scuttlebutt summer 2015

Summer 2015 [email protected]

meSSage from the Chair

Dear Friends Members,

First, I want to thank all of you for supporting the Friends and our mission to support the Battleship North Carolina. This past year has been one of substantial growth for the Friends. We have increased our membership by over 15% this past year. We have seen substantial growth from Northern Brunswick County as well as from new members from throughout North Carolina and beyond. We especially want to thank our renewing members for their continued support of the Friends.

As we begin planning for 2016, we are very excited about some new programs the Friends will be working on. At the top of our list is our new docent program. This coming spring the Friends will be offering scheduled paid tours of various lengths to enhance the visitor experience. As always, Friends members will receive a discount on all paid tours. We are also training Friends Ambassadors to assist visitors who visit the ship. They will be stationed throughout the ship to greet guests, answer questions and provide an enhanced guest experience. The Friends rely on the generosity of our volunteers to make these programs possible. If you are interested in becoming a

Friends Ambassador or docent, please contact our volunteer coordinator for more information. Contact [email protected].

Our Annual Meeting will be held on Saturday, October 17th from 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM. All Friends members are encouraged to attend. A review of the past year as well as our vision and goals for 2016 will be discussed. The election of new and returning board members will take place and all Friends members in good standing are entitled to vote for the nominated board members. Our guest speaker will be Admiral Ronald Henderson who will give a presentation on his time aboard the USS John F. Kennedy. In addition to Admiral Henderson, there will also be an update on the current Generations Fundraising Campaign to repair the ship’s hull and build a memorial walkway around the ship.

We encourage all Friends members to attend the Annual Meeting of your board of directors of the Battleship North Carolina. We are very excited about the coming year and invite you to join us in 2016.

Warmest regards,

Frank GlosslFrank Glossl, ChairmanFriends of the Battleship North [email protected] x3045

editor’S Note

I just wanted to take this opportunity to apologize for the lateness of this issue of Scuttlebutt.

Unfortunately, I was sidelined with a nasty case of shingles which, due to it being near my eyes, prevented me from wearing my contacts and/or glasses for about two months and that, on top of the discomfort (OK, pain) kept me on medication and resting a great deal of the time. I’m almost back to my old self and hope to keep future issues on time.

Nancie

Summer 2015 Scuttlebutt

Living History Crew Executive Officer’s Office Achieves A MilestoneMichael Resser, member USS North Carolina Living History Crew

At approximately 4 pm on Monday, June 28, 2015, LHC members doing living history interpretation in the Executive Officer’s Office (XOO) issued the 10,000th souvenir liberty chit to four year-old Andrew Ramoino from Tarrytown, New York, who was visiting the battleship with his mother, father and two older sisters. How this came to pass is a result of cooperative efforts of the Living History Crew and battleship staff.

LHC crew in the XOO describe to visitors the various duties and responsibilities of XO’s Yeomen, one of which was control of the ship’s liberty chits and how the liberty system worked. About eight years ago, LHC crew members Mike Resser and Richard Perry, who interpret the XOO for visitors, hit on the idea of giving liberty chits to children as a way to make make the visitors’ experience in the XOO a memorable one. With the assistance of Mary Ames Booker, Curator, who provided examples of original liberty chits from the museum collection as examples, and Promotions Director Heather Loftin, who was instrumental in obtaining exact reproductions of these chits, the journey to the 10,000th card began.

During LHC events, LHC members in the XOO issue the liberty chits to children on one weekend in May, September and December. In addition, for the past eight years, Mike Resser and Richard Perry have made it a point to be aboard in the XOO over the July 4th holiday because the ship receives a significant number of visitors at this time of year and they want the visitors to have an enhanced experience. This is a peak time for issuing liberty chits, with 1,460 chits issued over a twelve-day period in 2013.

