Naval History
British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck
On May 27, 1941, the British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000. On February 14, 1939, the 823-foot Bismarck was launched at Hamburg. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler hoped that the state-of-the-art ...read more
US Naval Academy opens
The United States Naval Academy opens in Annapolis, Maryland, with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors. Known as the Naval School until 1850, the curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French. The ...read more
USS Indianapolis: Survivor Accounts From the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History
Though Tony King is sharp and alert at the age of 94, a part of him is trapped forever in the summer of 1945. He time-travels there when he speaks of it—even as he sits in a wheelchair near the lone window in his San Francisco apartment. King’s eyes mist over as he tells his ...read more
North Korea Once Captured and Detained the Crew of a U.S. Spy Ship for 11 Months
The January 1968 capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo during a spy mission in international waters cost the life of one American sailor and began a grueling 11-month imprisonment for the other 82 Americans aboard. While the Pueblo crew was remembered for their bravery and defiance, ...read more
How the Sinking of Lusitania Changed World War I
On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the British-owned luxury steamship Lusitania, killing 1,195 people including 128 Americans, according to the Library of Congress. The disaster immediately strained relations between Germany and the neutral United States, fueled ...read more
The Daring Deep Sea Divers Who Helped Crack WWI German Codes
From the surface, the water was dark green—the Royal Navy diver peering down from the little boat could see no more than a few feet. Slipping into the sea, he adjusted the air valves on his heavy diving helmet and allowed the weights affixed to his body to drag him down to the ...read more
The Floating White House: A Brief History of the Presidential Yacht
Before there was Air Force One, there was the presidential yacht. Dating back to the 19th century, America’s chief executives utilized navy ships and other vessels for recreation and entertaining foreign dignitaries. Nearly a dozen different ships acted as the “Floating White ...read more
When Ironclads Clashed: How Hampton Roads Changed Naval Warfare Forever
In early 1862, the Union and the Confederacy were locked in one of the most influential arms races of the Civil War. While their navies still relied on wooden ships, both sides had gambled on building revolutionary “ironclad” vessels that boasted steam engines, hulking cannons ...read more
Remembering the Sinking of the Bismarck
Under the cover of darkness in the early morning hours of May 19, 1941, the most formidable battleship to have ever been built slipped into the Baltic Sea on its maiden voyage. An ocean-bound castle, the thickly armored Bismarck was the first full-scale battleship constructed by ...read more
9 Groundbreaking Early Submarines
1. Drebbel: 1620-1624 British mathematician William Bourne made some of the earliest known plans for a submarine around 1578, but the world’s first working prototype was built in the 17th century by Cornelius Drebbel, a Dutch polymath and inventor in the employ of the British ...read more
The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 19
It began as nothing more than a routine training flight. At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from a Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The planes—collectively known as “Flight 19”—were scheduled to tackle a three-hour exercise ...read more
7 Things You May Not Know About the U.S. Navy
1. George Washington was the father of the Navy. Despite having virtually no experience at sea, George Washington was a huge early proponent of the Navy, believing among other things that it would disrupt British supply lines. “It follows then as certain as that night succeeds ...read more
The Mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin
The Potemkin uprising was sparked by a disagreement over food, but it was anything but accidental. Morale in Russia’s Black Sea fleet had long been at rock-bottom lows, spurred on by defeats in the Russo-Japanese War and widespread civil unrest on the homefront. Many navy ships ...read more
The Forgotten Story of America’s Titanic
The hundreds of Union veterans and recently released prisoners of war who boarded the steamboat Sultana on April 24, 1865, were bloodied, exhausted and starving—but unlike more than 600,000 of their fellow soldiers who fought in the Civil War, they were alive. They had survived ...read more
The Civil War’s Landmark Naval Battle Is Remembered for a Unique Rallying Cry
More than three years into the Civil War, the Union naval blockade of Southern ports had choked most of the Confederacy’s nautical lifelines. Blockade runners, however, still operated out of one major haven along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico—Mobile, Alabama. Ever since his ...read more
Why is a ship’s speed measured in knots?
Ancient mariners used to gauge how fast their ship was moving by throwing a piece of wood or other floatable object over the vessel’s bow then counting the amount of time that elapsed before its stern passed the object. This method was known as a Dutchman’s log. By the late 16th ...read more
The Hunley’s Daring Submarine Mission
On the clear but chilly night of February 17, 1864, John Crosby stood on the deck of USS Housatonic a little less than six miles and three years removed from the launching point of the Civil War, Fort Sumter. The moonlight shimmered on Charleston Harbor’s still surface as ...read more
5 Maritime Disasters You Might Not Know About
1. The Wilhelm Gustloff (1945): The deadliest shipwreck in history On January 30, 1945, some 9,000 people perished aboard this German ocean liner after it was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine and sank in the frigid waters of the Baltic Sea. The Gustloff, named for a Nazi leader ...read more
6 Famous Naval Mutinies
1. The Mutiny on the Bounty The 1789 mutiny on the Bounty saw a rebellious crew hijack their ship and build their own island community. Commanded by William Bligh, HMS Bounty left England in December 1787 on a mission to collect breadfruit saplings in the South Pacific. During a ...read more
How USS Constitution Became ‘Old Ironsides’
Around 2 p.m. on the afternoon of August 19, 1812, a lookout aboard USS Constitution spied a sail against the cloudy southern horizon. The newsflash brought the frigate’s commanding officer, Captain Isaac Hull, and his charges “flocking up like pigeons from a net bed,” according ...read more
David Farragut
David Farragut (1801-70) was an accomplished U.S. naval officer, who received great acclaim for his service to the Union during the American Civil War (1861-65). Farragut commanded the Union blockade of Southern ports, helped capture the the Confederate city of New Orleans and ...read more
Divers recover U.S.S. Monitor turret
On August 5, 2002, the rusty iron gun turret of the U.S.S. Monitor broke from the water and into the daylight for the first time in 140 years. The ironclad warship was raised from the floor of the Atlantic, where it had rested since it went down in a storm off Cape Hatteras, ...read more
USS Pueblo captured
On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence vessel, is engaged in a routine surveillance of the North Korean coast when it is intercepted by North Korean patrol boats. According to U.S. reports, the Pueblo was in international waters almost 16 miles from shore, but ...read more
Passenger ferry, Estonia, sinks, killing 852
On September 28, 1994, 852 people die in one of the worst maritime disasters of the century when the Estonia, a large car-and-passenger ferry, sinks in the Baltic Sea. The German-built ship was traveling on an overnight cruise from Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, to ...read more