Seventy-Five Years Ago: A Submarine is Lost,Yet its Legend Persists

By Joseph Miechle
Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator

Oberleutnant Hans Sanger was the highest ranking of 29 Kriegsmarine personnel whose bodies were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean after the destroyer Roper (DD-147) sank their Unterseeboote (U-Boat) early on the morning of April 14, 1942.  They were buried at Hampton National Cemetery the following evening, where they remain to this day. (M.C. Farrington)  

Shortly past midnight on April 14, 1942, USS Jessie M. Roper (DD-147), a WW1-era Wickes-class destroyer, made radar contact with a suspected German submarine operating on the surface. “The night was clear, with many stars visible; the sea was very nearly calm,” noted the Roper’s captain, Lt. Cmdr. Hamilton W. Howe. The destroyer continued a nearly due south pursuit of the target it was now tracking off the North Carolina coast. The crew of Roper was ordered to general quarters as the old destroyer closed the distance with the unknown target. When the ship was approximately 700 yards from the still unidentified vessel, a torpedo was observed passing Roper close down the port side, immediately making clear the severity of the pursuit. 

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ABOVE: A sketch from an after-action report by Lt. Cmdr. H.W. Howe, who would later be awarded the Navy Cross for his actions against U-85. (War Record of the Fifth Naval District, 1942) BELOW: A painting of U-85 turing sharply to starboard in an attempt to evade Roper.  (Robert Hurst via Navsource.org)

When the distance between the vessels was only to 300 yards, the unknown vessel “cut sharply to starboard.” The darkness was suddenly pierced by Roper’s 24-inch searchlight as it illuminated the hull of U-85 as the submarine attempted to evade the rapidly approaching destroyer. As the two vessels circled each other like boxers in a ring, the combat became a race to see who could man their guns faster. As crewmen poured from hatches aboard U-85, Chief Boatswain's Mate Jack Edwin Wright aboard Roper responded with accurate .50 caliber machine gun fire, sweeping the U-boat deck of would be assailants. Shots were then fired from Roper’s starboard 3-inch guns, and despite numerous misfires, Coxwain Harry Heyman, Roper's junior gun captain, scored a hit just aft of U-85's conning tower. "This hit undoubtedly contributed markedly to the final destruction of the submarine," Howe wrote in his after-action report.

A sketch from an after-action report by Lt. Cmdr. H.W. Howe.  Drawn the day after the battle, it shows the frantic 20-minute engagement. (War Record of the Fifth Naval District, 1942)

A combination of this hit, and likely the remaining U-boat crew scuttling the ship, culminated in the rapid sinking of U-85, the first German submarine sunk by the United States Navy in World War II. Roper circled back through the last location of the U-boat where it proceeded to deploy 11 depth charges into the water. The action from the first spotlight contact aboard Roper to sinking had taken less than 20 minutes. The victorious destroyer remained on station until morning but was unable to stop and render aid to any possible survivors, as Howe feared that U-boats operated in pairs and his ship could be in danger if it slowed. The bodies of 29 German sailors recovered afterward became the first foreign combatants interred in American soil since the War of 1812.

USS Roper as seen from above in this 1942 photograph.
The starboard, aft 3-inch gun struck the fatal blow to U-85.
Notice the abundance of depth charges on the stern as well
as amidship. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

Sometimes a myth surrounding a ship is harder to destroy than the ship itself. Case in point: A U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings article by Parke Rouse Jr., from June 1982 contains what today might be called, “fake history.” 

Rouse claimed that when some deceased submarine crewmembers were recovered, they were “wearing civilian clothes with their wallets filled with U.S. currency and identification cards,” inferring that their mission was clandestine in nature. This is only partly true. German U-boat sailors often wore civilian clothing in conjunction with their military issued gear for comfort and functionality. The reports compiled by the Navy on April 15 and 17, 1942, described the type of clothing that was recovered as a mix of civilian and military garments. The reports also listed the pocket contents recovered from the crew. While identification tags and currency were recovered, there were zero instances of U.S. currency or identification documents being found.

