Historic Fleets

The U.S. Navy has operated only three designated evacuation transports, the Tryon (APH-1), Pinkney (APH-2), and Rixey (APH-3). The trio originally were begun as the Alcoa Courier, Alcoa Corsair, and ...

A. D. Baker III, Editor, Combat Fleets of the World
July 2023
National Archives

More Lives Than a Cat

When one needs ships, it is usually too late to build them. In mid-February 1898, as tensions heated the diplomatic climate between the United States and Spain in the wake ...

Robert J. Cressman
April 2012
Lithograph of the steam frigate Missouri burning at Gibraltar

‘An Ornament to the Navy’

By the flickering light of a globe lantern, Coal-heaver John Sutton, earning his $18 a month (as much as a ship’s cook or a coxswain), entered the starboard-side engineer’s storeroom ...

Robert J. Cressman
January 2012

A Lady in White

Captain Erik G. Hakansson, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, stood on the deck of the hospital ship Solace (AH-5) with a movie camera as the morning watch began on Sunday, 7 ...

Robert J. Cressman
December 2011
National Archives

A Fighting Ship that ‘Can Give It Always’

In the early morning darkness of 6 July 1943, formations of U.S. and Japanese warships approached each other on a collision course in Kula Gulf in the Solomon Islands. As ...

Robert J. Cressman
October 2011

Farragut’s Forgotten Flagship

The call of “square-rigger in sight,” standing toward the harbor entrance at Newport, Rhode Island, late one afternoon in December 1901, prompted commotion on the foc’sle of the training ship ...

Robert J. Cressman
July 2011
National Archives

An Experiment Proves Her Mettle in War

Shortly before Christmas of 1940, on board the heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa (CA-37), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt brooded over a missive from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. An appended table showed ...

Robert J. Cressman
May 2011
Naval History & Heritage Command

Eyewitness to the Fall of Fort Sumter

The wooden steam sloop Pawnee pounded toward the South Carolina coast through heavy seas and gale-force winds in the early hours of 12 April 1861. The weather and darkness made ...

Robert J. Cressman
March 2011
J.M. Caiella

‘A Mighty Important’ Makeshift Flagship

“Our ship was neither a troopship nor a warship,” the renowned war correspondent Ernie Pyle observed, “but it was a mighty important ship. It was not huge; just big enough ...

Robert J. Cressman
January 2011
RG-45, Ware Drawings, Naval Records Collection, National Archives

A ‘Magnificent’ Frigate’s Fighting Finale

“A magnificent ship for her period,” the noted naval strategist and historian Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan would write of the Congress, some years after serving on board the ...

Robert J. Cressman
December 2010