When issuing the chits, XOO Yeoman personalize the card for each child by asking where they want to work on the battleship. They do this because the chits were issued according to the division to which a sailor was assigned. For example, if a child asks to be on one of the main battery turrets, they are asked to choose #1, #2 or #3. Whatever their choice, that is the division which appears on the top of the chit. Next comes the rating. For children who elect to work on the ship’s guns, they usually draw the Gunner’s Mate (GM) rating, although some who opt for 5th Division (starboard

5 inch/38 turrets) may receive a Boatswain’s Mate (BM) rating because that division was also responsible for operating the ship’s boats. Small children, such as toddlers, sometimes are unsure what to choose, but the XOO staff has found that either steering the “boat” (Quartermaster/QM) or baking cookies (Baker/Bkr) usually brings forth smiles from the recipients.

In the past, some visitors have been kind enough to post favorable comments about their experience in the XOO on websites such as TripAdvisor. In addition, over the years the XOO has enjoyed return visits as some families have said they came back to the ship and wanted to re-experience the XOO, and in some cases obtain liberty chits to children born since their last visit. h


JULY 4, 2015Saturday, July 4th was the annual Fireworks Display which

Friends of the Battleship once again enjoyed from the deck of the ship! As in the past, there were food vendors on shore or

we brought our own picnic to enjoy on deck. Special thanks to Friends Board Member Mike Wortham for these great pictures.

Tell your friends and neighbors to join Friends so they can participate in this Friends-only event next year!

Summer 2015 Scuttlebutt Page4continued on Page 5

the suppression of the slave trade and the expansion of mercantile commerce. The Mediterranean Squadron’s small flotilla routinely called at British naval bases, where they would take on water and provisions and exchange visits endlessly with the officers of the British garrison and fleet. In time, the North Carolina was dispatched elsewhere in the world on similar tasks but in the end was consigned to the pathetic role of receiving hulk for seamen in transit from one vessel to another. She was decommissioned and broken up in 1867 having never seen any ship-to-ship naval action.

In 1830, American diplomats were sent to Turkey to negotiate a commercial treaty with the Ottomans. Such treaties were known by the diplomatic term Capitulations among the Western European powers. To the Turks they were known as “The Unequal Treaties” because they granted foreigners the right to trade in Ottoman domains without paying duties, to set up trading factories, missionary stations, hospitals and schools free of Turkish legal control. Americans poured into Turkey, Asia Minor, the Levant and the Holy Land ultimately representing one of the largest foreign contingents in the Empire. This situation revealed the weakness of the Ottoman Empire and stirred up the wrath of both Turkish nationalists and Islamists alike. The common enemy of both elements was the Christian Armenians, a people who inhabited Anatolia for 2,000 years and who had lived as subject people of the Turks for eight centuries. The Armenians were westernized, prosperous and well educated. The Turkish population saw them as infidels and as an enemy within. They were suspected of disloyalty because they were championed by Russia, the Turks traditional enemy.

In 1865, the U.S. Navy Mediterranean Squadron became the Atlantic Squadron and then the North Atlantic Fleet which it was when it was joined by the armored cruiser North Carolina (ACR-12) in 1909. The Ottoman Empire was sarcastically referred to as “the sick man of Europe” by this time. It seemed tottering and ready to disintegrate into ethnic fragments principally Turks, Arabs, Kurds and the hapless Armenians. In 1908, a revolt of westernized progressives known as the “Young Turks” overthrew and deposed the political sultan who was also, theoretically, the “Caliph of the Faithful” to Muslims of every persuasion and who had pronounced “jihad” against his opponents. Counter revolution and unrest followed with the Armenians and all foreign infidels assumed to be enemies. Riots and massacres followed.

The United States has maintained a presence and interest in the Middle East since the early republic. In the earliest years our small merchant fleet, flying the flag of a neutral power, traded aggressively with any and all countries during the Napoleonic Wars. Despite a quasi-war at sea with France in the 1790s and deep resentment of the Royal Navy’s practice of impressing seaman from ships flying the stars and stripes, American merchants factored the financial risks and continued to send vessels loaded with cotton and manufactured goods into the Mediterranean.

