USS Albany (CL-23)
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 The USS Albany |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Protected cruiser |
| Shipyard |
Armstrong-Whitworth & Co , |
| Keel laying | December 8, 1897 |
| Launch | January 14, 1899 |
| Namesake | the capital of the US state New York Albany |
| Commissioning | May 29, 1900 |
| Decommissioning | October 10, 1922 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
3438 tn.l. (3493 t) |
| length |
108.1 m over everything, |
| width |
13.1 m |
| Draft |
5.1 m |
| crew |
363 men |
| drive |
4 cylinder boilers , |
| speed |
19.52 kn |
| Armament |
6 x 6 inches (152 mm) L / 50 and |
| Armament from 1907 |
10 × 5 in. (127 mm) -L / 50 - Rapid Fire Guns |
| Coal supply |
350, maximum 1135 tn.l. |
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Armor armored deck, gun shields, command tower |
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| Sister ships |
Ministro Zenteno , Chile |
The third USS Albany (last CL-23 ) was a protected cruiser of the United States Navy . She started out as Almirante Abreu for the Brazilian Navy , but was bought by the United States on March 16, 1898 to prevent a feared purchase by the Spanish Navy during the Spanish-American War . When it was launched in 1899, it was named Albany . From 1900 to 1914 she was mostly deployed in the Pacific, but as a member of the US Navy's Europe station she traveled not only the Mediterranean, but also the Baltic Sea in the summer of 1902. When the USA entered the First World War , the cruiser was in the Atlantic and remained in service until the end of the war. In 1919 the Albany was relocated to the Pacific, where it was decommissioned in 1922. In 1930 the USS Albany was sold for demolition.
Building history
The cruiser with hull number 676 was laid down on December 8, 1897 in Elswick near Newcastle upon Tyne at the Armstrong Whitworth warship yard. It was to be delivered to Brazil, which had ordered three cruisers from Armstrong in 1894. Probably because of financial difficulties, Brazil had sold the first cruiser to Chile on the Helgen , but was still interested in acquiring a third cruiser. Due to the heavy workload of the shipyard, however, it could not begin until the end of 1897. The construction of a larger cruiser offered by Armstrong was not accepted by Brazil. The first two cruisers in the series were delivered to Chile as Ministro Zenteno and Brazil as Almirante Barroso in 1897 . The third ship was launched as the Amazon in late 1896 . On March 16, 1898 the purchase of the now completed third ship and the unfinished replacement building by the United States, which wanted to prevent the sale of these ships to the Spanish Navy .
The cruisers designed by Philip Watts for Brazil displaced a little over 3400 tn.l., were 113.5 m long and 13.4 m wide and had a copper-clad hull for use in tropical waters. The four-cylinder triple expansion engines supplied by Humphrys & Tennant had an output of 6500 hp and drove two propellers. The cruisers purchased by the USA retained the mixed armament planned for the Brazilian Navy, consisting of six 6-inch and four 4.7-inch L / 50 rapid-fire guns from the manufacturer . They also had ten six-pounder and four one- pounder cannons, four Colt system machine guns and three 45 cm torpedo tubes (nose tube and two broadside tubes).
When the newbuilding was launched in February 1899, it was named USS Albany .
Mission history
On May 29, 1900, the USS Albany entered service on the Tyne in England. Her first mission began on June 26th, taking her via Gibraltar , the Mediterranean , the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean to Cavite in the Philippines until November 22nd . In the following seven months she served in the American Asiatic Fleet on missions during the Philippine-American War in the Philippines, which was occupied by the USA in 1898, at the same time as the Boxer Rebellion in China. The USS Albany went after a grounding from December 28, 1900 to February 17, 1901 to Hong Kong , where it visited the dry dock for necessary repair work .
On July 3, 1901, she left Cavite together with the USS Nashville to be used on the newly formed European station of the US Navy. On her maiden voyage, the Albany returned to the Mediterranean by September 15. The new squadron was formed in Genoa with the USS Chicago withdrawn from South America as its flagship.
