15 July 2023. #12
GRAY FLEET
Huntington Ingles turned the new destroyer, JACK H LUCAS (DDG-125), over to the Navy after she completed her trials in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the first of the new Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that comes with the newest edition of the Aegis Combat systems that include an AN-SPY 6 air and surface missile defense radar. Because of the highest levels of technology within the Navy, the Commanding Officer will not be a Lieutenant Commander, the typical level of a new destroyer CO, but will only be commanded by an O-6 (Captain) officer.
The JACK H LUCAS is the last of the 10 hull designs the Navy ordered in 2013 from Huntington Ingles. A new proposed hull is under consideration and may give HII a contract for as many as 15 new destroyers.
Lucas was a Marine with the 26th Regiment, 5th Marine Division on Iwo Jima. He jumped on two Japanese grenades to save his fellow marines. Buried in Hattiesburg, MS, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Logic -Based Expert System (LBES) is a fault diagnosis of power systems using a new inference method. “Expertise is represented by logical implications and converted into a Boolean function. Unlike conventional rule-based expert systems, the expertise is converted into Prime Implicants (PIs) which are logically complete and sound. Therefore, off-line inference is possible by off-line identification of PIs, which reduces the on-line inference time considerably and makes it possible to utilize the proposed expert system in real-time environment.” https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/574960
If you understand this then you are in a higher pay grade than me. The Navy is building a new frigate testing arena in an old WWII aircraft factory in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. One suspects that the disastrous and hugely expensive failure of the LCSs, they need to test systems BEFORE they install them.
In the back-and-forth swings of naval philosophy, the old expendable frigates of WWII and the Cold War were jettisoned from the floating arsenal because they were so…expendable and costly. Uncle Sam’s Canoe Club (aka The U.S. Navy), put large stacks of chips on the Arleigh Burke destroyers and the Aegis Defense Systems that, unfortunately, are dated because technology tends to change faster than production. The LCS was supposed to be the veritable Swiss Army Knife for all missions, minus jet aircraft. So, we swing back to the easily sunken frigates whose proponents lost that argument decades ago.
I wonder if we will someday go back to wooden ships-of-the-line?
ENVIRONMENT
Viewers of the movie MASTER AND COMMANDER remember the scene when the SURPRISE ventured onto the Galapagos Islands and saw, evidentially for the first time, swimming iguanas. Dr. Stephen Maturin told Midshipman Calamy that he had to be wrong only to find that the young boy was correct—iguanas that swim.
The creatures, abhorred by Charles Darwin as hideous, stupid, and sluggish, evolved into reptiles that live on algae, have flat tails for their aquatic ventures, and glands that filter salt (which they rid by sneezing). Oil slicks, feral dogs, cats, and climate change have wreaked havoc on their environment. Long believed that these iguanas were all similar, recent DNA analysis notes that 11 different subspecies of swimming iguanas live on those equatorial islands.
The best-laid plans of men and mice often go awry, sayeth Robert Burns, and that is exactly what happened when Wisconsin environmentalists attempted to enhance fish habitat on the Big Green and Grant Rivers. Sadly, their good idea was squashed by a diminutive little Blanchard’s Cricket Frog that only grows from ½ inch to a massive 1.5 inch . These tiny amphibians are on the Endangered Species List and the entire project halted. New plans for improving the lives of Brown Trout will, unquestionably, kill a few of these beasties; however, DNR and other official bureaus considered that the loss of a few frogs is the best idea overall– or so say the fishermen. The Blanchard’s Cricket Frogs did not respond to inquiries.
Blanchard’s Cricket Frog
Reggie McCloud’s extraordinarily great magazine, BIG RIVER, contains superlative digests of news of the Upper Mississippi River. It is one of those magazines you end up reading, cover to cover, in one sitting. His latest edition contained a splendid article on the Gizzard Shad and its place in the overall environment of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers.
Zooplankton, microscopic animals, and phytoplankton, microscopic plants, inhabit much of the rivers and provide sustenance for a variety of fish, but especially for the Shad that rarely grows beyond 8 inches. Young Shad (about an inch in length) have very small teeth and a short digestive tract that is essential for gobbling up zooplankton.
Once the fish reach a certain age, they lengthen their digestive system, lose the teeth, move the mouth more forward, and commence dining on phytoplankton by pumping water through their mouths and their “gill rakers” strain out food.
The scientist’s postulate is that the energy stored in Shad’s body is important for feeding small beings like crayfish that are ultimately swallowed by larger panfish that in turn become food for bass and larger fish. These larger fish are the best treats an eagle can find. The food chain from Shad to Eagles reaches the zenith but dying birds become detritus and find its way back into the waters. Cool.
Gizzard Shad.
SEA HISTORY, the publication of the National Maritime Historical Society, featured a superlative article on the incredible abalone prized for food and beautiful shells used for sundry artifacts. Archeologists discovered ancient shells in garbage dumps that date to 300 BC. California experts knew that people have eaten them for at least 12,000 years.
Korea, known for its abalone, became a woman’s labor after men found other more profitable work. Because of their extra layer of fat, females were ideally suited for diving in cold waters. They typically dove with a bag, a hooked tool for dislodging the shells, and seaweed knives. It was especially dangerous. While in historic Korea men could move about but women were legally bound to a certain village.
