Oh, Shenandoah: Why Doesn’t the Navy Have One Today?

The United States Navy has a perfectly good ship’s name that is just gathering dust.

Shenandoah is musical, historic, unmistakably American, and considerably easier to pronounce than Antietam.  It summons up a river, a valley, blue mountains, Jimmy Stewart, a national park, a famous folk song, and several million tourists trapped behind recreational vehicles on Skyline Drive.  It has also been carried by four vessels commissioned as USS Shenandoah—one of which did not even float—and by the Confederate commerce raider CSS Shenandoah.

The Navy itself sometimes describes the most recent Shenandoah as the fifth naval vessel to bear the name because it includes the Confederate ship in the lineage.  Strict bookkeeping therefore gives us four USS Shenandoahs, plus one CSS Shenandoah.  Evidently, the Navy regards its Confederate cousin as part of the family, although presumably, she is seated at a separate table during reunions.

The first USS Shenandoah was a wooden screw sloop launched at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in December 1862 and commissioned in June 1863.  A “screw sloop” sounds like either an obscure sailor’s knot or something the Navy might court-martial you for attempting.  In fact, she was a steam-powered warship that also carried sails, displaced about 1,375 tons, and mounted some very serious guns.

During the Civil War, she joined the blockade off Wilmington, North Carolina, chasing ships trying to carry supplies into the Confederacy and carry cotton out of it.  In 1864 and 1865, she participated in the attacks on Fort Fisher, the formidable installation guarding the entrance to Wilmington.  Federal sailors and Marines from Shenandoah went ashore during the successful second assault, armed with cutlasses and revolvers and apparently unaware that Hollywood had not yet been invented to film them.

The first Shenandoah remained useful long after the war.  She served in South America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific.  She visited ports in Japan and China, surveyed unfamiliar harbors, searched unsuccessfully for possible survivors of the American merchant schooner General Sherman in Korea, and protected American interests during disturbances in Panama.  After several cycles of commissioning, decommissioning, and being brought back because the Navy had once again discovered that it needed ships, she was finally sold in 1887.  Her career had lasted nearly a quarter-century, which is quite respectable for a wooden vessel built while Abraham Lincoln was still explaining to generals that he wanted them to fight.

Then there was the troublesome relative: CSS Shenandoah.   Despite the name, this ship never actually sailed anywhere close to Virginia—she never sailed within sight of the American mainland.   And sadly, the USS Shenandoah never fought the CSS Shenandoah.

She began life in Britain as the merchant vessel Sea King.  Confederate agents acquired her in 1864 and converted her into a commerce raider under Commander James Iredell Waddell.  Her job was not to engage the much larger United States Navy.  Her job was to find American merchant ships in distant waters and ruin their owners’ day.

She was remarkably good at it.

CSS Shenandoah sailed around the world and captured, burned, or bonded 38 American merchant vessels, most of them whalers.  She took nearly 1,000 prisoners without suffering a combat death among her own crew.  In June 1865, while operating in the Bering Sea, she attacked the American whaling fleet and fired what is generally described as the last shot of the Civil War.

There was one slight problem: the Civil War had already ended.

Robert E.  Lee had surrendered at Appomattox in April.  Joseph Johnston had surrendered later that month.  Jefferson Davis had been captured in May.  The Confederacy was rapidly becoming a historical research topic, but Waddell was still burning Yankee whalers near Alaska because news traveled slowly before radio, satellite communications, and sailors checking their telephones every eleven seconds.

When Waddell finally received reliable confirmation that the Confederacy had collapsed, he disarmed the ship and sailed roughly 9,000 miles around Cape Horn to Liverpool.  On November 6, 1865—almost seven months after Appomattox—CSS Shenandoah surrendered to British authorities.  The Confederate flag was lowered for the final time.  This gave Shenandoah the distinction of being both one of the Confederacy’s most successful ships and the military unit that most seriously needed a newspaper subscription.

The next USS Shenandoah was not a ship at all.  It was ZR-1, the Navy’s first American-built rigid airship.