Rouse's article also states, “They had been preparing to row ashore in a rubber raft when the submarine was discovered.” There is no mention of a raft in Howe’s after action report, nor was a raft documented as having been recovered by the Navy. Also the submarine was 14 miles from the coast when sunk, a long distance to row at night with no coast visible. It is safe to say this bit of information can hold no credence and after scrutiny, ought be discarded unless some primary documentation can be found supporting the claim.

Although some military intelligence was gathered from the 29 recovered crewmembers inspected at Naval Operating Base Norfolk after the battle, much of what they carried, such as this photograph, was personal in nature. (War Record of the Fifth Naval District, 1942) 

Of the German bodies hauled aboard Roper, Rouse wrote, "Two were officers, [and] one of them the U-85’s captain.” This is categorically false. Naval intelligence officers positively established the identities of all 29 bodies. The original Navy report of April 15 states that it was believed that one of the bodies recovered may have been of the captain, but eventually only one casualty was identified as an officer: Oberleutnant Hans Sanger. The body of the U-85’s captain, Oberleutnant (possibly Kapitanleutnant at time of sinking) Eberhard Greger, has never been recovered. Once we put the various pieces together, it is safe to state that U-85 was not involved with any type of spying operation.

Among the personal pictures found among the belongings of the ill-fated submarine crew is this image of U-85 taken sometime before her fourth and final war patrol (War Record of the Fifth Naval District, 1942),  To the right is a photograph by Brett Seymour of the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center, taken from a similar viewpoint in 2009, which shows a possible penetration of the pressure hull from USS Roper’s gunfire. The wreck of U-85 is considered a war grave by both the United States and Germany. (Courtesy the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA))  

Among the articles recovered by the Navy in the flotsam was the diary of Erich Degenkold, a sailor aboard the U-85. In it he records a short statement describing each day. The night before he was killed, his final entry ominously foreshadowed the events that would soon unfold. “American beacons and searchlights visible at night.”

After the 29 bodies recovered from U-85 were brought back to Hampton Roads aboard USS Roper, they were transferred to Naval Operating Base Norfolk (now known as Naval Station Norfolk) aboard USS Sciota (ATO-30). After an intelligence investigation was conducted on the evening of April 14, 1942, Sailors at a hangar at nearby Naval Air Station Norfolk prepared to transport the bodies to Hampton National Cemetery. (National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Still Picture Branch via NOAA)

Sailors from Naval Operating Base Norfolk (now known as Naval Station Norfolk) move a box containing the body of a U-85 crewmember to a truck during the transport of the deceased sailors from Naval Air Station Norfolk to Hampton National Cemetery. According to an intelligence report dated April 17, 1942, the US Naval Hospital in Portsmouth did not have enough caskets for such a large mass-burial, and neither did local funeral businesses. The Veterans Administration in Kecoughtan (Hampton) came through, however, and supplied enough caskets and shipping boxes to ensure a proper burial. (NARA Still Picture Branch via NOAA)

On the evening of April 15, 1942, 29 sailors from U-85 were buried Hampton National Cemetery, Hampton, Virginia, with military honors. Fifty-two prisoners from Fort Monroe, Virginia, prepared the graves, and Soldiers from the fort acted as pallbearers. At 8 pm, the burial service was read by a Catholic chaplain, followed by the Protestant chaplain, Lieutenant Junior Grade R.A. Lundquist. A firing party of 24 Sailors from the Naval Operating Base fired three volleys, and Taps was sounded. The event attracted dozens of onlookers outside the cemetery walls. (NARA Still Picture Branch via NOAA)

The area of the Hampton National Cemetery containing the U-85 graves, as it looks today.  Union soldiers from nearby Fort Monroe were some of the first to be buried at the cemetery in Hampton, Virginia, but it is also the final resting place for Confederate soliders from the Civil War, as well as German and Italian prisoners from World War II. (M.C. Farrington)  

--For additional information about the USS Roper and U-85 please visit the NOAA website, and the Naval History and Heritage Command website. Special thanks to the folks at Uboat.net who maintain an excellent website full of links to primary sources about U-85 and many other German submarines. Several artifacts from U-85, including an enigma machine, can be seen on display at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in North Carolina.