By the early 1800s the American presence became too much of a temptation to the piratical city states, nominal subjects of the hapless Ottoman Empire that lined the North African shore. Merchantmen and cargos were seized and crews often sold as slaves to man the oars of the war galleys of Barbary pirates. We all know the history of the war that followed and the triumphs of the U.S. Marine Corps and the sailors of Stephen Decatur’s flotilla. Those events and others that followed the end of the Napoleonic era encouraged American administrations to authorize the permanent presence of a naval station or squadron in the Mediterranean to show the flag and protect American interests in those “exotic and oriental” places populated by the “terrible Turk” of public imagination. Although the Ottoman Empire stretched from the Balkans to Aden and from Libya to the Caucasus and was comprised of dozens of nationalities the American press, the Navy and the State Department, typically referred to it all as Turkey in the 19th and early 20thcentury.

Until the 1820s the United States Navy possessed only a few symbols of naval power in the age of sale, ships-of- the-line. In essence they were a monstrous wooden war machine afloat with 60 to 120 cannons and as many as a thousand crewmen. Britain had a fleet of these enforcers of nautical dominance at Port Mahon on Minorca, Gibraltar and Malta. France had a fleet of them at Toulon and even the Turks had sizeable force. Over the decade, the U.S. Congress appropriated money, hulls were laid and a handful of these behemoths were outfitted and launched including the 74 gun ship-of-the line North Carolina in 1820.

This magnificent ship sailed the world and often the Mediterranean making courtesy calls or to resupply at such ports as Algeciras, Naples, Marseille and Genoa. After the War of 1812 ended in something of a draw, the two English-speaking nations resolved their differences and pursued policies of enforcing political stability,

The Warships USS North Carolina in the Eastern Mediterraneanby Mike HoSick


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In May 1909, ACR-12 and its sister ship ACR-13 (U.S.S. Montana) were dispatched to the region of Adana on the Turkish Mediterranean coast to assist where needed and evacuate threatened U.S. citizens. A shore party was sent to treat wounded and desperately ill Armenians. Food, shelter, disinfectants, distilled water, dressings and medicine were provided and assistance given to relief agencies. As the crises lessened, ACR-12 and other Western warships dispersed. North Carolina proceeded to Jaffa in Palestine where her crew had the opportunity to visit Jerusalem and other Holy Land sites. They later sailed to Smyrna on the Aegean coast of Turkey and Naples and then returned to home waters. Crew members’ recollections of this cruise give no hint of the gravity of the situation they had entered but rather read like it was an extended vacation.

In the years that followed, the Ottoman Empire was defeated successively by Italy in a war in Libya and by her former subject people the Greeks, Montenegrins, Serbs and Bulgarians in the First Balkan War. Turmoil and unrest followed these events and vessels of the U.S. Navy Mediterranean Station intervened to save lives and protect property.

By the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Ottoman Empire had aligned itself with Germany and the Central Powers and the enemy of Britain and France. The United States was a neutral in these events but had the pressing need to insure the safety of her nationals in the war zone and provide financial assistance to those who were stranded. In late August the armored cruisers USS North Carolina and USS Tennessee (ACR-10) were dispatched to Europe with several millions of dollars in gold bullion from the treasury and a separate amount from a consortium of American banking and financial institutions to meet commercial needs such as cashing travelers’ checks. The North Carolina was then ordered to the Mediterranean to deliver bullion to the American Ambassador in Constantinople to use similarly as needed. Turkish authorities denied the ACR-12 access to the Dardanelles despite the ship’s neutral status. The cargo was loaded onto another American vessel, Scorpion which was not a warship but could more easily navigate the booms and mines placed in that critical waterway. Tensions in the fall of 1914 were heightened when the Ottoman Empire repudiated all the existing foreign Capitulations including the American. This action provoked fear and panic among all Western Europeans that looting and violence might follow. U.S. Navy vessels were used to evacuate American tourists, missionaries and consular officers.

