Don't Call Me San Marcos by tallpindo
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No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.
Description
In 1892 the first battleship in the U.S. Navy was sponsored as the USS Texas. This ship was renamed San Marcos in 1911 so a newly built ship could be sponsored as the USS Texas. For me the ship came alive in a book I saw at the bookstore "Rudder." It wasn't a collection of old yachting magazines or the story of their publisher. It was the biography of the Chancellor of Texas A & M University when it admitted it's first coeds. This man led a group of Army Rangers to assault the Normandy Beach on D-Day after a night of firing by the ship in this image. The USS Texas participated in fire support for landings at Operation Torch and against Southern France before and after Normandy. It also was in the Pacific at Okinawa. I only found the rest of it's story yesterday wondering if it was ever at Long Beach. Excuse Me! for thinking so small. In the years between the world wars it regularly sortied between the Atlantic and Pacific. At one time it was stationed in San Diego. Unlike the later larger aircraft carriers it could sail through the Panama Canal. Look it over! Fourteen inch main guns and a lot of five inch as secondary armament as well as torpedo tubes fore and aft. Two Anti-aircraft guns were added early on and an aircraft flew off it's main turret before others were stationed on it and lifted by derricks as artillery spotters. Last year was a good time to see it as it is now listing from corrosion to it's hull. Unlike the Queen Mary it sitting and floating in sea water. Since 1948 it has been there in that spot. On board climbing the ladders and walking the decks is magnificent study of iron and steel in bright sky and clouds. (San Marcos was used as a target and sunk by USS New Hampshire. A fact that reminds me of a day in Washington, DC with a lady I met who wanted to buy some White Castle hamburgers. The White Castle was just up New Hampshire from Georgia Avenue. Cute little buggers aren't they?)
Comments (11)
Ok, big ship!
COOL Thanks for INFO
You got a fine shot of this behemoth!
Great capture of this massive battleship!
A GREAT Ship with a great background. Thank you for the very enlightening history. Well appreciated!
A fantastic capture of this great ship and interesting background info and other commentary!
Good capture and commentary. The old girl was very popular not so long ago; she's the last WW1 vintage battlewagon still around so she filled in scenes in documentaries and has "served" in the Royal and Imperial navies in them. Mostly to show ammunition handling operations IIRC. Never got to visit when we lived in San Anton. Plans just never worked out that way.
I'd love to see photos from inside. This is a great one! Keep up the good work! :-)
Nice capture....
I went on this ship years ago.one can appreciate the sailor's lives aboard one of these ships down below the deck
That is a really excellent high definition photo of the world's very last surviving Dreadnaught-type battleship laid down before WW I. I hope that the state of Texas will spend the money required for its restoration. A nation forgets its martial heritage at its own peril. Texas here was of course heavily updated between its launching and its service in WW 2 to include some torpedo bulge hull modifications, fire control systems, additions of anti-aircraft guns and rebuilding of its superstructure. I don't think it had radical upper deck armor work but may be wrong about that. Unlike the later Tennessee class ships, the rebuild did not replace the secondary 5 inch battery in barbettes with turrets and high angle DP guns. Texas and similar ships were too slow to accompany WW 2 carrier task forces and were therefore used as you describe for shore bombardment in support of amphibious landings, a role in which they excelled. While it is easy for me to geek out on the technical details, it was of course the crew, many recently removed from their civilian lives, who made these vessels the effective tools for genocide stoppage that they became in WW 2 and the instrument of key national defense policy in WW I.