Ship Trivia Quiz

George Bancroft?? I've been passing by this little gate guard on the way to work (Kings Bay Submarine Base, Georgia)for the past couple of weeks and it rung a bell.

Old George founded the US Naval Academy.

Subfixer, you got it. 

Bancroft taught history (at least briefly) at Harvard, though he later became more intensely interested in secondary education reform.  He published a multi-volume textbook on the history of the U.S. that was used for many years in university courses all over the country.  Later he went into politics, and became Secretary of the Navy during the Harrison/Tyler administration.  In that capacity he was instrumental, in the wake of the notorious "mutiny" on board the brig Somers, in talking the War Department into transferring Ft. Severn, at Annapolis, over to the Navy and turning it into the U.S. Naval Academy.

The first U.S.S. Bancroft was a small, steel-hulled "gunboat" that was, in fact, designed specifically as a gunnery training vessel for the midshipmen at Annapolis.  As the school got bigger it outgrew the ship, and she was transferred to the Revenue Cutter Service (predecessor of the Coast Guard) to serve in a similar capacity.  Other ships named after Bancroft have included a destroyer, a patrol frigate, and, most recently, a Benjamin Franklin-class ballistic submarine. 

Alfred Thayer Mahan, of course, was the namesake for a class of destroyers.  Samuel Eliot Morison had an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate named after him.  (NAVSOURCE has a nice picture of her escorting the Constitution on one of the latter's annual "turnaround cruises" in Boston Harbor."  Now there's a good idea for a 1/700 diorama - using the excellent Skywave/Pit Road Perry-class frigate and the Skytrex cast metal Constitution.)  The Samuel Eliot Morison eventually was transferred to the Turkish Navy.  (I wonder how many people caught the irony:  Morison won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of John Paul Jones - who also wound up his career in the naval service of Turkey.)

I believe Subfixer has earned the privilege of asking the next question.

jtilley wrote:

Subfixer, you got it.  I believe Subfixer has earned the privilege of asking the next question.

I believe that I shall defer the next question to schoonerbum as he got two thirds of the question without the generous hint that allowed me to get Bancroft.

(by the way, the photo of the submarine surfacing on the hill at the Bancroft Gate at Kings Bay Sub base is of the actual George Bancroft)

Thank you Subfixer, as they say "You are a scholar and a gentleman".  

Sticking to the "three wise men" category, here we go....

A class of American warship from the Second World War had direct associations with three American Presidents.

What was the class?

Who were the Presidents? and

What were their connections? 

Well, the first possibility that comes to mind is the Iowa class.  The Iowa herself took FDR to and from Casablanca in 1943; as I recall, the special bathtub that was built for him is still on board the ship.  And the Missouri was christened by Truman's daughter, Margaret.  But I can't think of any more-or-less direct presidential connections for the New Jersey or the Wisconsin.  (President Rhee of S. Korea paid a visit to the Wisconsin in 1952, but Schoonerbum specified American presidents.)

Something tells me I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

I am fairly sure that this not the answer that schoonerbum is looking for as it only refers to two presidents. The Northampton cruisers Houston, Augusta and the modified Northampton class cruiser Indianapolis (officially a Portland class) all carried presidential parties during their career with the Augusta carrying two. But, as there were only two US presidents serving during WWII, I am probably missing the question.

I'd guess that Eisenhower comes into the equation somewhere.

Hint #1

Two Republicans and one Democrat... and no, Ike wasn't one of them. 

Hmmmm....The three presidents must be Coolidge, Hoover, and FDR.  Assuming the association with the ships in question had something to do with their construction and/or launching (which, I guess, isn't a safe assumption), they must not be battleships; no single battleship class's construction stretched over all three of those administrations.  And carriers are out; the first class of carriers that had more than two ships in it was the Yorktown class, all three of which were built during the Roosevelt administration.  My guess is that we're talking about one of the "treaty cruiser" classes.

Or....The question didn't say "U.S. Navy"; it just said "warship."  If I remember correctly, the 165-foot (B) class of Coast Guard cutters were built during the Coolidge and Hoover administrations (largely to chase rumrunners during Prohibition), and one of them served for a while as FDR's personal yacht.

I'm probably barking up the wrong tree there.  I think the answer is one of the cruiser classes.

Hint#2

To answer Dr. Tilley's questions...  they were US Navy warships... and each President's relationship was direct and personal, not indirectly through their administrations.

I was pretty sure that I had covered the uniqueness of my question... I had eliminated the President Lines ships and stated 'warship'.. I didn't consider Coast Guard vessels as being warships.

It's amazing what bubbles to the top in these things. 

hmmm.... the answers to this appear to be more obscure than I thought.

Hint#3

Descriptive statements could be made about each of these three Presidents ending with the word "down". (different statement for each) 

Hint #4

Each President's association was not necessarily during his term in office.

I think it could be the Independence Class Carriers:

Ford and George HW Bush (Republicans) Served on the Monterey

Franklin Pierce( Democrat) Served as an Army officer during The Mexican War Battle of Monterey. 

Where does the "down" phrase come in, though?

 Bush was shot down.

Pierce was brought down by a fever/dysentery/malaria for a good portion of the war with Mexico.

Ford?  I guess he just fell down.

I'll concede this one to Mr. Delawder. 

