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When armored cruiser Number 3, the USS Brooklyn, was designed and built under authority of the Congressional Act of 19 July 1892, the term “new navy” had a real and immediate meaning which modern seamen will never be able to appreciate. Our very first steel cruiser, the Atlanta, had been in commission only since 1886, and the protected cruisers and gunboats of the day still included auxiliary sail power as a regular feature of their design. Constructed at the yards of William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Brooklyn was actually the second of her class, as the first ship to be designated as an armored cruiser, the ill-fated USS Maine, was reclassified as a second class battleship prior to completion. The honor of being the Navy’s first armored cruiser then fell to the USS New York.
Commissioned on 1 December 1896, the Brooklyn made a leisurely shakedown cruise to Great Britain, returning in July 1897. In March 1898, following the sinking of the Maine in Havana harbor, she became flagship of the romantic but shortlived Flying Squadron of Commodore Winfield Scott Schley. Locating the Spanish fleet at Santiago, Schley set up a blockade. Admiral Sampson, commander of the North Atlantic Fleet, arrived in the New York on 1 June and took command. On the morning of 3 July 1898, just after Admiral Sampson left the blockade line, leaving Schley in the Brooklyn in tactical command, the Spanish Admiral Cervera sortied with his fleet of four cruisers and two torpedo boat destroyers. As the New York reversed course in a vain effort to get into the fight, the remaining American ships practically fell over each other in their eagerness to bring guns to bear on the fleeing Spaniards. The Brooklyn, reputedly the fastest ship in the Fleet, and the one most dreaded by the Spaniards because of her speed, overhauled the Spanish cruisers one by one, making 16 knots even though only two engines were in operation. Firing 100 8-inch, 473 5-inch, 1,200 6-pounder, and 200 1-pounder shells during the battle, the Brooklyn inflicted much damage to the Spanish ships. In return she took the brunt of the enemy fire, receiving more than 20 hits, most of them superficial, and suffered the only U. S. fatality in the action. All six Spanish warships were sunk or driven ashore in flames by the American fleet, and it had been a proud day for the Brooklyn.
Photographs from the Library of Congress and National Archives
The Brooklyn’s ram bow and cruiser stern were more extreme than in other armored cruisers, and her sides tumbled home so pronouncedly that the two thwartships 8-inch turrets stood out like battlements of a medieval fortress. Her stout military masts with cylindrical fighting tops were typical of the day. The foremast was unusually heavy, carrying the diameter of the conning tower all the way to the first fighting top, and supporting a small wooden charthouse surmounted by an open bridge. Her top three decks, designated topgallant forecastle, gun, and berth decks respectively, were practically open spaces, closed on the sides by bulwarks, within which the main housekeeping functions of the ship were carried on. Below these were the orlop deck, platforms, and the hold. The Brooklyn’s hull was of mild steel, unsheathed, with a double bottom. Like most contemporary cruisers, she had a slanting armored deck six inches thick on the slopes and three inches on the flats. A side belt of 3-inch Harveyized nickel steel backed by a double strake of hull plating distinguished her from the protected cruisers of the era and placed her in the new and elite category of armored cruiser. Designed for a complement of 561, she was in the opinion of her builders capable of comfortably holding twice as many.
The Brooklyn’s designers, having no significant U. S. experience to fall back on, drew heavily from French designs, borrowing such features as the great freeboard forward, the lozenge arrangement of the four 8-inch turrets which constituted the main battery, and the marked tumble home of the sides, which was intended to increase the arc of fire of the wing turrets. In other features she was a beefed-up version of the cruiser New York, with the cylindrical pillbox design of her turrets inherited from John Ericsson’s Monitor. The secondary battery consisted of 12 casemate-mounted 5-inch guns. Five tubes for 18-inch Whitehead torpedoes, still something of an innovation, were built into the hull above the water, one in the bow and four on the berth deck. Twelve 6-pounder and four 1-pounder rapid-fire rifles, and four Gatling guns completed her armament.