The United States walked a fine line of neutrality in the Middle East during World War I. It maintained diplomatic relations with the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman government) until they were severed by the Turks when the United States declared war on their ally Germany in April 1917. The United States never went to war with the Ottoman Empire and had no involvement with the post war treaties that divided the Middle East despite Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points which had encouraged the Central Powers to the armistice table in the fall of 1918. The Arabs, the Armenians and the Kurds were denied their own places in the sun which is arguably a contributing factor behind much of today’s turmoil in that region.

The events of a hundred years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean are generally unfamiliar to most Americans today as they were then. The U.S. public was outraged by reports of the genocidal destruction of a defenseless nationality of Christians, the Armenians. They prayed for peace in the Holy Land but were powerless to affect the outcome of events and in fact turned their collective back on them. Since the end of World War II and the creation of NATO (of which Turkey is a member), the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet is on station in Mediterranean waters to serve this nation’s interests. Ironically perhaps, we have Incirlik Air Base in Adana and Izmir (formerly Smyrna) Air Station. How familiar this all sounds.

Bibliography:The Fall of the Ottomans, the Great War in the Middle East, 2015 Eugene Rogan; U.S. Armored Cruiser, A Design and Operational History, 1985 Ivan Musicant; The American SailingNavy, 1949 Howard I. Chappelle; Commodore John Rodgers, 1910 Charles O. Paullin; The OtherTreaty of Lausanne, 1923; U.S. Department of State Division of Near Eastern Affairs Memo, The NewYork Times Archives.

Painting of the Ship-of-the-Line North Carolina: Commodore John Rodgers Mediterranean Squadron Passing the Golden Horn, Constantinople, 1825 (USS BRANDYWINE, USS CONSTITUTION, USS NORTH CAROLINA, USS ERIE, USS ONTARIO. Oil on panel, 24” x 36” h


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riChard JohNSoN’S Blog

May 2015

I took a little road trip of about 3000 miles to see some ships. Aside from the speeding ticket and blown tire, it was a good trip. Thanks to Mary Ames and Kim coordinating with some of the other ship’s curators, I got special access on some ships.

I started with the HMCS Haida in Hamilton, Ontario. Several young enthusiastic college students were docents. Good to see the younger generation involved.

Jerry Cline (from our cleaning crew) also volunteers on the USS Little Rock in Buffalo, NY. He was there and showed me some behind the scenes stuff. Also at the site was the USS The Sullivans, and USS Growler.

Old Destroyer Escort crew members from all over the US make trips en masse to help restore the USS Slater in Albany. Several were there the day I stopped by. They were scrapping and painting, working in the engine room, and all kinds of stuff. The Slater was closed to visitors that day but they greeted me with open arms when they saw my Battleship North Carolina Volunteer shirt.

My next stop was Fall River, Massachusetts. The USS Massachusetts and USS John Kennedy were open but two other ships were closed for maintenance. Staff member Chris Nardi met me and was very courteous. He was busy with Memorial Day preparations but did take time to open up Aft Steering for me. We take spaces like that for granted. But no other ship displays that particular area and for a technical geek like me it was wonderful. Chris was moving a helicopter as I was leaving.

I had to add the USS Nautilus to my trip. Interesting, but the engine room was off limits.

After a brief visit to the Hershey Antique Auto museum, Camden was my next stop. The USS New Jersey was having a birthday party for the ship’s commissioning date. Several crew members were sharing the cake with visitors. I got a special tour of the engine room, big gun turret, and sick bay area. Again, some of the things on our ship that we take for granted are not available to public on other ships.

The major things that I observed from my trip:Most of these ships all have more volunteers restoring and

maintaining things.They all have more restrooms. The Iowa class ships were upgraded so much in the 80s that

nothing of WWII is visible. They don’t even smell like an old ship due to the changed fuel system.

Even the USS Massachusetts has more modern equipment. Even though it was commissioned only one year later, the change in equipment is quite visible.