Over the next nine months, Albany visited ports in Greece , France , Italy , Spain and Egypt . On June 18, 1902, she moved to the Atlantic and visited Cherbourg and Southampton . She then met on July 12 for exercises with the liner USS Illinois and the cruisers USS Chicago and USS San Francisco at the Galloper lightship in the North Sea . On July 19, the exercises ended with a visit to the American ships in Christiania (now Oslo) , where the flagship Illinois was visited by King Oskar II , who was then still ruler of Sweden and Norway . The Albany started from there a visiting trip to the Baltic Sea , where she Stockholm , Kronstadt and Copenhagen started off. In September she left the Baltic Sea again and relocated to the Mediterranean via Plymouth until September 12th. In the following two months she visited various ports before marching to the Caribbean in November , where at the end of the year she took part in the maneuvers of the American Atlantic fleet, to which the ships of the North American, South American and European squadrons had been pulled together. The Albany was dispatched on December 19 from Puerto Rico to La Guaira , which was subject to the naval blockade of Great Britain , Italy, France and the German Empire , which had an almost armed conflict with Venezuela , which was settled through American mediation. On January 5, 1903, the Albany finally called Boston for the first time in an American port.
It was overhauled in Boston and at the New York Navy Yard, only to sail back to Europe on February 15, 1903. The stay in the Mediterranean was short, however, as the Albany passed the Suez Canal at the end of May and ran with the USS Raleigh to Aden and then from Colombo with the USS Cincinnati to the Far East. After she had taken care of herself again in Hong Kong, she met with the American Asiatic Fleet in Chefoo in northern China. With this association she operated in northern Chinese waters, off Korea and Japan. The flagship of the fleet's cruiser division was the sister ship USS New Orleans . After visits to Kobe and Yokohama , the Albany crossed the Pacific to Hawaii from December 3 to 16 , where the entire Asiatic Fleet with the flagship USS Kentucky , the liners USS Wisconsin and USS Oregon and the cruisers New Orleans , Raleigh and Cincinnati moved . The cruisers left closed two days earlier, but sometimes had bad weather, followed by the liners, which finally caught up with the cruisers and covered the distance of 3400 nautical miles with an average speed of 12.87 knots. On December 29, the Albany left Honolulu again with the squadron that returned to the Cavite naval base via Guam until January 20, 1904. In the months that followed, the Albany stayed in Filipino or Chinese waters. She was stationed in Shanghai from February 23 to March 26 and again at the end of April . In May she moved via Guam and Honolulu until June 16, 1904 to Bremerton , where the Albany was decommissioned at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard .
The Albany was out of service for almost three years . During this time she was repaired and - like her sister ship New Orleans - re-armed. Both cruisers used Armstrong guns, which had not been installed in the US Navy and otherwise only in a few ships. First the 12 cm cannons and then the heavier 15.2 cm cannons were replaced by American 5-inch (12.7 cm) L / 50 guns, so that both cruisers had a single battery when they were used for the second time of ten guns. However, these guns were also a new development that only found widespread use in the Navy in an improved form. The expanded British guns were used as coastal guns in the Pacific.
On June 10, 1907, the Albany was put back into service for the American Pacific Fleet under Commander Henry T. Mayo . She spent the next three years on the west coast of the United States and Central America. The main task was training trips. At times it held a record for the rate of fire and number of hits. In addition, there were repeated reconnaissance trips to Central America to clarify the situation in the unstable republics there and to protect American citizens and interests. She visited ports in Mexico , Honduras , El Salvador and Nicaragua . In early April she hid with two tugs the Navy passengers, post office and other important cargo from the front of Isla Santa Margarita accrued mail boat Indiana from the Pacific Mail. In December 1909 she was sent to Nicaragua on the gunboat USS Yorktown , where she arrived in Corinto on December 13th to protect American interests in the war between the dictator Zelaya and the insurgent General Estrada . In early 1910 she became the flagship of the emergency squadron that was forming in Nicaragua under Rear Admiral William W. Kimball . The transporter USS Buffalo brought over 600 Marines from Panama to Nicaragua. Further reinforcements were the gunboats USS Princeton and USS Vicksburg . In May, the Albany was withdrawn in order to be overtaken again before being used again with the Asiatic Fleet in the naval shipyard of Puget Sound.
