8 — THE CHRONICLE
OFFBEAT OREGON HISTORY
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2019
Battleship U.S.S. Oregon was lost in Pearl Harbor attack – sort of
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
FOR THE CHRONICLE
ecember 7, 1941, was a
bad day for American
battleships.
Four of the U.S. Navy’s
front-line battleships – the
Arizona, Oklahoma, West
Virginia and California –
were sunk or destroyed. Four
more were beached or badly
damaged.
And far across the ocean,
the fate of another storied
battleship was sealed as well:
The U.S.S. Oregon, hero
of the Spanish-American
War, which was then resting
quietly at a dock in Portland
as a museum ship.
Time never was on the
U.S.S. Oregon’s side. She
was launched in 1896, in
the middle of a remarkable
period of torrid innova-
tion and development in the
history of warships, a time
when ship designs were
only good for about 10 years
before something better
came along.
The Oregon was one of
three sister ships built at the
same time, two on the East
Coast and one (the Oregon)
in San Francisco. They were
built to the same specs, but
for some reason the Oregon
was the fastest of the group
by a considerable margin.
That speed would become
the ship’s main claim to
fame.
By the time the Spanish-
American War was on the
verge of breaking out, in
1898, the Oregon already had
a reputation. It was known as
“the bulldog of the Navy,” a
reference to its massive bow
wave when under full steam;
the wave was big enough that
sailors joked that it looked
like the ship had a bone in
its teeth.
The onset of hostilities
caught the Oregon on the
wrong side of the continent,
up in Bremerton. Orders
went out for it to get “around
the horn” and up to the
Caribbean Sea right away.
Heaping the decks with
coal to save time on fuel
stops, the battleship’s crew
set out on a cannonball run.
They tore southward to
Patagonia, cut through the
notoriously stormy Strait
of Magellan, got caught in a
D
The U.S.S. Oregon in dry dock in 1898, two years after launch. When this photo was taken, the Oregon was the most famous warship in
the country, and one of the most powerful. IMAGE: U.S. NAVY
bad one, rode it out success-
fully, and then raced north-
ward past Argentina and
Brazil to rendezvous with
the American fleet off the
Florida coast – arriving on
May 24, 1898.
It had taken the new
battleship 68 days, and she’d
come almost 17,000 miles
(from Bremerton to Key
West). The run broke several
records for speed and endur-
ance. Along the way, she’d
demonstrated to the many
doubters that a modern,
low-freeboard front-line
battleship could handle very
heavy seas indeed. She had
also inspired a new wave
of support for the Panama
Canal project.
The crew wasted no time
joining up with the rest of
the fleet.
“Two days later, the new
battleship, her decks still
piled with coal and the crew
covered with the grimy dust,
fell in with the immacu-
late ships of the American
fleet for inspection,” histo-
rian Leonard Wiley writes.
“She was a dirty, disreputa-
ble-looking bulldog, ready
for trouble.”
And a little more than a
month later came the naval
engagement that would
really cement the Oregon’s
fame. The Spanish fleet,
which had been secure in
the harbor at Santiago, Cuba,
was forced to make a run for
it after a U.S. expedition-
ary force landed and started
pushing toward the harbor.
On July 3, 1898, the Spanish
fleet made a break for free-
dom.
The American fleet was
ready – or, rather, ready-
ish; there was some scram-
bling for position, but they
were soon formed up and
in hot pursuit. The volume
of fire was overwhelming;
but had the Oregon been
the only ship on the scene,
the outcome likely would
have been the same. Spain’s
navy was stocked with small
ships, most of them slow and
obsolete; and the Oregon’s
13-inch main cannons, firing
1,100-pound shells, could
outrange everything they
had.
One by one the Spanish
ships were hit, caught fire,
and were beached. Two
ships, the Vizcaya and the
Cristóbal Colón, managed to
outdistance all the American
ships … except the Oregon,
which chased them down
doing an astonishing 18
knots – crews panting and
sweating as they shoveled
coal into the furnace, boiler
nearly bursting – and then,
from five miles astern,
started dropping those brutal
13-inch shells around their
ears. The Vizcaya was hit,
and beached; the Cristóbal
Colón was nearly hit, and
struck her colors. The battle
was won, and with it the war
– and basically, one ship had
done all of it.
The breathless newspaper
coverage of the Oregon’s
17, 0 0 0 - m i l e v o y a g e ,
followed by the even more
breathless newspaper cover-
age of the battle, made the
Oregon the unquestioned
star of the American fleet.
And for the few years brack-
eting the turn of the century,
she was the unquestioned
ruler of the seas.
But by 1903 or so, she
was already a little obso-
lete. And in early 1906 – the
A crew member on the U.S.S. Oregon poses with one of the ship’s small same year the British rolled
one-pounder cannons. IMAGE: U.S. NAVY
out the legendary 527-foot
H.M.S. Dreadnought, revo-
lutionizing battleship design
for everyone – the die was
cast. The aging warrior was
sent back to dry dock to be
“modernized,” and when
she emerged, she was put on
reserve duty.
The Oregon was on backup
a nd ceremonial duties
during the First World War;
the highlight of it was proba-
bly in 1919 when, just before
being decommissioned, she
served as reviewing ship for
Woodrow Wilson in Seattle.
But brief though it had
been, the aging warrior’s
moment in the sun had been
so bright that a movement
got started in Portland to
preserve the ship as a float-
ing monument and museum.
And, the Navy not having
any other plans for her,
this was done: the ship was
restored and handed over to
the state of Oregon on an
indefinite loan.
And there she sat, moored
in Portland Harbor, playing
host to groups of schoolchil-
dren and visiting history
buffs and Spanish-American
War vets, becoming a famil-
iar and beloved feature of the
Portland skyline.
Then came the events of
Dec. 7, 1941, which changed
her destiny and sealed her
fate.
The U.S., once at war,
started spinning up its manu-
facturing base. Appeals
went out for scrap metal to
be donated to the war effort.
And, of course, the old
U.S.S. Oregon represented a
very large potential contri-
bution to any scrap-metal
drive.
It wasn’t an easy call to
make. President Franklin
Roosevelt himself consid-
er e d t he O r egon t he
fourth most historic Navy
vess el a f loat, b eh i nd
t h e C on st it ut ion, t h e
Const el lat ion a nd t he
Hartford.
But war is war. And in
early 1942, the darkest hour
of the war for the U.S., the
very survival of the nation
seemed at stake. Sacrifices
would have to be made.
So the governor of Oregon
gave the ship back, and she
was sold for $35,000 to
an outfit in Kalama to be
stripped.
The ship’s hull was towed
to Guam and finished World
War II as a munitions barge.
Finally, in 1956, what
remained of the old battle-
ship was sold to a Japanese
company and cut up for
scrap.
Today, all that remains of
the U.S.S. Oregon is the old
ship’s mast and bow shield,
which are part of a memorial
in Portland’s Tom McCall
Waterfront Park.
(Sources: “Battleship
Oregon’s 50 Years,” an
article by Leonard Wiley
published in the March 1943
issue of Oregon Historical
Quarterly; “U.S.S. Oregon,”
an article by Thomas
McClellan published on
March 17, 2018, at oregone-
necyclopedia.org)
Finn J.D. John teaches
at Oregon State University
and writes about odd
tidbits of Oregon history.
His book, “Heroes and
Rascals of Old Oregon,”
was recently published by
Ouragan House Publishers.
To contact him or suggest a
topic: finn@offbeatoregon.
com or 541-357-2222.