The Independence Class (CVLs 22-30), Gerald Ford (Assistant Navigation Officer, USS Monterey, CVL 26) and George Bush (pilot, VT-51, USS San Jacinto, CVL 30) are correct answers, but Franklin Pierce lived about a hundred years too early to have a personal association.

The third President was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The conversion of Cleveland Class light cruisers to fast escort carriers was FDR's brainchild, proposed in mid 1941.

The Navy was opposed to the idea; experts worried that the hulls of the Cleveland Class would not be provide stable aircraft launch and recovery platforms, would provide limited aircraft storage and maintenance facilitities and would have poor seakeeping characteristics.

But FDR persisted and CL to CV conversions were authorized after the Pearl Harbor attack, beginning with CL-59, USS Amsterdam, to be redesignated CV-22 USS Independence. In 1943, the Independence Class vessels were reclassified as CVLs. Although some of the Navy's concerns proved to be valid, the CVLs were generally considered to be a successfull class.

As Alumni72 noted, Bush was shot down, and 1970's comedians had a field day with Ford's unfortunate tendency to fall down.

Due to his polio, FDR spent most of his time in office, sitting down.

Mr. Delawder, you are up next.

More trivia....

Pierce was present at the Battle of Monterrey (spelled with two Rs) in northern Mexico, fought by the US Army in September of 1846. 

CVL-26 was named after a different "Battle" of Monterey, the siezure of Monterey, in Alta California by the US Navy, almost three months before the Army's assault on the other Monterrey. (The California Monterey is spelled with one R - in spite of some misinformation on some internet sites, the spelling shown on 18th century Spanish charts showing the California city has always used one R).

It wasn't much of a battle. Not a shot was fired, but the Navy's seizure of Alta California's Capitol, Monterey was the most siginifcant action of the Mexican War. The territory associated with Mexican California extended well beyond the borders of the modern state. With Monterey's capture, the United States bridged the gap between Texas and the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific.

The territory claimed through the capture of Monterey included the modern states of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. The war and its territorial issues were settled with Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Claims to Oregon and Washington were disputed by the British and were settled later under a separate treaty.

Well, that one tripped me up.  I did remember that both Ford and Bush had served on board Independence-class carriers, but I couldn't think of a third president - a Democrat - who had any association with them.  (I did a Google search for Lyndon Johnson's navy service record, thinking he might be the culprit, but no luck.)  I should have thought of FDR.

Nice one, Schoonerbum.

Thanks Dr. Tilley.

And for a bit more trivia... Bush's carrier, USS San Jacinto, has what I believe may be the unique distinction of being named for a battle fought by two foreign powers.

The Texan victory at San Jacinto saved the Texas Republic in 1836 as an independent country. Try as she did for the subsequent decade, Texas did not become part of the United States until after the Mexican War. There were even negotiations over her becoming a protectorate of England in the 1840s, one of the driving forces leading to the Mexican War. The last thing the southern states wanted was a British colony (meaning fugitive slave asylum) next door. England had outlawed slavery.   

Correct regarding the San Jacinto, - and an interesting point indeed.  (I certainly can't think of another American warship named after a battle between two foreign powers.)

But (at least from the U.S. standpoint) Texas became a state of the Union in December, 1845, when Congress voted to accept its state constitution.  (That, according to the U.S. Constitution, is the key moment in the achievement of statehood.)  That was in the last days of the Tyler administration; Polk, who had already won the election of 1844, was waiting to be inaugurated when Texas became a state.  (One plank of Polk's platform had been "the re-annexation of Texas.")  The Mexican government, always resentful of Texas's bid for independence, had announced that it would regard a U.S. takeover of Texas as an act of war, and refused to recognize the American annexation.  One of my professors in grad school described the Mexican-American War (1846-48) as "a case of two adolescent countries playing chicken with each other."

Surface_Line wrote:

Memphis was commanded by the father of Edward Beach, CO of Triton.

Rick 

I fear that I only jumped out with the answer for the sport of it, and was not well prepared to respond with a decent question, particularly one in line with Mr. Death's "too much Yank stuff'" constraint,

What was the last of the British WWII War Emergency classes of destroyer to be lost to enemy action?  (That should encompass the O-Z and various Ca, Co, Cr & Ch classes)

Rick 

Good question. 

Depends on how you define "lost"...  HMS Pathfinder was damaged by Japanese aircraft off Burma in Feb. 1945. She made it back to port and was declared a "constructive loss" and scrapped.

Or it depends on how you define "enemy action. I believe HMS Swift had the misfortune of being the last emergency class  destroyer to be sunk..  by a mine off of the Normandy beachhead on 24 June 1944.

The last emergency class vessel to be sunk in a shooting "action" was HMS Shark, but not as a British destroyer, as she had been transfered to the Norwegians and was sunk off Normandy by German torpedo boats on D-Day under the name Svenner.

I think that the last emergency class British destroyer to be sunk in a shooting action, under the Royal Navy ensign was HMS Hardy, torpedoed by U-278 on 30 Jan 1944.

We do seem to have a hard time of these things without further definition of terms, don't we?

I did not intend the ships to be limited to the British flag at the time of their loss, and the cause of their loss could be any of the explosive devices you named, and even including submarines with big screws attaching warheads or buzz-bombs or zepplins any other sort of unpleasantness that a lawyer would specify.   :-)

Rick 

"hey.. I didn't do anything wrong, even my lawyer says so"

I guess my guess is, then, the last vessel lost due to enemy activity would be Pathfinder, I guess.