It made me appreciate the USS North Carolina even more. Our ship is really a time capsule of late 1930s technology. It is truly one-of-a-kind.

June-July 2015

Great to see some of the original crew tour the ship at this years reunion. Its interesting to see their reactions to things that they have never seen (like the Reefers).

I was stationed in Aft Steering during Battleship 101. A retired Dolby Laboratories engineer asked me the decibel reading in aft steering after noticing the soundproof booth. A USS Boston helmsman recognized most everything in aft steering.

Mighty hot in June. The cleaning crew decided to postpone activities till the heat wave breaks.

Showing the Gov. Morehead School vision-impaired folks around the ship proved challenging. But the staff and volunteers pulled it off somehow. These folks felt and enjoyed things like the anchor and chain, 40 and 20mm guns on the main deck. Then we moved down to the second deck to encounter items from the chapel, galley, bakery, barbershop, head, dentist office. It was very interesting.

A very busy July came with no relief from the heat. Aside from Battleship 101, I and other volunteers assisted in at least a dozen special tours.

We had special tours for three different families and one for some corporate types from International Paper.

Cape Fear CC brought a group of welding students one day and the next week brought the diesel engine students. UNCW brought three different summer camp classes. Our State Magazine came out to scout the ship for ideas for stories.

There was another group of 50 young students out one day for a class. (I missed that one).

All of that in the heat of July. It was miserable for some folks but we pulled it off.

Busy, Busy, Busy.

Did I mention that parts of the tour route got shut down periodically one day so a movie could be filmed? Crazy.

I haven’t had time to talk to regular visitors and record their comments. Been too busy with all the other programs


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and tours. I kind of miss that, but the special tours are fun also.

auguSt 2015

Battleship 101 started off my month. Good turnout. I understand we had record attendance. It was a good 10 degrees cooler than June or July also.

I spoke to a fellow from Kidde corp. They do fire extinguishers and now aerospace stuff. I told him to look for the Kidde logo on the fire protection CO2 bottles by CPO. Cecil Ard brought a visitor down to see me because he was interested in Diesels. I told him a few things and got his email so I could send him some more info.

Sunday, I was talking to some folks in the Officers galley when I heard someone exclaim: “Richard!?!”. I looked around and saw a cute girl calling my name.

Excuse me, do I know you? “I’m Tiffany. Remember my daughter, Melody?” As she

pointed to a 25-year-old holding a baby. I had a hard time remembering my cute old girl friend

from 22 years ago. Hard to believe that cute girl was a grandmother. Amazing the folks you run into on the Battleship.

Typical Monday morning for me went as follows: Went down to Aft Steering to remove fan and extension cord used during BS 101. Returned fan to CPO area. Walked Lower Deck tour route. Climbed up to bridge. Started looking around the ships stacks and superstructure. Looked at ship drawings and tried to figure out what the skirt around the stacks was for. Over to maintenance shop to pick up a couple of 1/4 inch nuts. On my way to Aft Steering, a visitor asked me about the 16 inch guns. We had a nice conversation that started with the definition of “Caliber”, ended up with a discussion of the pre-WWII Naval Treaties. Got my tools and secured a cleaning locker down in Aft Steering. Tore my cargo shorts on something, so I decide to head for home at 0930. Lets see what tomorrow brings.

A group of about 50 Navy Chiefs and Chief Selectees came out to help work on the ship. About half worked on scrubbing the teak on the main and 01 decks. The other half worked on the second and third deck cleaning. We really got some stuff accomplished. They all worked with vigor and needed little supervision.

Some of the cleaning crew came out the last week of August. We straightened up our equipment but it was still too hot and humid to do much work. Maybe next month.

The Wednesday morning crew has been replacing a lot of

stair treads upper and lower decks. They also worked on painting some of the superstructure.