Before the Pearl Harbor Attack, the "Sleeping Giant" was Actually Hard at Work in Hampton Roads

Each year the first week of December is one in which the mass media dutifully reminds the American public of the infamous Japanese attack upon American military facilities on the island of Oahu and the over 2,000 Americans who perished on December 7, 1941.  One way to do that is to broadcast documentaries and feature films about it.  One of them, Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), has for generations taught the public about the attack.  In an iconic scene near the end of the movie, the architect of the successful attack, Admiral Isoruoku Yamamoto (Soh Yamamura), ruefully opines afterward, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with terrible resolve."

Note that this message that reached Naval Air Station Norfolk on the afternoon of December 7, 1941, is devoid of details.  It gets straight to the point, merely instructing all recipients to "EXECUTE WPL FORTY SIX (Also known as War Plan Rainbow Five) AGAINST JAPAN."  War Plan Rainbow Five, a highly detailed set of instructions on how to respond to a specific attack scenario in a particular geographic area, had been promulgated to the fleet by Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark on May 26, 1941.  On November 27, Stark issued a "war warning" to all American naval forces in the Pacific to "[e]xecute an appropriate defensive deployment preparatory to carrying out the tasks assigned in WPL 46." A young naval officer from Tennessee named William B. Wingo was Officer of the Day (OOD) when this message reached NAS Norfolk.  He served another two decades in the Navy, active and reserve, while making Norfolk his home for another half-century.  He died in 1994.  (Courtesy the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

The apocryphal line says less about what Yamamoto really said aboard the Japanese battleship Nagato in December 1941 and more about the beliefs of some Hollywood producers and writers nearly three decades later.  With this in mind it seems that they believed that Americans collectively refused to get involved in the war until after American territory was attacked.   But was America really so "America First" in 1941?  Some academics and reporters seem to think so, 75 years on.  A recent Florida State University news release called the attacks “a brutal salvo that forced the United States into the fray of World War II,” and a national security writer for US News and World Report recently wrote of the attack's significance: “Pearl Harbor was supposed to serve as a lesson that American popular disapproval for going to war should not have allowed its government to fail in preparing for one.”

This widely held assumption about prewar American ill-preparedness ignores abundant evidence that thousands if not millions of Americans had been actively preparing the nation for a war that presidents from Theodore Roosevelt onward to his cousin Franklin knew the nation had to be ready for. And ready, the nation was. You would be hard pressed to find a better example of this prewar preparation than in Hampton Roads, where by mid-1941, one could hardly be blamed for thinking that the nation was already at war.  In fact, local shipyard workers and Sailors had been preparing since President Herbert Hoover ordered a significant part of the Atlantic Squadron transferred from Norfolk to the Pacific in 1931 during his administration’s Asia pivot to counter Japanese expansionism. 

Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1941 was bustling with activity, just as it had been for several years, with the battleship Alabama (BB-60) under construction and several other battleships, including USS New York (BB-34), undergoing modernization. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum Photograph)

The shift of so many ships from Norfolk had hit the local economy pretty hard at first, just as the Great Depression was entering its darkest days.  Rents and the cost of living dropped over 20 percent over the next few years, yet by 1935, they started to rise again, thanks to shipyard and construction  jobs springing up in the defense sector.  Because of the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Vinson-Trammell Act during the decade preceding the Pearl Harbor attack, not to mention the Naval Act of 1938, Norfolk Navy Yard and what is now Newport News Shipbuilding spent the decade making up for the warship tonnage lost as a result of Hoover’s Asia pivot, hiring many thousands in the process.  Norfolk Navy Yard built nine destroyers during the 1930s as its workforce expanded to 7,625 by September 1, 1939, when World War II actually began in Europe.  By 1940, 1,000 employees were being added to the shipyard’s rolls every month.  Newport News Shipyard increased from 6,500 workers in 1935 to more than 10,000 in 1940. 

