Posts Tagged ‘Navy’

The flagship of the Pacific Squadron arrived unexpectedly in San Diego in late December 1891. “Our presence is probably a surprise to you,” said the ship’s captain, Rear Admiral George Brown.  “We were ordered to San Diego and here we are.  We shall take on about 250 tons of coal and will then be on waiting orders.”

Within days, Brown’s ship was joined by another cruiser, the USS Charleston. The ships would spend the next six weeks in San Diego.

The story of the White Squadron.

USS San Francisco

In the early 1900s, the ultimate status symbol for a business tycoon in America was a luxurious, ocean-going yacht. A personal mark of opulence in San Diego was the 226-foot steam yacht Venetia, owned by John Diedrich Spreckels. Read more about Spreckels’ famed yacht: The Venetia.

The “Venetia” leaving San Diego in 1924. From Adams, The Man: John D. Spreckels.

July 29 – 8 to meridian. At 10:30 hauled up courses, standing in for harbor of San Diego.  At11:30 came in to 9½ fathoms; hoisted out boats . . . At 3:40 the launch and Alligator under command of Lieutenant Rowan, and the Marine Guard under Lieutenant Maddox, left the ship to take possession of the town of San Diego.

–Log of the USS Cyane.

Read the story of the first flag raising over San Diego in 1846: Raising the flag

Captains and officers of San Diego’s “Yippie” boats.

We called ourselves the pork chop express. We carried meat and vegetables from Pearl Harbor all over the central Pacific. . . Sometimes we’d come back from an 1,800 jaunt, load up with pork chops and go right out again. We were so slow that almost anything could have caught up with us and sunk us.

The story of San Diego’s tuna fleet in World War II: The Pork Chop Express.

The city of San Diego has been the namesake for two U.S. Navy ships with distinguished careers in the two world wars. The armored cruiser USS San Diego served in World War I before its sinking by a German mine off the New York coast in 1918. Another USS San Diego would fight in World War II, remembered by San Diego author Fred Whitmore as “the unbeatable ship that nobody ever heard of.”  Read more about the USS San Diego of World War II.

Within the next twenty days San Diego harbor will assume a warlike appearance, for twenty vessels of the navy, including the two submarines Grampus and Pike . . . will be in the waters of the inner bay . . .

Go to submarines.