Commissioned in 1923, the silver giant was 680 feet long—more than twice the length of a football field.  It was the first rigid airship to fly using helium rather than highly flammable hydrogen.  This was an improvement because helium does not explode, although being inside a 680-foot aluminum framework during a thunderstorm remained a lifestyle choice.

The airship was intended to scout ahead of the fleet, locating enemy ships far beyond the horizon.  It also served as an enormous flying advertisement for naval aviation.  In 1924, it completed the first crossing of North America by an airship, attracting crowds wherever it appeared.  People looked up and saw the future. 

The future looked like a tremendous silver cucumber.

On September 3, 1925, USS Shenandoah encountered a violent storm over Ohio.  Powerful updrafts carried it beyond its structural limits, and the airship broke into several sections.  Fourteen crewmen died, including its commander, Zachary Lansdowne, while 29 survived by riding portions of the wreckage to the ground.  The disaster helped expose the dangers of using fragile rigid airships in severe weather, although it took the losses of the Akron and Macon before the Navy was finally convinced that the risks outweighed the benefits of rigid-frame airships.

The name returned during World War II.  USS Shenandoah (AD-26) was a destroyer tender: essentially a floating repair shop, warehouse, machine plant, hospital, supply depot, and hardware store.  Destroyers could tie up alongside her and receive repairs without returning to a major naval base.  She carried the men, tools, spare parts, and mysterious Navy paperwork necessary to keep fighting ships at sea.

Commissioned on August 13, 1945, AD-26 arrived just as World War II was ending.  That was unfortunate timing if one wanted battle stars, but excellent timing if one wanted to avoid being sunk.  She spent much of her 35-year career supporting the Atlantic Fleet and made numerous deployments to the Mediterranean.  In 1964, her crew helped rescue everyone aboard the Dutch freighter Doris after the ship broke loose during a storm at Naples.  The tender was finally decommissioned in 1980.

Three years later came USS Shenandoah (AD-44), another destroyer tender and the largest member of the family.  At 642 feet and more than 20,000 tons, she carried roughly 1,500 officers and sailors.  She supported destroyers, cruisers, and frigates wherever the Navy needed a mobile repair facility.  She served until 1996 and was eventually scrapped in 2012.

That means the Navy has gone 30 years without a Shenandoah.   It’s time the Navy rectified this mistake.   I guess I should be slightly mollified by the presence of another Shenandoah.

Outside of the US Navy, civilians have continued using the name.  The most extravagant example is Shenandoah of Sark, a magnificent 178-foot, three-masted schooner built near Staten Island in 1902.  She has survived two world wars and now accommodates about ten guests in the comfort expected by people who use “summer” as a verb.  One charter company advertises her for approximately €110,000 to €125,000 per week, while another lists a price exceeding $150,000.

That is only the base rate.  Food, drinks, fuel, port charges, taxes, and tips may be additional.  At those prices, I would expect the crew not only to raise the sails but also to address me as Admiral, fire a seventeen-gun salute whenever I came on deck, and pretend to laugh at all my jokes.

Since most of us are unlikely to find that much spare money in our sock drawer, that brings us back to my original question:  So why is there no USS Shenandoah today?

The Navy has plenty of ships named for politicians, admirals, states, cities, battles, Native American peoples, and abstract concepts.  Some deserve the honor.  Some undoubtedly resulted from a committee meeting that went on much too long.  But Shenandoah has everything a naval name should possess.  It is dignified without being pompous.  It is rooted in American geography.  It has accumulated a remarkable history involving the Civil War, Arctic whalers, Korea, Japan, rigid airships, destroyer tenders, and a schooner affordable only to people who regard a Gulfstream jet as carry-on luggage.

Surely the name deserves another assignment.  A submarine would be appropriate: quiet, formidable, and moving beneath the water as smoothly as the song.  A new repair ship would honor the two tenders.  Even a future airship would complete the circle, although perhaps we should keep that one away from Ohio thunderstorms.

After four USS vessels, one Confederate raider, and more than a century of extraordinary adventures, the name should not end in a scrapyard—or belong exclusively to a yacht that costs more for one week than most Americans paid for their first house.

“Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you.”

Preferably painted gray, flying the Stars and Stripes, and paid for by somebody else.