Still being painted before her first war deployment, USS Indiana (BB-58) is shown here in September 1942 off Old Point Comfort, with Fort Monroe and the Chamberlin Hotel in the background. (Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph)

Throughout 1941, the naval expansion was bearing fruit. On February 1, after an 18-year hiatus, the United States Atlantic Fleet was resurrected as a command under Admiral Ernest King. By mid-March, King commanded 159 ships.  By October 20, when the aircraft carrier Hornet (CV-8), built at Newport News Shipbuilding, was commissioned under the command of Capt. Marc A. "Pete" Mitscher, the Atlantic Fleet had more than doubled, to 355 ships.  The battleship Indiana (BB-58) was launched in Newport News on November 21, while her sister ship Alabama (BB-60) was only a few months away from launching in Norfolk when news of the Pearl Harbor attack broke over local radio at a little after 2 pm on December 7.  

This aerial photograph of Sewells Point shows the nearly complete landing field at Naval Air Station Norfolk on May 13, 1941, located on 1,041 acres of newly-acquired land between Mason Creek at lower right and the rapidly disappearing Boush Creek (spelled “Bush” on some older maps) in the middle of the photograph, which once separated the new runways from the original Naval Operating Base area and older Chambers Field runways in the background. Newport News can be seen on the horizon. Boush Creek would completely disappear during subsequent construction and the mouth of Mason Creek would be covered by the rapidly expanding air station. The project was spearheaded by the Virginia Engineering Corporation of Newport News, which was awarded on June 29, 1940, the largest construction contract in Norfolk’s history up to that time, ultimately totaling almost $75 million. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum Photograph)

As seen from the control tower at Naval Air Station Norfolk (which was still under construction at the time) on May 28, 1941, the first aircraft touches down on the new landing field being built by the Virginia Engineering Corporation of Newport News.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum Photograph)

During 1940 and 1941, the Naval Operating Base at Sewells Point was virtually doubling in size with the acquisition of land for a new South Annex. Naval Air Station Norfolk had also added about 1,500 acres of runways to the east of the base in the past year and a half, absorbing even Norfolk's old commercial airport. Between 1938 and 1941, NAS Norfolk had already provided aircrews, material, maintenance, training and repair capability for two carriers built in Newport News during the 1930s, Ranger (CV-4), and Yorktown (CV-5), as well as the aircraft carrier Wasp (CV-7).
 
Among the six battle-weary British warships that paid call in Hampton Roads for vital repairs during the summer of 1941, the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious had arrived for repairs and structural modifications at Norfolk Naval Shipyard on May 12, so British pilots from Illustrious and a sister ship, HMS Formidable, which arrived August 25, were likely some of the first to benefit from the major expansion of the air station’s runways and hangars, as well as its aircraft testing and repair facilities, that were completed that summer. Royal Navy Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived to take command of Illustrious at a ceremony at the yard on August 28, 1941. Norfolk was only one of the locations Lord Mountbatten visited on his speaking tour across the America, professing his belief to the consternation of some senior American military leaders that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to surprise attack. Both carriers left the area for Europe, reinvigorated and ready for battle, shortly after the official American entry into the war.

In addition to the major expansion of existing naval facilities in the area, new bases which still serve the fleet today came into being during the months leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack.  Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek had been commissioned on September 2, and Anti-Aircraft training and Test Center, Dam Neck, was completed on November 29, 1941.  Within months, work would also begin on another new facility, Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, which would train members of some of the Navy's first Mobile Construction Battalions, known later as Seabees.

More ships, planes, shore stations and runways meant that more Sailors were needed in a hurry, and recruits were being brought to Hampton Roads in exponentially larger numbers. By 1940, the traditional areas of downtown Norfolk open to Sailors could no longer hold them. The downtown Norfolk YMCA, for example, recorded 213,000 more Sailors entering its doors than it had just a year earlier. In addition to the hordes of single Sailors, Rear Adm. Joseph K. Taussig, who as commandant of the Fifth Naval District led the effort to prepare Naval Operating Base Norfolk for the Second World War, estimated that there were 7,500 married Navy personnel with over 22,000 dependents in the area, not accounting for those who wanted also to bring their families to the area but could not for want of housing.  In response he and Rear Adm. Ben Moreel, head of the Bureau of Yards and Docks (and later the founder of the Seabees), launched the first Navy efforts to construct housing for its own enlisted members on a large scale.

