USCG CABLE SHIP PEQUOT - UNITED STATES
HARBOR DEFENCES
|
The 'Other' Pequots |
The 1st USCG Pequot Cable Ship
In 1916, when the first World War in Europe became America’s business, it
was recommended that the various means of communication being used along the
coast be coordinated and that the Coast Guard, then being the existing
telephone system of coastal communications, be brought up to a high state of
efficiency. It was necessary to lay submarine communication cables to
achieve this. However, in WW1, the Coast Guard had no cable ship and what
little cable laying was done was accomplished by the Western Union cable
ship Robert C. Clowry and the converted 282 gross ton menhaden
fishing trawler, John A. Palmer Jr. (SP-319), which was operated by
the US Navy.
 |
 |
| 2a. The only known photo of the Robert C. Clowry. (Courtesy Bill Burns - from Kenneth Haigh's "Cableships & Submarine Cables") | 2b. Crew from the Robert C Clowry untangling telephone cables in 1916 while working for the American Telephone & Telegraph Company. (Rosenfeld Collection Mystic Seaport Museum) |
The Clowry was built by A.C. Brown in 1910 in Tottenville, New York with a length of 132' and a beam of 33'. She was owned and operated by the Western Union Telegraph Company as a cable layer. Between 1919 and 1924 she ran each year from Halifax, Nova Scotia to New York where her foreign crew was processed through Ellis Island whenever they entered port. After Western Union sold the Clowry in 1924 the new owners painted “Western Union” in big letters on her superstructure and used the ship as a rum runner during prohibition which resulted in Western Union being accused of bootlegging! She was sold again in 1926 and renamed Telegraph before being sold in 1930 and renamed Salvor. The ship was scrapped in 1938.
 |
 |
| 3a. The John A Palmer Jr. in 1911 in
Wilmington, Delaware as photographed by the Jackson and Sharpe
shipbuilding company. We have yet to locate a photo of the Palmer
after she was converted to a cable ship and later transferred to
the Coast Guard when she became the 1st Pequot cable ship.
(Delaware Public Archives) Click to enlarge. |
3b. A view of the Palmer’s
starboard side also from 1911. Here we see the ship as originally
configured as a menhaden fishing trawler for the C. E. Davis
Packing Company. (Delaware Public Archives) Click to enlarge. |
The Palmer was built in 1911 by the Jackson & Sharp Company of Wilmington, Delaware. She displaced 276 tons, had a length of 155', a beam of 22' and a top speed of 12 knots.
The ship was named for John Armistead Palmer Jr. who was one of the most innovative menhaden [a species of fish] fishing operators of the period. Palmer was the first to add refrigerated holds to menhaden ships to reduce spoilage, and he first used ship-to-shore wireless communications to alert fish processing plants when boats laden with the latest catch would be arriving. The Palmer Fisheries first experimented with burning oil on menhaden fishing trawlers to generate steam instead of coal and he pioneered the use of packing plant scraps as fish meal to feed livestock. A true visionary he even convinced the Navy to make a US Navy flying boat available to test if aerial observations could spot schools of fish off the US coast. While the experiment proved very successful and established that schools of fish could be located from the air and their locations radioed to fishing company shore stations, it proved too expensive a practice to implement at the time. In retrospect many felt ingenious Palmer was 50 to 75 years ahead of his time. Many of his unique concepts from the early 1900s are standard practice today.
The Navy acquired the John A. Palmer Jr. trawler from the C. E. Davis Packing Company of Reedville, Virginia, on April 7th, 1917 for World War I service as a patrol vessel and armed her with two 1-pounder cannons. She was commissioned the same day as the USS J. A. Palmer (SP-319) with Boatswain W. A. Hudgins in command.
 |
 |
 |
| 3c. The Palmer in
Wilmington along what we believe is the Christina River with the
Market Street Bridge in the background 1911. (Delaware Public
Archives) Click to enlarge. |
3d. Another converted fishing
trawler of the same period, The USS Margaret (WP-328) was
very similar to the John A. Palmer and was acquired by the US Navy
during WWI to serve as a patrol vessel. (U.S. Naval Historical
Center Photograph NH 100558) |
The innovative John Armistead Palmer Jr. whose innovative ideas to modernize the menhaden fishing industry were 50 - 75 years ahead of his time. (Palmer Family Collection) |
Assigned to the 5th Naval District, J. A. Palmer served on patrol duty off Cape Henry, Virginia, until February 1918, when she received special cable equipment at Berkeley, Virginia. She then was loaned to the United States Coast Guard for use along the East coast laying and repairing cable. To avoid confusion with the destroyer USS Palmer (DD-161), J. A. Palmer's name was dropped on January 17th 1919, and she became the USS SP-319. She was transferred to the Coast Guard on September 10th 1919 and served as the cable ship Pequot until 1922. She towed her replacement vessel, the former Army mine planter General Samuel M. Mills, from Newport News, Virginia to the Depot at Curtis Bay on April 28th 1922. The 1st Pequot cable ship was decommissioned on May 11th 1922 and was sold on August 8th 1922 to McNeal Edwards Company, of Reedville, Virginia for $17,000.
The Other Pequots
In honor of the Native America tribe of Southern
Connecticut two other United States ships were named the Pequot.
