USS Neversink

Near as I can figure it, I live about 700 miles from the nearest large body of water.  Thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers, I live near a couple of lakes and even near a river that actually has a little water in it about six months out of the year. The rest of the desert is drier than Amarillo on Sunday.  Like many other people who live so far from an ocean, I’m fascinated with books about the days of sail.

The house fairly drips with history books about naval warfare during the time of Napoleon, mixed in with books by Forrester, Monsarratt, O’Brian, and Ransome.  Some of the best of these are those written by Herman Melville, particularly Moby Dick and Billy Budd.  There is one book by Melville, however, that—while I enjoyed it—I would suggest that you put at the end of your reading list: White-Jackets.  The fifth of Melville’s books, White Jackets is sort of a rough draft that eventually evolved into those two later books, both of which are more fun to read.

Melville is an interesting author of sea-faring novels:  his work is so thoroughly researched that what some readers think are outrageous feats of creative fiction are actually pretty accurate historical accounts.  Melville spent time in the merchant navy, sailed aboard whalers, and enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served aboard the USS United States.

The very first ship in our navy, the USS United States, was named by President George Washington, and was the first of the American ‘Super Frigates’.  At the time of her construction, frigates were fourth rate ships of the line, far smaller and less well armed that first rate ships of the line such as the HMS Victory that Lord Nelson used at the Battle of Trafalgar.  First rate ships of the line and the fleet of necessary support vessels were far too expensive for a fledgling nation to maintain, nor were we likely to need them unless we were stupid enough to declare war on a major naval power like France or Great Britain.  (Unfortunately, we did both in the next fifteen years.)

Since we couldn’t afford a ship of the line, we sort of fudged a little.  The United States and her sister ships, like the USS Constitution, were larger and carried far more armament than the usual frigate but were still small enough to be faster than larger ships of the line, enabling these super frigates to be able to run away from anything they couldn’t beat in a naval battle.  This is the same general idea as the pocket battleships used during World War II.

The USS United States fought the Barbary Pirates, she fought the French during the Quasi War, and she was the heroine of the War of 1812.  Shortly before that war started, the British captain of the HMS Macedonian wagered a beaver skin hat to his close friend, Captain Stephen Decatur, that should the two ships ever meet in combat, the Macedonian would be victorious.  When the war started a few months later, Decatur easily won the bet when the USS United States dismasted and captured the Macedonian.  I’m still not sure if Decatur ever received that beaver skin hat, but the prize commission rewarded him handsomely for adding a new ship to our navy.

A less famous (if not notorious) victory occurred in 1841.  While sailing in the Pacific, Commodore of the Pacific Squadron, Thomas ap Catesby Jones, spotted a British ship hurriedly sailing north.  Since he knew that war with Mexico was imminent, he suspected that the British ship was attempting to capture California, that was then still a part of Mexico.  Sailing northward, the USS United States captured Monterey from the puzzled Mexicans defending it, demanding the surrender of all of California.  The next day, the Commodore learned that the United States was not at war with Mexico, and apologetically gave the town back.  This might have been the end of a naval career had he not learned that the British ship had actually captured Hawaii, so he sailed there and forced the Brits to give the islands back to the Kingdom of Hawaii.  This was a few decades before we seized it ourselves and more than a century before Hawaii became a state.

Shortly after this, Melville served as a sailor on the vessel, where he witnessed the incredible harsh discipline and deplorable living conditions imposed upon the ordinary seamen by the ship’s officers.  The ship’s own log lists over 160 floggings in the year Melville was aboard.  This was the material that the author used to write White-Jacket, with many of the book’s characters plainly patterned after the ship’s actual officers.  When the book was printed, the publisher sent a copy to every member of the United States Senate.  The book was directly responsible for the Navy’s outlawing flogging aboard ships of the U.S. Navy.  (The senator who introduced the bill was the father of the fiancée to John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot President Lincoln.  But, that's a story for another day.)

When Melville served on the ship, it was already old, approaching half a century in age, which was an unbelievably long time for a wooden-hulled ship to remain in service, so the author named the ship in his novel the USS Neversink.  This was a pretty good joke at the time, but as it turned out, the ship still had a few more decades of life than Melville realized.

The navy finally retired the old ship, decommissioning her in Norfolk, Virginia, where she spent many years slowly rotting while tied to a dock.  In April 1861, the Confederate forces were moving towards the naval base and the remaining federal forces were ordered to destroy everything of value before the rebels could capture the port.  An old wooden ship more than sixty years old, left rotting for more than a decade, wasn’t even worth the bother of setting on fire, so the navy just left her tied to the dock as they evacuated ahead of the Confederate Army.

The Confederate forces, desperate for ships, recommissioned the ship, loading her up with guns and used the ship for harbor defense.  With a sense of humor not normally attributed to the Confederacy, the ship was named the CSS United States!  (Or maybe the Confederates were just superstitious, as it is considered bad luck to rename a ship.  In any case, the Union navy referred to her as the CSS Confederate States.)

A year later, when Union forces were moving to recapture Norfolk, the Confederates decided to sink the vessel in the middle of the Elizabeth River to block Union ships.  Confederate sailors destroyed a crate of axes trying to hack a hole through her hold, and finally had to drill holes through the solid hull to sink her.  The dense, hard white oak used to build these ships is the reason her sister ship, the USS Constitution, is nicknamed Old Ironsides.

Even when finally sunk, the ship didn’t stay down for long.  The federal forces easily refloated her and took her back to Norfolk Navy Yard.  In 1864, the Navy finally ordered the ship broken up and the still valuable wood was sold at auction.  Which, I guess, is better than being sunk.