Despite sustaining heavy flooding to her bow, there were no casualties and the battleship was able to make it to Philadelphia under her own power. She would remain at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for five months, during which time the war ended. In January 1919, Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels visited the battleship and personally commended 27 crew members for their "courage and efficiency." After leaving Philadelphia, Minnesota would do her part bringing thousands of American soldiers home from Europe.
The Minnesota incident of 99 years ago ended happily, but it stands out as the exception and not the rule in the long, violent history of what was originally called the "torpedo" by its inventors during the American Civil War. Although enemy mines did the worst damage to American vessels during both Twentieth Century wars, not to mention in the Middle East during the latter part of the century, it should not be forgotten that American-made mines were also deployed in large numbers along our coasts, particularly during the Second World War. Although intended to protect American merchant vessels and warships from the enemy submarine threat, they too caused damage to American shipping when merchant vessels strayed off course or their captains and pilots did not possess the latest information.
While waiting for a harbor pilot to arrive on the "dark and stormy night" of February 16, 1942, the one-year-old, 554 foot-long tanker SS E.H. Blum of the Atlantic Refining Company, described as "one of the largest and finest tankers in the world" in the War Record of the Fifth Naval District, was ripped in two after drifting into a Navy minefield only 950 yards off the Cape Henry lighthouse. On June 11, the SS F.W. Abrams of the Standard Oil Company "through a combination of unfortunate circumstances which included bad weather, a misconception of escort duties, and lack of proper navigational information, strayed into the Hatteras Mine Field and was eventually lost."
Just three days later, on June 15, two American ships and one British vessel ran into a German minefield within sight of Virginia Beach that had been set by U-701, killing 17 on the British vessel, HMT Kingston Ceylonite, and one on SS Robert C. Tuttle.
Despite a concerted effort to sweep the area for German mines, SS Santore encountered another of U-701's mines while assembling to leave Hampton Roads in Convoy KS-511 on June 17, listed to port, and quickly sank, taking three crew members with her.
Before the month was over, the 7,256-ton Norwegian passenger-cargo vessel MV Tamesis became the second ship sunk by the "friendly Hatteras Mine Field." The American tug Keshena became its third victim on July 19 while attending to the Panamanian-flagged J.A. Mowinckel, that had itself been damaged by torpedoes and mines. Three were killed in the tug's engine room.
Whether the mines that emerged from the depths off North Carolina this week present a renewed threat from a past war has yet to be ascertained, but one thing is for certain: the story of mines off the East Coast is far from over.
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