| Act of 3 March 1899: |
"._._. The President
is hereby authorized to have constructed by contract three seagoing coast
line battle ships, carrying the heaviest armor and most powerful ordnance
for vessels of their class upon a trial displacement of about thirteen thousand
five hundred tons, to be sheathed and coppered, and to have the highest
practicable speed and great radius of action, and to cost, exclusive of armor
and armament, not exceeding three million six hundred thousand dollars each
._._." |
| Virginia (Battleship No. 13) was laid down
on 21 May 1902 at Newport News, Virginia, by the Newport News Shipbuilding
and Dry Dock Co.; launched on 6 April 1904; sponsored by Miss Gay Montague,
daughter of the Governor of Virginia; and commissioned on 7 May 1906,
Capt.
Seaton Schroeder in command. After fitting out, Virginia conducted
her "shaking down" cruise in Lynnhaven Bay, Virginia, off Newport, Rhode
Island, and off Long Island, New York, before she put into Bradford, Rhode
Island, for coal on 9 August. After running trials for the standardization
of her screws off Rockland, Maine, the battleship maneuvered in Long Island
Sound before anchoring off President
Theodore
Roosevelt's home, Oyster Bay, Long Island, from 2 to 4 September,
for a Presidential review. |
| Virginia then continued her shakedown cruise before she
coaled again at Bradford. Meanwhile, events were occurring in the Caribbean
that would alter the new battleship's employment. On the island of Cuba,
in August of 1906, a revolution had broken out against the government of
President T. Estrada Palma. The disaffection, which had started in Pinar
del Rio province, grew in the early autumn to the point where President Palma
had no recourse but to appeal to the United states for intervention. By
mid-September, it had become apparent that the small Cuban constabulary (8,000
rural guards) was unable to protect foreign interests, and intervention would
be necessary. Accordingly, Virginia departed Newport on 15 September
1906, bound for Cuba, and reached Havana on the 21st, ready to protect the
city from attack if necessary. The battleship remained at Havana until 18
October, when she sailed for Sewall's Point, Virginia. |
| Virginia disembarked General Frederick Funston (reciently
becoming infamous as commander of the garrison at Presidio following the
San Francisco Earthquake ... he would later puncuate his carear as leader
of the unsuccessful manhunt for Mexican bandit Pancho Villa) at Norfolk upon
her arrival there and coaled before heading north to Tompkinsville to await
further orders. She shifted soon thereafter to the New York Navy Yard where
she was coaled and drydocked to have her hull bottom painted before undergoing
repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy Yard from 3 November 1906 to
18 February 1907. After installation of fire control apparatus at the New
York Navy Yard between 19 February and 23 March, the battleship sailed once
more for Cuban waters, joining the fleet at Guantanamo Bay on 28 March. |
| Virginia fired target practices in Cuban waters before
she sailed for Hampton Roads on 10 April to participate in the
Jamestown
Exposition festivities. She remained in Hampton Roads for a month,
from 15 April to 15 May, before she underwent repairs at the Norfolk Navy
Yard into early June. Subsequently reviewed in Hampton Roads by President
Theodore Roosevelt between 7 and 13 June, Virginia shifted northward
for target practices on the target grounds of Cape Cod Bay -- evolutions
that lasted from mid-June to mid-July. She later cruised with her division
to Newport; the North River, New York City; and to Provincetown, Massachusetts,
before conducting day and night battle practice in Cape Cod Bay. |
| Returning southward early that autumn, Virginia underwent
two months of repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy, Yard, from 24
September to 24 November, before undergoing further repairs at the New York
Navy Yard later in November. She subsequently shifted southward again, reaching
Hampton Roads on 6 December. |
| Virginia spent the, next 10 days preparing for a feat
never before attempted around-the-world cruise by the battleships of the
Atlantic Fleet. The voyage, regarded by President Roosevelt as a dramatic
gesture to the Japanese -- who, like the United States, had only recently
emerged on the world stage as a power to be reckoned with -- proved to be