Although the evidence is clear that preparations for war were in full swing by late-1941, it would be no exaggeration to say that, at least for the United States Navy, an undeclared war with Germany had already begun. German U-boats were prowling off the east coast, dodging the neutrality patrols that had been instituted under the order of President Roosevelt in 1939. The destroyer Greer (DD-145) had narrowly missed being torpedoed in September 1941 after chasing a German submarine with the help of British planes. In response, Roosevelt had issued “shoot on sight” orders for all US vessels on patrol. He then ordered that destroyers of the Atlantic Fleet relieve their British counterparts on convoy escort duty to Iceland, escalating the potential for armed hostilities between American destroyers of the new Support Force and German submarines. On October 17, seven Sailors were killed when the Norfolk-based destroyer Kearny (DD-432) sustained a torpedo hit, and on the 31st, USS Reuben James (DD-245) sank into the frigid waters off Iceland after a torpedo attack, taking 115 of her crew with her. Although actual declarations of war would be voted upon by Congress against Japan and the other Axis powers about seven weeks later, it is safe to say that Hampton Roads was already playing the role it would play throughout the war for months, if not years, beforehand.
 
December 7 is a time to remember those who lost their lives in America’s far-flung Pacific outposts after one of the worst tactical intelligence failures in American history, yet should we not also bring to remembrance those who paved the path to victory, and paid the ultimate price, before that fateful morning? Their hard work and sacrifice made it possible to bomb Tokyo a little over four months later and strategically turn the tide of the war only two months after that (something Adm. Yamamoto actually predicted could happen), and place victorious American troops firmly in control of the Japanese home islands less then four years later. Improvement in intelligence collection and analysis deservedly receives credit for the victory at Midway six months after Pearl Harbor, but without the "giant" building, modernization, and expansion programs begun years before the Pearl Harbor attack, much of which were carried out in Hampton Roads, that intelligence would not have been actionable.

Pier side scene taken from USS Ranger (CV-4) at Naval Operating Base Norfolk on September 20, 1941, showing a Grumman J2F-5 "Duck" being hoisted from the pier. Note spare SOC-1 floats (foreground); Grumman F4F -3s in background. Ship at upper right is USS WYOMING (AG-17); unidentified AO is at near right. Also note family members on pier (lower right) and civilian trucks at various points on the pier. Although the largest carrier in the Atlantic Fleet, because of her size and capability, Ranger never joined the fight against Japan. (Naval History and Heritage Command Image)

A Mystery Beneath the HRBT

Marine Archaeologist Dr. John Broadwater looks out over the James River from the tip of Willoughby Spit, where one or more ship hulks lie just off the beach, extending towards the eastbound lanes of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel at the upper right, which carry traffic from across the river in Hampton, seen in the far distance. (Photograph courtesy Bill Utley)

No matter where you go in the world, you are rarely far from relics of history.  While underwater archaeologists from the Naval History and Heritage Command travel the globe in search of discoveries that not only clear up old mysteries but also redefine our understanding of naval history, Hampton Roads is the kind of place where untold discoveries await just below the surface.

Case in point: The Hampton Roads Naval Museum's singular collection of Civil War artifacts from the sloop-of-war Cumberland and the Confederate raider Florida.  Both wrecks lie within a half-mile of one another at shallow depths in the James River.

For this week's post we turn our attention to something lying just beneath the surface to the east of those two wrecks, at the tip of the narrow tendril of sand between Sewells Point and the Ocean View section of Norfolk known as Willoughby Spit.  Overlooked by most commuters passing nearby on the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT) southeast from the Virginia Peninsula, a dark form lapped at by the waters of Chesapeake Bay has been shrouded in mystery for decades. Generations of local residents have passed along the apocryphal tale that the jumble of dark metal mostly obscured by sand is that of a German U-Boat that tried unsuccessfully to make it into the roadstead during World War II, only to become fatally trapped in steel antisubmarine netting.

HRNM Curator Joe Judge cleared up the mystery for readers of the Bay Journal in 2010 when he identified the shallow hull as the remains of the torpedo boat USS Stringham, which was decommissioned in 1913 and sold to a private company a decade later.  But when you consider what the torpedo boat actually  looked like, it is not difficult to imagine why she would have been mistaken for a submarine for all these years.


