US Navy of 1915
11-minute video fragment
This video was found on the National Film Preservation Foundation site. It was produced by the Lyman H. Howe Company from a 35mm negative and identified by Charles “Buckey” Grimm. A music track was added.
The film was made with the full support of the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, who believed in the power of motion pictures to convince isolationists of the importance of building a strong American navy. A former newspaperman who knew the value of publicity, Daniels allowed Howe’s camera crew remarkable shipboard access. The results show sailors as they go about their day—doing repairs, cleaning the deck, exercising, as well as demonstrating naval might. The film drew praise as capturing “the pulse-beat of the complex life that throbs through our dreadnoughts from reveille to ‘taps.’”
Background
This was not the first time the Navy had turned to film to tell its story. Early on, the Navy had collaborated with the Biograph Company on a now-lost series of 60 short films showing sailors and officers at work. The series screened at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland before being put to use in a Midwest recruitment tour. Naval facilities and ships also figured prominently in early newsreels and narratives. The service took care to ensure that depictions presented it in a favorable light and reserved the right, for commercial films shot with official approval, to reuse them for the Navy’s own purposes.
Buckey identified the fragment through careful detective work involving the ships and ordnance on display in the fragment. For example, the “E-2” class submarine, pictured in the opening scene, was taken out of service in 1915, and the shells mentioned in an inter-title—“It costs the U.S. government $970.00 for each 14 inch projectile fired”—were added to the naval arsenal the year earlier. The clincher was matching a frame from the documentary with an image used in a newspaper piece to illustrate the Howe film. Buckey reported his research at the 2010 Orphan Film Symposium at New York University.
About the Preservation
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia generously lent the nitrate print to make the preservation copies. Edge codes on the source material date from 1917, suggesting this print of an earlier film may have been distributed to demonstrate American naval strength after the United States entered World War I. New prints are available at the Library of Congress and the NFSA.
Ships Identified — by Tony Fernandez (CWO-4, USN-ret)
The first battleship shown is either the USS South Carolina (BB-26) or her sister, the USS Michigan (BB-27), which were the first US-built class of “dreadnoughts,” started in 1906 but not commissioned until two years later. They were armed with a main battery of eight 12-inch guns arranged in four turrets disposed along the ship’s centerline, and had 12 coal-fired boilers and two 4-cylinder triple-expansion engines driving two screws.
The next battleship shown is definitely the USS North Dakota (BB-29), identified from her sister, the USS Delaware (BB-28), by the placement of the pole mast at the rear end of the platform atop the main mast and the three identifying horizontal bands around her aft stack. As the next advance in US dreadnoughts, they added a fifth 12-inch twin-gunned turret at the rear of the ships. The third battleship shown is definitely the USS Delaware (BB-28) because of her turret arrangement, the mainmast’s pole mast placement, and the two identifying horizontal bands around her aft stack.
The open mount shown in the gunnery drill was probably a 5-inch, although the later view of a full gun crew was probably a cluster around a 3-inch aboard an early destroyer.
The large shells being loaded were in fact 14-inch projectiles, first used aboard the sister battleships USS New York (BB-34) and USS Texas (BB-35), both commissioned in 1914. The smaller powder cans were probably for the 5-inch secondary battery guns generally in case mates rather than turrets; note the larger powder cans that several sailors are leaning on in the background, used for the main battery.
The conic-shaped instrument used when splicing a rope or line is called a “FID.” A marlin spike is the metal conic-shaped instrument used to splice wire-rope.
The USS Wyoming (BB-32) was a sister to the USS Arkansas (BB-33), both commissioned in 1912. They had six turrets with twin 12-inch guns arranged along the centerline—two forward, two immediately aft of the mainmast, and two more toward the extreme end of the ships. Curiously, the Arkansas, New York, and Texas all survived to fight in World War II. All predecessors had been scrapped due to obsolescence and the 1922 Washington Naval Conference’s provisions, with the exception of the USS Utah (ex-BB-31), which had been de-militarized. That same Utah, then in use as a radio-controlled target ship, was sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor in 1941, having been mistaken for a carrier because of timbers laid across her decks.
The primary reference used is Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905–1970 by Siegfried Breyer (ISBN 0-385-07247-3), which covers all nations during that period and contains detailed comments on history, construction, equipment, modifications, and disposition—including drawings showing each ship as-built and after major modifications.
About Tony Fernandez
Tony has had an affinity for warships, their construction and functions since the age of 14, beginning with the early plastic model kits of the mid-1950s. He served active USN from June 1959 until retiring in December 1979, starting as an ET before being persuaded to apply for Warrant Officer around the time he made ETC. He served aboard Rigel (AF-58), Great Sitkin (AE-17), Thor (ARC-4), Miller (DD-535), Springfield (CLG-7), Little Rock (CLG-4), and John F. Kennedy (CV-67), with his final shore duty as Electronics Officer for COMNAVSURFPAC in Coronado, CA.
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