserve at New York on 3 November
1908. Though she remained inactive at New York, the battleship was not
decommissioned until 17 August 1909. The warship underwent an extensive overhaul
that lasted until the early part of 1912. On 17 April 1912, she was placed
in commission, second reserve, at New York, Comdr. Charles F. Preston in
command. At that point, she became an element of the newly established Atlantic
Reserve Fleet. According to that concept, the Navy organized a unit that
comprised nine of the older battleships as well as Brooklyn (ACR-3),
Columbia (C-12), and Minneapolis (C-13) for the purpose of
keeping those ships constantly ready for active service using the fiscal
expedient of severely reduced complements that could be filled out rapidly
by naval militiamen and volunteers in an emergency. The unit as a whole possessed
enough officers and men to take two or three of the ships to sea on a rotating
basis to test their material readiness and to exercise the sailors at
drill. |
| Alabama was placed in full commission on 25 July 1912
and operated with the Atlantic Fleet off the New England coast through the
summer. She was returned to reserve status -- in commission, first reserve
-- at New York on 10 September 1912. Late in the spring of 1913, the Navy
added a new dimension to the concept of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet by having
the warships of that unit embark detachments of the various state naval militias
for training afloat in a manner similar in many respects to the contemporary
Navy's selected reserve program. During the summer of 1913, Alabama
cruised along the east coast and made two round-trip voyages to Bermuda to
train naval militiamen from Maryland, the District of Columbia, New York,
Rhode Island, Maine, North Carolina and Indiana. She ended her last training
cruise of the year at Philadelphia on 2 September. The battleship was placed
in ordinary on 31 October 1913 and in reserve on 1 July 1914. |
| Though still in commission, she passed the next 30 months in
relative inactivity with the Reserve Force, Atlantic Fleet, at Philadelphia.
America's shift toward belligerency in World War I, however, brought
Alabama out of the doldrums of the peacetime reserve at the beginning
of 1917. On 22 January, she became receiving ship at Philadelphia, embarking
drafts of recruits for training. In mid-March, the battleship moved south
to the lower reaches of the Chesapeake Bay and began transforming landsmen
into sailors. |
| Alabama took a brief respite from her rigorous training
schedule on 6 April 1917 for the announcement of the United States' declaration
of war on the Central Powers. Two days later, Alabama became flagship
of Division 1, Atlantic Fleet, then maneuvered and exercised in company with
the battleships Wisconsin (BB-9), Kearsarge, Illinois
(BB-7), Kentucky (BB-6), Ohio (BB-12), Missouri (BB-11),
and Maine between 13 and 19 August 1917.
For the remainder of World War I, the warship conducted recruit-training
missions in the lower Chesapeake Bay and in the coastal waters of the Atlantic
seaboard, though she made one visit to the Gulf of Mexico in late June and
early July of 1918. |
| After the armistice on 11 November 1918, her recruit training
duties continued but began to diminish somewhat in intensity. During February
and March of 1919, the battleship steamed south to the West Indies for winter
maneuvers. She returned to Philadelphia in mid-April for routine repairs
before heading for Annapolis to embark Naval Academy midshipmen for their
summer training cruise. On 28 and 29 May, Alabama made the short trip
from Philadelphia to Annapolis. She left Annapolis on 9 June with 184 midshipmen
embarked. During the first part of the cruise, Alabama visited the
West Indies and made a trip through the Panama Canal and back. In mid-July,
she voyaged to New York and the New England coast. August saw her return
south for maneuvers at the drill grounds. Alabama disembarked the
midshipmen at Annapolis at the end of August and returned to
Philadelphia. |
| After more than nine months at Philadelphia lingering in a sort
of naval purgatory, the battleship was finally decommissioned on 7 May 1920.
On 15 September 1921, Alabama was transferred to the War Department
to be used as a target, and her name was struck from the Navy list. Subjected
to aerial bombing tests in Chesapeake Bay by planes of the Army Air Service,
the former warship sank in shallow water on 27 September 1921. On 19 March
1924, her sunken hulk was sold for scrap. |
|
Bibliography
 |
Naval Historical Center FAQ --
Great
White Fleet |
|
United States Navy Department, Bureau of Navigation, Men
on Board Ships of the Atlantic Fleet Bound for the Pacific, December 16,
1907, (Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1908) |
|
Larry W. Jewell, Who's Who of United States
Battleships, (Internet publication), edition: 30 August, 1993. |
|
| Max R. Newhart, American Battleships
(Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., Inc., 1995). |
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|
|
| James L. Mooney, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting
Ships, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964),
Vol.1 -- A-B, p. 190-191 |
|
|
| James L. Mooney, Dictionary of American Naval
Fighting Ships, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1991), Vol.1 -- Part A, p. 108-109 |
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