a signal success, with the ships performing so well as to confound the doomsayers
who had predicted a fiasco. |
| The cruise began eight days before Christmas of 1907, and ended
on Washington's Birthday, 22 February 1909. During the course of the voyage,
the ships called at ports along both coasts of South America; on the west
coast of the United States; at Hawaii; in the Philippines; Japan; China;
and in Ceylon. Virginiia's division also visited Smyrna, Turkey, via Beirut,
during the Mediterranean leg of the cruise. Both upon departure and upon
arrival, the fleet was reviewed at Hampton Roads by President Roosevelt,
whose "big stick" diplomacy and flair for the dramatic gesture had been
practically personified by the cruise of the "Great White Fleet. |
| Following that momentous circumnavigation, Virginia underwent
four months of voyage repairs and alterations at the Norfolk Navy Yard from
26 February to 26 June 1909. She spent the next year and three months operating
off the eastern seaboard of the United States, ranging from the southern
drill grounds, off the Virginia capes, to Newport, Rhode Island. During that
time, she conducted one brief cruise with members of the Naval Militia embarked
and visited Rockport and Provincetown, Massachusetts, For the better part
of that time, she conducted battle practices with the fleet -- evolutions
only broken by brief periods of yard work at Norfolk and Boston. |
| Virginia visited Brest, France, and Gravesend, England,
from 15 November to 7 December and from 8 to 29 December 1909, respectively,
before she -- as part of the 4th Division, Atlantic Fleet -- joined the Atlantic
fleet in Guantanamo Bay for drills and exercises. She subsequently operated
in Cuban waters for two months, from 13 January to 13 March 1910 before she
returned north for battle practices on the southern drill grounds. |
| Virginia departed Hampton Roads on 11 April, in company
with
Georgia
(BB-15), and reached the Boston Navy Yard two days later. She underwent repairs
there until 24 May before putting to sea for Provincetown. Over the next
five days, Virginia operated with the collier Vestal, testing
a "coaling-at-sea apparatus" off Provincetown and at Stellwagen's Bank, before
she conducted torpedo practices. The battleship returned to the Boston Navy
Yard on 18 June. |
| Virginia maintained her routine of operations off the
eastern seaboard-occasionally ranging into Cuban waters for regularly scheduled
fleet evolutions in tactics and gunnery-into 1913, a routine largely
uninterrupted. In 1913, however, unrest in Mexico caused the frequent dispatch
of American men-of-war to those waters. Virginia became one of those
ships in mid-February, when she reached Tampico on the 15th of that month;
she remained there until 2 March, when she shifted to Vera Cruz for coal.
She returned to Tampico on 5 March and remained there for 10 days. |
| After another stint of operations off the eastern seaboard, ranging
from the Virginia capes to Newport -- a period of maneuvers and exercises
varied by a visit to New York at the end of May 1913 for the dedication of
the memorial to the battleship
Maine
(sunk in Havana Harbor in February 1898), and one to Boston in mid-June for
Flag Day and Bunker Hill exercises -- the Commander, Division 3, Squadron
1, transferred his flag from Virginia to
Rhode
Island 28 June 1913 and Virginia returned to Mexican waters
in November. She reached Vera Cruz on 4 November and remained in port until
the 30th, when she shifted to Tampico. She observed conditions in those ports
and operated off the Mexican coast into January of 1914. |
| Returning to Cuban waters for exercises and maneuvers with the
fleet, Virginia sailed for the Virginia capes in mid-March 1914. She
maneuvered with the fleet off Cape Henry and in Lynnhaven Roads before she
conducted gunnery drills at the wreck of
San Marcos
(ex-Texas) in Tangier Sound, Chesapeake Bay. Virginia subsequently
held experimental gunnery firings on the southern drill grounds before she
spent much of April drydocked at Boston. |
| The American occupation of Vera Cruz in April 1914 resulted in
the sizable deployment of American men-of-war to that port that lasted into
the autumn. Virginia reached Vera Cruz on 1 May and operated with
the fleet out of that port into early October, a period of time broken by
target practice in Guantanamo Bay between 18 September and 3 October. |
| While war raged in Europe, Virginia continued her operations
