Beach's book is good - as are his others. USS Memphis [Tennessee] was originally part of Teddy's "Great White Fleet".
Posted on 12/27/2004 3:16:10 PM PST by XRdsRev
The USS Memphis was a large armoured cruiser of 18,000 tons, originally named the Tennessee, and launched on 3 December 1904. Her boilers were coal-fired and she had two reciprocating engines which gave her a speed of 23 knots. Her main armament consisted of four ten-inch guns in twin turrets, and when she was commissioned these guns could outrange those of any battleship in existence. Her subsidiary armament included 16 six-inch and 22 three-inch guns.
She was renamed Memphis in 1916 to release the name Tennessee for a battleship (BB43) which was then under construction. Many of the dock workers thought it bad luck to change the name and the idea spread to the crew, but few took it really seriously.........
(Excerpt) Read more at compass.dircon.co.uk ...
http://www.compass.dircon.co.uk/Memphis.htm
Scared the crap outa me far a second.
It was Prescott Bush's fault!
The Captain of The Memphis was Edward Beach, father of Edward "Ned" Beach, the WW II submariner and later author of Run Silent, Run Deep, among many other books.
Ned Beach wrote a book, "The Wreck of the Memphis" on the disaster and his father's court martial. It's still in print, I believe, and is a good read.
Jack
Beach's book is good - as are his others. USS Memphis [Tennessee] was originally part of Teddy's "Great White Fleet".
Possible thread?
Simply unbelieveble.
Could be. Especially since it is just an excerpt here. Thanks tanker.
The claim it was a Tsunami seems to be completely unsupported at that website.
Seems like it was a hurricane storm surge.
Only bigger.
A true story, but some of the facts given are open to question. The listings I found on the web for the Tennessee/Memphis listed her as 14,000 tons, not 18,000. 14,000 would have been about right for a large armored cruiser of the period. Battleships of the period were 18,000 tons. Plus, the assertion that the Memphis's 10 inch cannon outranged any battleship at the time it was built strikes me as questionable. Battleships were armed with 12 inch cannon by then, and the bigger guns usually outrange the smaller guns.
No, I followed it to the source. Great pic.
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