Hard Aground: The Wreck of the USS Tennessee and the Rise of the US Navy

By Andrew C. A. Jampoler

University Alabama Press, 2023

Reviewed by Jim Gallen, St. Louis, Missouri

When the Tennessee Was New and Beautiful

When I began this read, I was expecting to find an exposition on how the grounding of the USS Tennessee was a turning point in the modernization of the United States Navy. I actually found that the theme of the book is the second clause of the subtitle: “The Rise of the U.S. Navy” of which the grounding of the Tennessee is merely one, though a recurring, story.

Tennessee’s operational career as an armored cruiser spanned just over 11 years, from 1906 to 1917. In 1916, she was renamed the Memphis to free the Tennessee name for a new battleship.  During her career, she transported Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft to Panama for inspections of canal construction. In 1907 she participated in the naval review associated with the  Jamestown Exposition, held from 7 to 11 June 1907, to commemorate the tricentennial of the founding of the first English settlement in America. The outbreak of World War I disrupted commercial sailings and financial transactions, leaving Americans scrambling for transportation home. On 6 August 1914 the Tennessee sailed out of anchorage at Tompkinsville, Staten Island, for Falmouth, England, with only a Navigation Complement, barely enough crew to sail safely but not a “fighting crew.”  Its ammunition holds were loaded with $50,000 in U. S. double eagle gold pieces as part of a shipment of $1.5 million in U. S. government money and $3 million in private money to satisfy expenses and secure transportation for expatriate Americans. She spent about a year in the eastern Mediterranean protecting American interests until her return trip in August 1915, carrying “seven carloads of English gold” to safekeeping in the United States and Canada. By then renamed Memphis, the vessel was participating in American intervention in the Dominican Republic when it was wrecked by a hurricane that left her aground and unsalvageable on 29 August 1916.

That is the story of Tennessee’s service and wreckage, but an even bigger part of the story is the second part of the subtitle, "The Rise of the U.S. Navy,"  beginning in 1881. The Civil War Navy was obsolete and retired. In the words of Navy Secretary, William Hunt: “The condition of the Navy imperatively demands the prompt and earnest attention of Congress.  Unless some action be had…it must soon dwindle into insignificance…We have been unable to make such an appropriate display of our naval power abroad as will cause is to be respected…It is a source of mortification to our officers and fellow countrymen generally, that our vessels of war should stand in such mean contrast alongside those of other and inferior powers.”  

The Navy’s rise began with the 1884 appropriation. Dolphin, Atlanta, Boston and Chicago introduced steel hulls to the fleet. By 1898, the rise was sufficient to decimate the Spanish fleets in Manila and of Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War that put an end to Spanish Empire. Lessons from the Spanish-American war that a heavily-armed cruiser like Tennessee could outrun anything it could not outfight lasted until the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought made them obsolete in 1906. The acquisition of an American island empire gave rise to the Anti-Imperialist League whose leaders, including industrialist Andrew Carnegie, labor leader Samuel Gompers, Harvard Professor William James, and Mark Twain became the conscience of America and questioned its need for a navy. President Theodore Roosevelt made a statement as he sent the Great White Fleet around the world in 1908.

Though still neutral, Great War belligerents reached American shores when Kapitänleutnant Hans Rose of U-53 made a surprise three-hour visit on October 7, 1916 when he docked his boat at Newport, Rhode Island, ostensibly to mail a letter to the German Ambassador in Washington. During courtesy calls on naval district commander Rear Admiral Austin Knight, USN, and commander of Atlantic Fleet’s destroyer force, Rear Admiral Albert Gleave, USA, his boat’s deck guns and torpedoes delivered a show of the Kaiserliche Marine’s force and range to the still neutral United States. Back again in international waters, U-53 reinforced its message by quickly sinking six foreign-flagged steamers.

The advent of U-boats during World War I changed naval warfare, as they threatened to starve Britain into submission. As British subjects subsisted on adulterated bread, ersatz sausage, potatoes, turnips and, occasionally, “boiled crow,” Germany suffered through its own “turnip winter” of 1916–1917. The U.S. Navy responded with a shift to wooden submarine chasers, harbor patrol boats and destroyers. Naval preparation notwithstanding, American mothers “didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.” When war did come, the Navy, in contrast to the Army, was impressively large and relatively prepared to engage. Vice Admiral William S. Sims was dispatched to England as liaison office to the Admiralty in London. Sims’s analysis was that U-boats were “sweeping British commerce from the seas” and that unless success against the U-boats was achieved over the summer of 1917, the grim arithmetic of sinkings versus construction meant that defeat was certain by autumn, possibly by November. Six new Tucker-class destroyers were the first combat Americans “Over There.” USN suffered few combatant ship losses at sea and none in classic big-gun, ship-on-ship duels.

World War I did end, and Nashville became the home of the largest remaining portions of the Tennessee/Memphis. The narrative concludes with the successor Tennessee moored along Ford Island in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, but that is another story.

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Though the breath of this work extends over 40 years, about 20 percent of it focuses on the Great War. Roads readers will appreciate Hard Aground for its extensive chronicle of the evolution of the United States Navy from the remnants of the Civil War fleet into the fleet of the Great War and beyond. The intermittent one-to-two- page snippets of artwork featured in Puck magazine or paintings of maritime themes situate naval history in the context of social milieu. Secondary sources are liberally quoted. The index is helpful in locating topics and the bibliography is a guide to further reading. Author Andrew C. A. Jampoler has crafted a tome broader than its title would suggest. Begin this book with broad expectations and let the text narrow them, rather than expecting Tennessee to be the center. If it has a weakness, it is in its meandering breadth in contrast to linear development found in many accounts.  That recognized, it is a worthwhile read.

Jim Gallen