Jarred Jefferies from the Outdoor Channel came out to the ship on the last day of the month. He has fished in the south Pacific and recognized a lot of the small islands involved with the US push westward during WWII. It was fun showing him around. As many others, he was amazed at the Greatest Generation.

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Kirk Binning shared a very interesting and insightful German observance with Kim Sincox from a book he is reading. Please see below.

I’m reading: Eckhertz, Holger (2015-04-09). D DAY - Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944 (Kindle Locations 735-746).

It’s the Germans stories of D-Day. This paragraph talks about a ship bombardment and it gave me a perspective of how it would be on the receiving end of a Battleship.

Omaha Beach: The Resistance Point Gunner Henrik Naube was an Unteroffizier (corporal) with the 325th Infantry Division, stationed near Vierville.

“This bombardment, however, was by warship cannons.That was obvious from the flashes that we could see on

the horizon, among the many outlines of the advancing ships, and then the noise of the shells approaching us in the air. These shells made a noise similar to a gas blowtorch being run at full strength, and at first they passed right overhead. We could actually see them as bright shapes flying inland over the beach – huge shapes too, the size of a car engine or similar. They exploded a few hundred metres behind us, and then the next salvo came down much closer to us. We dragged the steel plates over our trench covers and we huddled underneath them with our guns. The power of the explosions made the concrete of the trench ripple and fracture, and if I glanced up, I could only see enormous spouts of earth and sand hanging over the dunes and the beach. The shockwaves punched all the air out of our lungs, and made our eyes bleed. The shrapnel that flew around us was monstrous in size; I saw one piece of shell case as big as my arm, which simply fell down out of the air and jangle at the end of the trench, still smoking. But other pieces were flying left and right horizontally, screeching and smashing off the parapet and the steel roof plates. It went on and on, for salvo after salvo, with absolutely no pause in between the impacts. It was as if a gigantic hammer was falling on the beach, trying to pound it flat – that is how it felt to me.” h


2015 CaleNdar of eveNtSJanuary 10 Hidden Battleship

February 21 Firepower!

March 14 Power Plant

Friday, April 3 Easter Egg Hunt Carnival (Good Friday)

May 16 Showboat — Systems & Design

Monday, May 25 50th Annual Memorial Day Observance

May 27-30 USS North Carolina Battleship Association Annual Crew Reunion

May 30 Battleship Alive!

June 13 Battleship 101

June 14 Celebrate Flag Day

June 19-20 Celebrate the Legacy — Celebrate the ships named North Carolina

Saturday, July 4 Fourth of July Fireworks Display - this event is only for Friends members

July 11 Battleship 101

August 8 Battleship 101

September 26 Battleship Alive!

October 10 Hidden Battleship

Tues., October 27 Batty Battleship’s Halloween Bash

November 7 Torpedo Headed for You: Damage Control Aboard North Carolina

December 5 Battleship Alive! A Very Merry Showboat

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All articles & photos printed with permission. Copyrights may apply.

Scuttlebutt is the newsletter of The Friends of the Battleship North Carolina, PO Box 480,Wilmington, NC 28402 • battleshipnc.com/friendsEditor-in-Chief/Layout & Design: Nancie Giacalone Managing Editor: Ronnie Rhodes Contributing Editors: Mike Hosick and Richard JohnsonPlease send article suggestions, photos, address changes, or comments to:

[email protected]

Through dedication, perseverance and funding by the Friends of the Battleship, the free online catalog gives the

Internet community an insider’s look at rare artifacts. http://www.battleshipnc.com/friends

BattleShiP North CaroliNa life loNg ProgramS 2015coMe learn and explore witH uS

ALL PROGRAMS - Participants must be 16 or older and able to climb narrow ladders and over knee-high hatches. Wear comfortable, washable clothing, sturdy, rubber-soled shoes and bring a camera!

Registration and payment due the Thursday prior to the program. Call 910-251-5797 extension 3001 for reservations.All events take place on Saturday unless otherwise noted.

Be sure to check the Battleship website for complete details about all of these events.

scuttlebutt summer 2015

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