About That U.S. Navy White Oak Forest in Indiana

From the November 8, 2020, Gadsden Times "David Murdock Column:   On unusual American military units."

He found out about an unusual naval facility located in the middle of Indiana, not exactly where you'd expect to find a naval unit based.  It is the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division and is located neat Bloomington, Indiana.  

According to the Navy, it is the third largest naval  installation in the world.

But what really caught Mr. Murdock's eyes a forest of white oak trees. was the fact that it maintains a forest of white oak trees. And the reason it exists and is so large is a warship named the USS Constitution.  This old ship, the longest commissioned warship in the world,  requires white oak trees for  repair and rehabilitation.

The Constitution is a wooden sailing frigate that was launched in 1797.  It is the oldest warship still afloat (Britain's HMS Victory has been afloat slightly longer, but is in permanent drydock).

--Brock-Perry

HMS St. Lawrence-- Part 5: "The Mightiest Ship To Never Sail the Seas"

From Military History Now.


This site refers to the HMS St. Lawrence as "The Mightiest Ship To Never Sail the Seas."   That would refer to the fact that the ship never sailed in an ocean.

The St. Lawrence was a ship of the line, the most powerful warship during the Age of Sail.  She was five feet longer than Horatio Nelson's more famous HMS Victory and two feet wider.  It mounted 112 cannons, eight more than the Victory.

It was built, launched and served its whole short career on a fresh water lake, Lake Ontario.

It was the proverbial "Big Fish in a Small Pond."

--Brock-Perry

HMS Dauntless in Pirates of the Caribbean

The movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" featured the HMS Dauntless as the Pride of the Royal Navy, but in search of pirates instead of Frenchmen or Americans.  It was certainly a scourge for Captain Jack Sparrow and Capt. Hector Barbosa.

The movie Dauntless was based on the HMS Victory, a 100-gun first rate ship-of-the-line.  It carried Governor Swann and his daughter Elizabeth from England to his post in the Caribbean.

--Brock-Perry

U.S. Naval Power Grew to Match Mercantile Ambition-- Part 1: The Story of the U.S. Ships-of-the-Line

From the August 31, 2012, Bloomberg View by Alasdair Roberts.

Sackets Harbor in upstate New York was one of the U.S. Navy's most important ports and it guarded access to the St. Lawrence River. During the War of 1812, two major British attacks on it were repulsed .

As the war ended, there became an odd memorial in the form of the USS New Orleans which remained incomplete on the stocks for seventy years. Had it been launched, it would have been one of the most powerful ships ever built in the American Navy, larger even that the famed British HMS Victory which fought the French at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Its construction was stopped with the coming of peace.

From 1813-1816, Congress authorized the construction of 16 large warships. By 1830, only one remained in service after six of them had been launched, all of which were quickly removed from service.

More to Come. --Brock-Perry