Painted a dark green, the torpedo boat USS Stringham, photographed in 1907 during the Jamestown Exposition, contrasted sharply with the USS Maine (BB-10) in the background.  (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

Although not a submersible, Stringham and other torpedo boats like her were built during the same era of technological transition that was taking place in navies around the world near the turn of the last century.  The submarine was invented around the same time simply as a submersible form of torpedo boat, while vessels like USS Stringham were employed to do the same thing on the surface.  These fast, lightly-armed boats would close in for the kill with their torpedoes and withdraw before the huge, sluggish pre-dreadnought battleships of the time could react.  By contrast, early submarines made up for lack of speed with stealth. 

It stands to reason that the first torpedo boat commissioned by United States Navy in 1890 would be named after the daring Lt. William B. Cushing, who used a steam launch equipped with a fixed spar torpedo to sink the Confederate ironclad Albemarle in October 1864.  The invention of the screw-driven torpedo during the 1880s paralleled the development of small, fast, inexpensive boats to carry them, making them a cost-effective way for navies to neutralize much larger, more expensive capital ships in the way Cushing did. 

USS Cushing (TB-1) was not only the first of a new class of warship for the Navy, but it also inaugurated a new way of naming vessels for figures who played key roles in American naval history.  Torpedo Boat 19 was named for Flag Officer Silas Horton Stringham, the commander of the newly-established North Atlantic Blockading Squadron in Hampton Roads after the outbreak of the American Civil War.  Although his long service to the United States Navy began during the War of 1812 and he was a captain during the Mexican-American War, his status as a key figure in naval history, particularly in Hampton Roads, was cemented after the outbreak of the Civil War, after many other long-serving naval officers resigned to join the Confederacy.

Silas Stringham, who first saw combat during the War of 1812 as a teenage midshipman, is shown here after his promotion to rear admiral in 1862. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

Aboard his flagship USS Minnesota (where William B. Cushing was working as an acting master's mate), Stringham entered Hampton Roads in May 1861 and quickly began rounding up blockade runners. Three months later he commanded a joint Army-Navy expedition, along with Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, against Confederate forts Hatteras and Clark guarding Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina.  Stringham later accepted the sword of Confederate Commodore Samuel Barron after he and nearly 700 other prisoners were taken into custody on August 29.  Stringham was relieved by Flag Officer Louis M. Goldsborough aboard Minnesota on September 23, 1861, less than six months before the Battle of Hampton Roads.  

Sponsored by Edna Stringham Creighton, granddaughter of Rear Adm. Stringham, and commissioned on  June 10, 1899, USS Stringham performed a number of operational duties up and down the eastern seaboard, including Hampton Roads, including as a host for the nation's news media, until succumbing to that fate that befalls all warships great and small: obsolescence.  Only the very elect of historic ships escape the fate of torpedo boats like Stringham, which was built too late to have earned a mention in history during the Spanish-American War. 

Well before World War I, this type of vessel was outmoded by a new class of ship, the "Torpedo-Boat Destroyer," which was designed specifically to protect capital ships from torpedo boats.  This was later shortened to "destroyer" (DD).  It just so happens that the last Spruance-class destroyer was also named in honor of the man whose daring, unconventional attack changed naval warfare.  USS Cushing (DD-985), the fifth ship named for the legendary naval officer, was decommissioned in 2005.  The Arleigh Burke and Zumwalt-class multirole guided-missile destroyers (DDGs) continue to serve an important role in protecting the larger ships of strike groups today.

Decommissioned on November 21, 1913, Stringham was stored at Norfolk Navy Yard for nearly a decade until she was sold to the E.L. Hurst company in May 1923 for the sum of $256.76.  After being purchased, however, she somehow came to came to rest in the shallow water at the tip of Willoughby Spit instead of being broken up at a shipyard in North Carolina.  What remains to be sorted out is just how and why this happened.  