On August 4, 1910, the Albany left for China and reached Wusong near Shanghai via Honolulu in Hawaii and Yokohama in Japan on September 15 . For three years she was station service in the Asian fleet and commuted between China, Japan and the Philippines. When the Chinese Revolution broke out in 1911, it was relocated from Cavite to Shanghai. She moved on to Hankau to report on radio from there. The radio station had failed on her sister ship New Orleans , which is moored in Nanjing . When the revolutionaries threatened to conquer Amoy at the beginning of November , the Albany was ordered there to protect the foreigners living there, some of whom she transported to Shanghai. At the end of November 1911, she went to Nanjing as the flagship of the Commander of the Asian Fleet, while the New Orleans took over the position in Shanghai. The actual flagship, the armored cruiser USS Saratoga ex New York , could not be used on the Yangtze .
On September 20, 1913, the Albany left Yokohama to return to San Francisco with a five-day stay in Honolulu , where it arrived on November 12. In mid-December she moved to Puget Sound and was assigned to the reserve on December 23, 1913.
After necessary repairs, the Albany was put back into service on April 17, 1914. She patrolled Mexican waters through the summer and through November 1914 and was decommissioned for a major overhaul in Bremerton on December 4, 1914. On May 12, 1916, she returned to the service of the Navy, after having served in the Washington and Oregon state militia for training the previous year. Again she went into Mexican waters.
In early 1917 the Albany came into the Atlantic and practiced with the Atlantic Fleet off Virginia in anticipation of the USA joining the war. In July she became the flagship of the 6th Squadron of the Security Forces and accompanied eleven convoys to Europe until the end of the war on November 11, 1918.
In 1919 the Albany was reassigned to the Asiatic Fleet. During the Russian Civil War , in 1919 and early 1920, she made several trips to Vladivostok to support the American troops that had landed there , occasionally with parts of the crew being used as reinforcements on land. To do this, she transported sick and wounded soldiers from the combat area. After the US troops were withdrawn from Vladivostok by April 1, 1920, the Albany made normal station service in China or the Philippines. In the classification of the US fleet, it was classified as PG-36 on July 17, 1920 , which was changed to CL-23 on August 8, 1921 .
Final fate
She left China in July 1922 and reached the Mare Island naval shipyard on August 6 and was decommissioned on October 10, 1922. On November 3, 1929, the ship lying at the naval shipyard was canceled and then sold for demolition on February 11, 1930.
Individual evidence
- ↑ 6 "/ 50 (15.2 cm) Mark 5 (Armstrong)
- ↑ 4.7 "/ 50 (12 cm) Mark 3 Armstrong
- ^ Cruiser Albany goes aground. In: New York Times. 20th December 1900.
- ^ Ships for Mediterranean. In: New York Times. July 6, 1901.
- ↑ King Oscar vists the "Illinois". In: New York Times. July 20, 1902.
- ↑ Albany sent to La Gueyra. In: New York Times. December 20, 1902.
- ^ Asiatic Squadron cruise. In: New York Times. November 22, 1903.
- ^ Battleships' record run . In: New York Times. December 19, 1903.
- ↑ 5 "/ 50 (12.7 cm) Mark 5 and Mark 6
- ↑ Special to the New York Times - Article 4. In: New York Times. March 31, 1908.
- ↑ Pacific Liner aground. In: New York Times. April 5, 1909.
- ↑ Hope for Estrada Victory. In: New York Times. December 11, 1909.
literature
- Peter Brooke: Warships for Export: Armstrong Warships 1867-1927. World Ship Society, Gravesend 1999, ISBN 0-905617-89-4 .
- Roger Chesneau, Eugène M. Koleśnik, NJM Campbell: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .
Web links
- Albany in Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships base of the text
- USS Albany Association
- Commanders and pictures of the Albany
- more pictures
- USS CL-23 Albany (Protected Cruiser) (1897). Side elevation of the Albany on the-blueprints.com