Birth of a Navy (250th Anniversary)

John Adams had been a strong advocate of a navy for the rebellious colonies since the Congress had convened. But the same Congress that had endorsed an army under the command of George Washington that spring was reluctant to do the same for a navy. Adams was aware that, in these early days of the rebellion, a sizable faction still hoped for a reconciliation with the Crown, and they feared that creating a navy was too provocative. An army could be seen as defensive in nature, a necessary response to provocations, but a navy implied sovereignty—and that begat independence, something many of the delegates would not be ready to endorse for nearly a year.

After the 13 October resolution was passed, an ebullient Adams wrote James Warren back in Boston: “We begin to feel a little of a Seafaring Inclination here.” Indeed, once the genie was out of the bottle, the Continental Congress took its creation seriously.

The committee of three referred to in the 13 October resolution again included Silas Deane and John Langdon, but Adams was replaced by Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, an apparent attempt to appease the South. On 30 October, the committee was expanded to add Adams and three others—Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and Joseph Hewes of North Carolina—for a total of seven.

On that same day, Congress added two more vessels “for the protection and defence of the United Colonies.” On 10 November, the Continental Marine Corps was authorized, and later that month the delegates approved the capture and confiscation of all British armed vessels, transports, and supply ships and directed “the issuing of commissions to captains of cruisers and privateers.”

Some of you may be aware already but I found this obscure to me treasure trove of history, navy and otherwise but all military.

I don’t expect you to delve into any of the following, just too much and too little time and too many other things to be done, but I did want to make you aware of it. I still don’t think anyone living really actually knows how all the things of WWII got done or if we could ever do it again. If you would take just a little time to scroll down in the volume of Navy construction and look at the facility pictures of things built across the globe you can’t help but be left in wonder and amazement. Maybe the pace and scale of some of these data centers today is on par but they come nowhere close to the efficiency that is apparent in today’s dollars of $183 billion for all the construction of facilities of the War.

My latest interest began with floating dry docks.

I got reinterested in this again last week and went on a reading spree that went into overtime. Of course there are youtube videos about them.

Starting with Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_floating_drydock

Take note of the section that was floated through the Panama Canal on its side. Seems improbably to have been done. The section was raised to its side by sinking and careful flooding and pumping then it was stabilized with the use of Pontoons of which the Navy had many.

The larger docks had machinery spaces and quarters in them. I wondered where and went in search of a cut-away or plan. Sure enough, I found one. In the article citations or references is this:

https://books.google.com/books?id=bCEDAAAAMBAJ&dq=popular+science+July+1946&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q=popular%20science%20July%201946&f=false

Officers were on the top deck of the walls, enlisted in the bowels of the barge section along with the mess hall. Lots of stairs to climb. The cold storage was up in the upper deck of the wall so food had to be carried down the spiral stairs to the galley.

Also note how the cranes were transported and then moved to the top of the guide walls.

I had found but forgotten the Google books resource and have not yet figured out how to access the periodicals but the book offerings are endless.

Once upon a time Popular Science and Mechanics were worth reading. Each month something like 250 pages of what is happening and things to build and how to do.

I draw your attention to the citation in the Wiki article about Navy Logistics in WWII. Most likely a good read for the interested, see below for more.

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/beans-bullets-black-oil.html

These things are like the Library. I would have studied there at Univeristy if I could but it was just too easy to get distracted and follow any trail you choose.

https://play.google.com/store/books/category/coll_1673?pli=1

I was curious about how they repaired battle damage along with my curiosity about floating dry docks and the immense logistics challenge of war anywhere but in particular the Pacific. How do you replace armor plate armor belt that’s incheskj thick?

Well here is the answer In a post war report from 1947. They must have had so many people after the war that they took advantage of them to document as much as they could. I was up till early this morning reading this document, I did not realize but it makes sense that ships have a section modulus and a neutral axis for their beam strength longitudinally and transversely

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/structural-repairs-forward-areas-wwii.html#HOUSTON

I found another resource I have attached below. There are many of them and this one includes citations of other locations. I have not yet mastered how to navigate this Site

It is nothing short of astounding and any other superlative you can ever think of that things got done so massively and quickly. Huge facilities all across the globe. The real mobilization of people did not take place until ‘43, training in much of ‘44 and then nobody stood a chance by late ‘44 and all of ‘45. It was clear that the push was for Europe in manpower at the outset.

The training lag for Seabees seems to be about 6 months or less? With all these tradesmen engaged in service who was left to build the things at home? Nearly 1/4 million men engaged in just this one service, we didn’t have a population near what we have now.

The expense was short of $10 billion then, only about $183 billion in today’s dollars. We piddle that away in round-off now. The total amount for All Naval Shore Construction in five years is less than 20% of one year’s defense budget.

There are money and manpower charts at the end of the list of figures in the index of the following volume.

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/Building_Bases/index.html

This is the root page of the citations just above.

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/

Anchors Away!

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