This undated aerial photo looking east taken sometime after the ex-USS Stringham (TB-19) came to rest just off the tip of Sewells Point, presumably in the early-1920s, but before the construction of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT) during the mid-1950s, shows the hull of the torpedo boat just offshore, with what might be a barge alongside.  Whether this is evidence of an effort to re-float the hull or to fill it with concrete as part of an effort to limit beach erosion remains to be established. (Courtesy the Ocean View Station Museum)   

Over the decades, the mystery of how and why the ex-torpedo boat came to rest off Willoughby Spit receded back into the mire, replaced by a legend about a lost German submarine, but new technology has reignited the mystery.  Dr. John Broadwater, after a four-decade career as a marine archaeologist, including postings as chief scientist of the USS Monitor expedition and serving as senior underwater archaeologist at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, has brought us evidence that might force a reassessment of our assumptions about the former Navy torpedo boat.

This enhanced satellite image shows the presumed remains of the former torpedo boat USS Stringham, along with a submerged barge alongside, plus a second, larger, unidentified vessel which extends roughly to the north, completely under the eastbound lanes of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT). (Courtesy John Broadwater)

Recent satellite imagery has shown the unmistakable outline of a second, larger hull behind the former USS Stringham.  If accurate, this means that perhaps the torpedo boat was not accidentally lost after all, but was perhaps put there deliberately as a part of a concerted effort to stave off beach erosion.  There could even be yet another, as yet unknown story here waiting to be uncovered.  Only further research and exploration will solve this mystery.  Meanwhile, we are reaching out to you, our readers, in an effort to gather any other evidence you might possess as to the identity of the second vessel, or any other details or clues you might know of.



Since the original publication of this post, HRNM senior docent Hunt Lewis has conducted extensive research into the identity of the mystery hull and has concluded:

Internet research of ship casualties as far back as 1900 do not indicate that any vessels of the size of the “Mystery Ship” went ashore on Willoughby Spit. Careful scaling of the outline of the “mystery ship” against the known dimensions of the torpedo boat Stringham reveals that the outline closely matches that of the underwater half-breadth plan of a Word War II Liberty ship. During the construction phase of the first HRBT tunnel, the inactivated Liberty ship SS E. Kirby Smith was being used as a grain barge and was rammed during a storm by the SS Nyland on March 17, 1956 within the confines of Hampton Roads. The SS E. Kirby Smith was damaged to such an extent that the ship was broken-up locally. Available records so far about the SS E. Kirby Smith end at that point. It is my conjecture that before the SS E. Kirby Smith was completely scrapped, the cut down hulk was purchased, towed to its present position and sunk as a “ready made groin.” Little notice was taken of the event because very little of the hulk probably appeared above the water, and by that time the hulk had lost its identity as the SS E. Kirby Smith.


As new technologies have recently revealed famous lost shipwrecks such as the WWII-era aircraft carrier USS Independence (CVL 22), new mysteries have also emerged right here in Hampton Roads, even in the shallows under the bridge thousands of today's Sailors take to Naval Station Norfolk every morning.  Please stay tuned as we continue to search for clues, and in the meantime, please chime in! 

The Daybook: Volume 16, Issue 3-USS Chesapeake Captured

The next issue of The Daybook is currently online at http://tinyurl.com/thedaybook. In this issue, we cover the capture of Hampton Roads' own frigate USS Chesapeake by the frigate HMS Shannon.  We also look at the local operations of the United States Revenue Cutter Service during the War of 1812.   Further, the Museum Sage makes a plea to rescue the phrase "Don't Give Up the Ship!" from misuse.

Print copies of The Daybook are a benefit of being a member of the Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation.  Call 757-445-9932 or visit http://www.hrnhf.org to support the foundation and the Naval Museum today!

"My Country Right or Wrong"-What Decatur Actually Said and Why He Said It

The phrase "My country right or wrong" is one of those iconic American quotes that has almost become cliche. Like many iconic phrases, however, it has been often misquoted, taken out of context, and misused.

Commodore Stephen Decatur uttered the phrase in 1816 as a toast during a dinner held here in Norfolk. After sealing the final victory over the Barbary states in late 1815, several port cities held victory celebrations in Decatur's honor. Norfolk politicans/lawyers Littelon Tazwell, John Nivision, and Robert Taylor organized the event. After dinner, servants cleared the table and brought out the wine. Several men stood up to give toasts.

It started off reasonably enough with one person quoting a recently written poem out of Baltimore:

"The Star Spangled Banner-Long May it wave
O'er the Land and Home of the Brave."