One of my personally significant possessions is a tiki doll purchased by Amerigo Luigi Baldo, corpsman with the 9th Marine Regiment, who purchased it in New Zealand while the 3rd Marine Division practiced for the Guam invasion. He gave it to my father, also a corpsman with the 9th Marines. Amerigo and his twin brother, Italio, were born on a U.S. bound ship and named for their family’s home nation and for the U.S. Amerigo was a very kind and caring man who took me to my first major league baseball game: the Dodgers vs. the Phillies. (As an aside, the LA team started Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Johnny Padres, Jim Gilliam, Johnny Roseboro, Norm Sherry, Gil Hodges, Maury Wills, and Duke Snyder. The Phillies had Alvin Dark, Bobby Del Greco, Joe Morgan, Wally Post, and Robin Roberts)
NAUTICAL HISTORY
John and Nathanael Herreshoff, two extraordinary brilliant brothers from Bristol, RI, were partners in a ship-building company that left indelible marks in nautical history. Nate graduated in engineering at MIT and developed the 40’ 1400hp dynamo that generated electricity for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. He later joined his brother in boat building.
John built his first sailboat as a pre-teen and loved designing different boats but he lost an eye due to disease. He continued creating boats until in his mid-teens when he lost the other eye in an accident. Nevertheless, his personality, brilliant mind, and common sense aided him all his life.
John Brown Herreshoff
After the Civil War, the Navy was keen on the enhancement of a sleek Torpedo Boat that could attain fast speeds. At that time, torpedoes were explosives attached to long poles. One such ram sank a boat during the late war and the Navy wanted to perfect the concept.
Admiral David Dixon Porter, of Civil War fame, met John Brown Herreshoff in Rhode Island near the Navy’s Torpedo School and was convinced that John and his brother could build the kind of vessel they were looking for: a long, sleek, low-riding, fast ship that could carry the long poles. Congress approved the expenditure for two such boats from Herreshoff Manufacturing Company.
The brothers designed the LIGHTENING and in 1875 Porter rode the ship in various experimental runs off Goat Island. The LIGHTENING was a 3.45-ton boat with a length of 58 feet and a beam of 6’4” with a canoe-like draft of 14 inches. Her 4-man crew operated with 2–100-pound spar torpedoes. She was powered by twin connected engines with their crankshafts offset by 90 degrees that generated speeds of over 20 knots.
Rare photo of LIGHTENING (compliments of Naval History)
Porter later wrote, “We have in this country a man of great genius engaged in the construction of marine engines and boilers, but we are blind to his merits. I allude to Mr. [John Brown] Herreshoff.” In the report, Porter envisioned a 150-foot steel torpedo boat with a quadruple expansion engine, Herreshoff boilers, Ericsson torpedoes, and a top speed of 30 mph.” (“Prelude to the Beginning” J.M. Caiella, NAVAL HISTORY, April 2023).
While the LIGHTENING proved to be better than imagined, the spar torpedo concept was abandoned when European navies were creating self-propelled torpedoes and LIGHTENING was soon scrap; but not the Navy’s interest in the weapon or the Herreshoff brothers.
Nathanael Herreshoff
Nathaniel Herreshoff was a brilliant marine designer and the partnered with his blind brother in shipbuilding. After the LIGHTENING experience, the brothers worked on a 94-foot wooden torpedo boat with a displacement of 31 tons that could attain 20 knots. This was a private speculative operation that John Brown Herreshoff sold to the Navy in 1887 as the USS STILETTO which they quickly loved because of its self-propelled torpedoes. This became the first true torpedo boat.
Nate was supervising a speed trial on a new steamship, SAY WHEN, on which a boiler exploded killing one crew member. The consequence of this failure was the loss of his steam engineer’s license.
Undeterred, Nate and John, both accomplished sailors, moved into the lucrative realm of yacht building, especially for racing. Nate tinkered with a twin-hull design and proved that a catamaran had excellent aspects over a single-hull boat. He held the first patent for a catamaran.
They started designing and building yachts for such notables as Jay Gould, William Randolph Hearst, Cornelius Vanderbilt (and for two of his brothers), J.P. Morgan, and Harry Payne Whitney to name a fraction of the elite who enlisted the Herreshoff brothers. As for racers, they built America’s Cup yachts including VIGILANT (1893), DEFENDER (1895), COLUMBIA (1889), RELIANCE (1903) and RESOLUTE (1920). He loved smaller boats too and his Herreshoff 12 ½ is still being built.
The brothers built the first torpedo boat for the Navy, developed the blub and fin keels for large boats, updated and improved sail track and slide, and invented the crosscut sail with panels running at right angles to the leech. The Herreshoff brothers are arguably the greatest boat designers in U.S. history.
Herreshoff 12 ½
Despite eons of sailing, rules for passing, overtaking, or ship maneuvering. The federal government did not officially suggest rules of the road until 1897! Not only the Navy had ships sailing in coastal waters, but the Army also had 190 steamboats and 60 tugs under their jurisdiction.
In 1864 the Navy issued General Order #34 that provided necessary direction on ship movements. The Army followed suit with General Order #246 which was identical. Pamphlets of these orders were widely distributed both in the U.S. and internationally. In 1890, the International Maritime Conference finalized what is now the Rules of the Road. They have been amended over the years but the substance of General Order #34 remains.
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2 responses to “BEYOND THE HORIZON”
Great to see the new and improved Beyond the Horizon! Thank you.
WOW, I think there was a major technological problem and few could actually read the column. You save me.