Colors of pre-WW I U.S. Navy destroyers

Marcus Goodrich in his novel,  'Delilah' describes the ship as being bluish-gray with rust red decks.   The Delilah was an early destroyer operating in the Phillipines in the years leading up to the US entry into WWI.  Goodrich himself served on the USS Chauncey, a sister to the Bainbridge.  The Chauncey was sunk in a collision during WWI.   'Delilah' was published in 1941 and acheived critical success at the time.   For a while it was on the required reading list at the Naval Academy.  It is not a novel of great naval actions, rather an investigation of interpersonal relationships between officers and enlisted.

So, that is a bit of eye-witness storytelling.  Take it with whatever sized grain of salt you want,  considering the Asiatic Fleet versus the home waters and 1917 versus 1902.

I have heard about the red decks (they were steel, not wood) before and have seen them on some period colorized postcards.

Next is Eric Ronnberg's excellent monograph "Paint and Colors for American Merchant Vessels, 1800-1920: Their Study and Interpretation for Modelmaking" from the Nautical Reserach Guild

http://www.naut-res-guild.org/nrg_colors.htm

Read the article. it has some very good information on color theory as well as some concepts of scale color.

Ignore what is says in the title about merchant vessels.   While the article draws heavily on commercial building and railroad painting practices, the concept of getting the most coverage for the dollar will be as attactive to the shipping tycoon, railroad tycoon, or Bureau of Construction and Repair

I have heard the color applied to some early destroyers a Bottle Green.   Consider the following plate in Ronnberg.

You can see that the Bottle Green is very dark and would appear black in old B&W photography.

Thanks, Ed!

With regard to these torpedo destroyer boats having wood decks, my eye had been fooled. There are several photos extant which show officer and crew shots. At first, I thought these had been taken on board, but now I see they were shot on piers. Other pix of Bainbridge-class DD's in drydock show that the decks were, indeed, rectangular steel plates.

The article you cite regarding colors is extremely useful, and I strongly recommend other folks interested in colors of the period read it.

There's a rattle-can color available that seems close to the bottle green for the hull: Rust-Oleum Anodized Bronze (#7754). It's somewhat grayer/whiter, but I think it's about right for 1/350 scale. It even has a satin finish, so I won't have to futz with exactly the right mixture of shiny Future and Tamiya clear flat. (Photos show that the paint was shiny when new.)

I'm still stumped as to colors of everything above the decks. Nearly every photo from the early years of these vessels shows these lighter than the hull sides and decks.

One thing seems plain: the Great White Fleet in the western Pacific showed an amazing variety of colors, from these very dark destroyers to the white-ocher-brown-gray-black larger vessels.

For the benefit of folks searching the forum for information about this class, here is the list of torpedo boat destroyers in the Bainbridge class, along with links to pix:

• DD-1: Bainbridge (1902-1920)
  
• DD-2: Barry (1902-1920)
  
• DD-3: Chauncey (1902-1917)
  
• DD-4: Dale (1902-1920)
  
• DD-5: Decatur (1902-1920)