Everything about Uss Texas 1892 totally explained
The
United States Navy's first
battleship was the first to bear the name
USS Texas, in honor of
Texas, the 28th state.
Texas was authorized by the
U.S. Congress on
3 August 1886. She was built from
British plans developed for a design competition. The prize for the winning design was $15,000.
Texas and were unusual in that their armament was mounted
en echelon, projected off to either side (
Texas' forward turret was off to port and her aft turret to starboard; the arrangement was reversed on
Maine). This severely limited their ability to fire on a broadside.
Texas was a weak design even for her time . An unfortunate feature of her turrets when she was launched was that they'd a fixed loading position; this was corrected later.
Her keel was laid down on
1 June 1889, at
Portsmouth, Virginia, by the
Norfolk Navy Yard. She was
launched on
28 June 1892, sponsored by Miss Madge Houston Williams and
commissioned on
15 August 1895, with Captain Henry Glass in command.
The
Texas had several unlucky incidents including but not limited to flooding and settling to the bottom to her gun deck at dock in New York and also receiving significant damage to her hull in drydocking. During the period between her commissioning and the Spanish American War in 1898 she obtained a reputation as being a jinxed or unlucky ship and earned the nickname "Old Hoodoo".
Assigned to the North Atlantic Squadron, the warship cruised the eastern seaboard of the
United States. In February 1897, she left the Atlantic for a brief cruise to the Gulf coast ports of
Galveston, Texas, and
New Orleans. She resumed Atlantic coast duty in March of 1897 and remained so employed until the beginning of 1898. At that time, she visited
Key West, Florida, and the
Dry Tortugas en route to Galveston for a return visit which she made in mid-February. Returning to the Atlantic via the Dry Tortugas in March, the warship arrived in
Hampton Roads on
24 March and resumed normal duty with the North Atlantic Squadron.
Early in the spring,
war between the United States and
Spain erupted over conditions in
Cuba and the supposed Spanish destruction of the armored cruiser
Maine in
Havana harbor in February 1898. By
18 May, under the command of Captain J.W. Philip,
Texas was at Key West, readying to prosecute that war.
On
21 May, she arrived off
Cienfuegos, Cuba, with the Flying Squadron to blockade the Cuban coast. After a return to Key West for
coal,
Texas arrived off
Santiago de Cuba on
27 May. She patrolled off that port until
11 June on which day she made a reconnaissance mission to
Guantánamo Bay. For the next five weeks, she patrolled between Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo Bay. On
16 June, the warship joined for a bombardment of the fort on
Cayo del Tore in Guantánamo Bay. The two ships opened fire just after 1400 and ceased fire about an hour and 16 minutes later, having reduced the fort to impotency.
On
3 July, she was steaming off Santiago de Cuba when the Spanish Fleet under Admiral Cervera made a desperation attempt to escape past the American Fleet.
Texas took four of the enemy ships under fire immediately. While the battleship's main battery pounded armored cruisers
Vizcaya and
Cristobal Colon, her secondary battery joined and in battering two torpedo-boat
destroyers.
The two Spanish destroyers fell out of the action quickly and beached themselves, damaged heavily. One by one, the larger enemy warships also succumbed to the combined fire of the American Fleet. Each, in turn, sheered off toward shore and beached herself. Thus,
Texas and the other ships of the Flying Squadron annihilated the Spanish Fleet.
The defeat of Cervera's Fleet helped to seal the doom of Santiago de Cuba. The city fell to the besieging American forces on
17 July, just two weeks after the great American naval victory. The day after the surrender at Santiago, Spain sought peace through the good offices of the
French government. Even before the peace protocol was signed in
Washington, DC, on
12 August, American ships began returning home.
Texas arrived in
New York on
31 July. Captain Philip was promoted to
Commodore on
10 August 1898.
In late November,
Texas moved south to Hampton Roads where she arrived on
2 December. The warship resumed her peacetime routine patrolling the Atlantic coast of the United States. Though her primary field of operations once again centered on the northeastern coast, she also made periodic visits to such places as
San Juan, Puerto Rico, and
Havana, Cuba, where her crew could view some of the results of their own ship's efforts in the recent war.
Texas went out of commission briefly in 1901 for repairs at the
Norfolk Navy Yard but was commissioned again on
3 November 1902. She served as flagship for the Coast Squadron until 1905.
By 1908 she'd become the station ship at
Charleston, South Carolina. On
15 February 1911, her name was changed to
San Marcos to allow the name
Texas to be assigned to
Battleship No. 35. On
10 October 1911, her name was struck from the
Naval Vessel Register. She was, subsequently, sunk as a target in
Tangier Sound in
Chesapeake Bay.
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