USS BROOKLYN
ARMORED CRUISER NUMBER 3
Scale in feet
Line Drawing by Melbourne Smith, from plans in the National Archives.
Length Over-all Beam
Maximum Draft Normal Displacement Trial Speed Complement Main Armament Launched Commissioned Decommissioned
402' 7"
64' 8"
28'
9,215 tons 21.9 knots
561 officers and enlisted men Eight 8-inch, 35-caliber guns 2 October 1895 1 December 1896 9 March 1921
The Brooklyn’s propulsion plant was fairly conventional for a day when marine machinery spaces were characterized by oil squirt cans, dancing connecting rods, and sweating coal-passers and firemen. It consisted of four vertical, triple expansion, three- cylinder engines, driving twin propeller shafts. The two forward engines could be easily uncoupled for economical cruising. Seven Scotch boilers, all but universal in warships of that time, produced steam at 160 pounds per square inch maximum. The fuel was, of course, Pocahontas coal. “She can easily go from New York to San Francisco without refueling,” proudly reported the Secretary of the Navy. The rationale of economy led to one of few innovations in the Brooklyn’s machinery design—her inordinately high stacks. Measuring 100 feet from the lower grate bars to the top of the smoke pipes, their added natural draft produced economy in terms of reduced coal consumption, less auxiliary machinery, lower upkeep, and greater operating efficiency. Forced draft blowers were provided to boost the ship’s top speed when required. Three generators provided electricity for the ship’s 750 incandescent lights, telephone system, engine order telegraphs, range indicators and other control instruments, and four 30-inch searchlights. A new electric drive was also used with success in the forward and starboard turrets, the other two being competitively designed for operation by steam.
It is, perhaps, surprising that the incentive-type contract was being used in the early 1890s. In the Brooklyn’s case the provision for extra payment, or penalty as the case might be, was based on speed. Cramp’s trial crew pushed the cruiser to 21.91 knots, earning a tidy bonus of $350,000. The incentive system fell into disuse shortly after this, perhaps because the comp- 1 20 trailers of that day felt that a third of a million dollars was too
much to pay for a gain of not quite two knots. All in all, the Brooklyn cost $4,423,790, including armament and equipage.
During her 25-year career the Brooklyn remained essentially unaltered. Radio aerials and higher topmasts were added, the torpedo tubes and a few small rapid-fire guns removed, changes made in the boats and arrangement of the ventilators, and the ornate bow crest dismantled. The Brooklyn's original white and buff paint was covered with successive coats in varying shades of gray after 1910, when the Fleet changed its color scheme. As a fighting ship, the Brooklyn’s days were numbered by the turn of the century. Design development had accelerated, especially in foreign navies, as the concept of the armored cruiser as an inexpensive substitute for the battleship took hold. When armored cruiser Number 4 was laid down in 1901, the class had grown to 12,000 tons and within a few years would mature in the form of 14,500-ton giants armed with 10-inch and 6-inch guns. During this brief heyday of the armored cruiser, exemplified by the so-called “Big Ten” ships of the U. S. Armored Cruiser Squadron, the Brooklyn and her arch-rival New York were clearly outmatched. But the junior battleship- type died even more suddenly than it had been born, when the British Dreadnought rendered obsolete not only the armored cruiser, but also the mixed-caliber pre-Dreadnought battleship.
According to the construction standards of 1918, most of the features that had been the Brooklyn’s pride in 1896 had become liabilities. What made her useful for a quarter century were not her fighting qualities, but rather her spacious, habitable decks and economical boilers; ideal features for a peacetime flagship on a foreign station or an administrative flagship in a home port. It was in these capacities that she spent most of her career, and she was a favorite flagship on many a station. On her vast, well ventilated berth decks generations of seamen took their meals at tables that triced to the overhead when not in use, squatted around their games during leisure moments, slung their hammocks at night from neatly numbered hooks, and served their guns when the occasion demanded. But even for the proudest of ships, as for men, there must be an end. The Brooklyn’s colors came down for the last time on 9 March 1921, and before the year was over her sturdy hull was sold for scrap.
Joseph Conrad