USS Oregon (BB-3) - Design and Construction

Design and Construction

Oregon was constructed from a modified version of a design drawn up by a policy board in 1889 for a short-range battleship. The original design was part of an ambitious naval construction plan to build 33 battleships and 167 smaller ships. The United States Congress saw the plan as an attempt to end the U.S. policy of isolationism and did not approve it, but a year later approved funding for three coast defense battleships, which would become Oregon and her sister ships Indiana and Massachusetts. The ships were limited to coastal defense due to their moderate endurance, relatively small displacement and low freeboard, or distance from the deck to the water, which limited sea-going capability. They were however heavily armed and armored; Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships describes their design as "attempting too much on a very limited displacement."

Construction of the ships was authorized on 30 June 1890 and the contracts for Indiana and Massachusetts were awarded to William Cramp & Sons in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They also offered to build Oregon, but the Senate specified one of the ships had to be constructed on the West Coast of the United States. Therefore the contract for Oregon—not including guns and armor—was awarded to Union Iron Works in San Francisco, California for $ 3,180,000. The total cost of the ship was over twice as high, approximately $6,500,000. Her keel was laid down on 19 November 1891 and she was launched two years later on 26 October 1893, a ceremony attended by thousands of people. The construction was slowed due to delays in armor deliveries, so the ship was not completed until March 1896. Her sea trial was on 14 May 1896, during which she achieved a speed of 16.8 kn (31.1 km/h; 19.3 mph), a significant improvement over the design speed of 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph) and superior to her sister ships.