USS Oglala (CM-4) - World War I

World War I

The Navy converted the two passenger steamships at the Boston Navy Yard with decks to improve seaworthiness as mine planters. The ship was commissioned as Massachusetts (ID-1255), on 7 December 1917, and renamed Shawmut on 7 January 1918. She steamed to Britain in June 1918 and spent the rest of World War I helping lay the anti-submarine mine barrage across the North Sea by:

  • planting 300 mines during the 3rd minelaying excursion on 14 July,
  • planting 320 mines during the 4th minelaying excursion on 29 July,
  • planting 150 mines during the 5th minelaying excursion on 8 August,
  • planting 320 mines during the 7th minelaying excursion on 26 August,
  • planting 290 mines on 30 August to complete the 7th minefield after USS Saranac was unable to lay its mines,
  • planting 270 mines during the 8th minelaying excursion on 7 September,
  • planting 320 mines during the 9th minelaying excursion on 20 September,
  • planting 330 mines during the 10th minelaying excursion on 27 September,
  • planting 330 mines during the 11th minelaying excursion on 4 October, and
  • planting 340 mines during the final 13th minelaying excursion on 24 October.

Shawmut laid a total of 2,970 anchored mines while under command of Captain Wat Tyler Cluverius, Jr., USN. Captain Cluverius had been a midshipman aboard Maine (ACR-1) at Havana Harbor. In December 1918, Shawmut returned to the United States.

Read more about this topic:  USS Oglala (CM-4)

Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:

    “Let north and south—let all Americans—let all lovers of liberty everywhere—join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.”
    —Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    “Then down came the lid—the day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo. World-politics stepped in, and a war was started which has not ended yet: a “war to end war.” But it merely ended art. It did not end war.”
    —Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)