The Pequots are members of the Algonquian language grouping who believe
that every living thing in the earth has a spirit and that One Great
Spirit oversees everything. By 1990 there were only 680 Pequot remaining
in the United States.
The Civil War Pequot.
The first USS Pequot was a 600 ton Nipsic Class US Civil War
wooden screw gunboat built in 1862 by Woodruff of Portsmouth, New
Hampshire. She was launched in June 1863 at the Boston Navy Yard and
commissioned in 1864 when she joined the North Atlantic Blockading
Squadron under the command of Rear Admiral Stephen Platt Quackenbush.
Ordered by the Navy Department as an emergency measure, and built
rapidly of unseasoned timber Pequot and her sister ships were
known as "90-day Gunboats." Designed by S. M. and S. H. Pook with
engines by Isherwood these two-masted schooners did poorly under sail,
but performed well while steaming. With a deadweight of 836 tons she was
armed with one 150-pounder Parrott Rifle, one 30-pounder Parrott Rifle,
two 9" Dahlgren smooth bore cannons, two 24-pounder Howitzers, and one
smooth bore 12-pounder cannon. Under Quackenbush she captured the
British blockade runner, Don, off Beaufort, North Carolina and
helped the Army beat back a Confederate attack on Wilson’s Wharf at
James River, Virginia. Later she also engaged during the bombardment of
Fort Fisher, North Carolina and helped capture Fort Anderson.
Decommissioned after the Civil War in June 1865 she was sold to Haiti in 1869.
In 1875 she was renamed the Terreur which means “The Terror” or “The Dread” in
French.
 |
 |
 |
| 17. In August of 1864 after the
battle of Mobile Bay Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi was
given command of the U.S.S. Pequot. (U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph NH 49305) |
18. The bombardment of Fort Fischer January 15th, 1865. (Engraving by J.O. Davidson) | 19.
Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter, Commander of the Pequot's
North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. (U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph NH 91416. Photographed by Alexander Gardner) |
 |
 |
 |
| 20. A Nipsic Class gunboat at the Washington Navy Yard,
District of Columbia, circa late 1860s. (U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph NH 45212) |
21. Navy Rear Admiral Stephen Platt Quackenbush who was the
Pequot’s first captain. (findagrave.com) |
22. The Pequot’s sister ship - the 1864 Nipsic class gunboat USS
Yantic. (U.S. Navy Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships Naval Historical Center) |
The World War I Pequot. The second Pequot (ID-2998) was a German built freighter which displaced 12,500 tons, and was operated as the Ockenfels for the German Navy. When World War I broke out and the high seas were unsafe for German shipping, she took refuge at New York where she was seized in April 1917 by the Shipping Board of the US Government and became part of the American merchant marine. When the US entered the war she was refurbished and taken over by the US Navy on October 28th 1918 and commissioned as the USS Pequot on the same day. She was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service and was used to carry general cargo on both the Army and Shipping Board accounts during the war. She was struck from the Navy List in July 1919 and returned to the Shipping Board.
 |
|
23. The freighter USS Pequot - date and harbor unknown. We speculate that this photo may have been taken shortly after WWI when the ship was released from military service. The large "C" on the funnel indicates she was operated by a shipping company when this photo was taken. (photoship.co.uk) |
|
|
|
|
|
24. Gun crew bore sighting
the forward deck gun on the S.S Ockenfelds 1917. |
25. The officers and crew of the
freighter USS Pequot taken in Rotterdam, Holland on
February 23rd, 1919. |
26.
The Second
Pequot: SS Ockenfels - 28 June 1917. |
Non-Military Pequots
Under sail or steam over the years numerous ships have been have been named Pequot. Historical ship index records provide references and citations to more than 25 different non-military craft that have served on the high seas or inland waterways during the past 150 years that were named in honor of the North American Indian tribe Pequot. Here are two examples from opposite ends of the 20th century.
 |
|
1. Moored next to a large passenger ferry this Pequot from the early 1900s without forward mast or booms appears to be a working harbor tug or auxiliary of some kind. (Historical Society of America, Thomas H. Franklin Collection) |
 |
|
2. The bulk carrier Pequot in the Belgium/Netherlands Ghent Canal in 2004. Constructed by Sumitomo Heavy Industries in 1996 this 36,615 gross ton freighter operated worldwide as the Pequot under the Liberian Flag. In 2011 the ship was renamed The Bulk Patriot and began operating under the Panamanian flag. (Dave Medgett, shipspotting.com) |
 |
|
3. On November 6th 2005 while steaming across Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela the LPG Tanker M/T Maersk Holyhead loaded with 11,200 metric tons of propane steered directly in front of the Pequot resulting in a serious collision. (cargolaw.com) |
 |
 |
|
Despite a small fire both ships survived.
The bow of the Pequot had to be completely rebuilt. |
|
Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright. The authors would welcome any information from people who believe their photos have been used without due credit. Some photos have been retouched to remove imperfections but otherwise they are true to the original.
FEEDBACK
If you have comments or queries specifically
about the Pequot or her Escort Ships, please contact
Chip Calamaio
chipaz@cox.net, 938 E. San Miguel Avenue, Phoenix, 85014, Arizona,
USA. (H) 602-279-4505.
Click here to go to the Pequot Main Page.
Research and design: Chip Calamaio and Richard Walding