However, as the evening rolled on, the toasts became more jingoistic and even delusional. Two in particular went:

"The militia of the United States-They have triumphed over the conquerors of the conqueror of Europe." (No doubt said by Taylor, who served as the local milita commander. However, during the War of 1812, the militiamen frequently broke and ran in fights with British regulars.)
 
"The Crescent-Its luster was dimmed even by the twinkling of our STARS." (The "Crescent" refers to the Islamic kingdoms in North Africa.)

It was in this setting that Decatur stood up and stated,

Newspaper account of the dinner
(Click image to enlarge)


"Our country-In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong."

In this context, Decatur's toast is not a call for undying, blind patriotic devotion to one's country as the expression is often used in modern political discourse. It is rather a prayer for guidance, wisdom, and temperance in foreign relations.

Even though the toast was non-partisan and neutral in nature, it was not universally well-received. Federalists denounced Decatur for being a stooge for the Democratic-Republican party (the sponsors of the dinner), as they believed no member of the Armed Forces should speak at a political function. They partially excused the commodore by claiming he must have being drinking too much wine at the time. Some believed that members of America's Armed Forces should not boast about their military victories at any public event.

Nonetheless, the toast raised Decatur's public profile to new heights. Newspaper editors across the nation, whether they agreed with the commodore or not, reprinted the quote. Some even mention that Decatur would make a good President.

Deleting an Urban Legend on USS Constitution

The Internet is a wonderful tool for distributing information.  Unfortunately, that includes urban legends and misinformation.  You made have seen this e-mail forwarded to your inbox:
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Subject: A LITTLE KNOWN TIDBIT

LITTLE KNOWN TIDBIT OF NAVAL HISTORY...

The U. S. S.. Constitution (Old Ironsides), as a combat vessel, carried 48,600 gallons of fresh water for her crew of 475 officers and men. This was sufficient to last six months of sustained operations at sea. She carried no evaporators (i.e. fresh water distillers).

However, let it be noted that according to her ship's log, "On July 27, 1798, the U.S.S. Constitution sailed from Boston with a full complement of 475 officers and men, 48,600 gallons of fresh water; 7,400 cannon shot; 11,600 pounds of black powder and 79,400 gallons of rum."

Her mission: "To destroy and harass English shipping."
Making Jamaica on 6 October, she took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum.

Then she headed for the Azores , arriving there 12 November. . .She provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 64,300 gallons of Portuguese wine.

On 18 November, she set sail for England . In the ensuing days she defeated five British men-of-war and captured and scuttled 12 English merchant ships, salvaging only the rum aboard each.

By 26 January, her powder and shot were exhausted. Nevertheless, although unarmed she made a night raid up the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Her landing party captured a whisky distillery and transferred 40,000 gallons of single malt Scotch aboard by dawn. Then she headed home.

The U. S. S. Constitution arrived in Boston on 20 February 1799, with no cannon shot, no food, no powder, no rum, no wine, no whisky, and 38,600 gallons of water.

I told my students, "That’s probably where the expression ‘Sailing the  High Seas originated.’"

GO NAVY!
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Not only is this "forward" full of errors, it is somewhat insulting to the real history of "Old Ironsides."  Here are just a few of the errors:

1) In 1799, the United States was war with France, not England.  The British were actually our unofficial allies in the "Quasi-War" with the French Republic. 
2) The United States Navy moved away from using Jamaican rum as part of the grog ration and moved towards more home grown spirits such as Kentucky whisky.  Captains also had a strict policy against public intoxication.  A sailor found less than sober was often subject to flogging.
3) Speaking of Jamaica, the colony was a major British naval station.  Why would it outfit an American warship during an alleged war with the British?
4) USS Constitution defeated four British warships (Java, Guerriere, Levant, and Cyane) ...in the War of 1812.
5) Having said that, Constitution never raided the home isles.  However, the brig USS Argus did (see the book Fatal Cruise of the Argus). 
6) When a warship captured a merchant ship, the alcohol supply was the last thing on the captain's mind.  Instead, he was looking for goods he could sell when the cruise was over. 

I strongly suggest going to Constitution's website to see more about the real ship.  Better yet, go to Boston and see the ship in person.