off the eastern seaboard of the United States, ranging from the southern
drill grounds to the coast of New England and occasionally steaming to Cuban
waters for winter maneuvers. She was placed in reserve on 20 March 1916,
at the Boston Navy Yard, and was undergoing an extensive overhaul in the
spring of 1917 when the United States declared war on Germany. |
| On the day America entered World War I, the United States government
took steps to take over all interned German merchant vessels then in American
ports. As part of that move, Virginia sent boarding parties to seize
the German passenger and cargo vessels Amerika, Cincinnati,
Wittekind, Koln, and Ockenfels on 6 April 1917. |
| Completing her overhaul at Boston on 27 August, Virginia
sailed for Port Jefferson, New York, three days later, to join the 3d Division,
Battleship Force, Atlantic Fleet. Over the ensuing 12 months, the battleship
served as a gunnery training ship out of Port Jefferson and Norfolk; service
interrupted briefly in early December 1917, when she became temporary flagship
for Rear Admiral John A. Hoogewerff, Commander, Battleship Division 1. She
subsequently became flagship for the 3d Division commander, Rear Admiral
Thomas Snowden. |
| Overhauled at the Boston Navy Yard in the autumn of 1918,
Virginia spent the remainder of hostilities engaged in convoy escort
duties, taking convoys well over half-way across the Atlantic. She departed
New York on 14 October 1918 on her first such mission, covering a convoy
that had some 12,176 men embarked. After escorting those ships to longitude
22 degrees west, she put about and headed for home. |
| That proved to be her only such wartime mission, however, because
the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, the day before Virginia
set out with a France-bound convoy, her second escort run into the mid-Atlantic.
After leaving that convoy at longitude 34 degrees west, Virginia put
about and headed for Hampton Roads. |
| The cessation of hostilities meant the return of the many troops
that had been engaged in fighting the enemy overseas. Similar in mission
to the "Magic Carpet" operation that followed the end of World War II, a
massive troop-lift, bringing the "doughboys" back from "over there," commenced
soon after World War I ended. |
| With additional messing and berthing facilities installed to
permit her use as a troopship, Virginia departed Norfolk eight days
before Christmas of 1918. Over the ensuing months, she conducted five round-trip
voyages to Brest, France, and back. Reaching Boston on Independence Day 1919,
ending her last troop lift, Virginia ended her transport service,
having brought some 6,037 men back from France. |
| Virginia remained at the Boston Navy Yard, inactive, until
decommissioned there on 13 August 1920. Struck from the Navy list and placed
on the sale list on 12 July 1922, the battleship-reclassified prior to her
inactivation to BB-13 on 17 July 1920-was subsequently taken off the sale
list and transferred to the War Department on 6 August 1923 for use as a
bombing target. |
| Virginia and her sistership
New
Jersey were taken to a point three miles off the Diamond Shoals
lightship, off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and anchored there on 5 September
1923. The "attacks" made by Army Air Service Martin bombers, under the command
Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell, began shortly before 0900.
On the third attack, seven Martins flying at 3,000 feet, each dropped two
1,100-pound bombs on Virginia -- only one of them hit. That single
bomb, however, "completely demolished the ship as such." An observer later
wrote: "Both masts, the bridge; all three smokestacks, and the upperworks
disappeared with the explosion and there remained, after the smoke cleared
away, nothing but the bare hull, decks blown off, and covered with a mass
of tangled debris from stem to stern consisting of stacks, ventilators, cage
masts, and bridges." |
| Within one-half-hour of the cataclysmic blast that wrecked the
ship, her battered hulk sank beneath the waves. Her sistership ultimately
joined her shortly thereafter. Virginia's end, and New Jersey's,
provided far-sighted naval officers with a dramatic demonstration of air
power and impressed upon them the "urgent need of developing naval aviation
with the fleet." As such, the service performed by the old pre-dreadnought
may have been her most valuable. |
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