II
"Bright Lookout on a Dark Night the Loss of USS Saginaw by Dr. Hans Van T ilburg ometimes even the smallest and most rem ote coral atoll can offer a window into Pacific and naval history. That is the case with Midway Atoll and USS Saginaw, a small navy vessel lost on one of the most remote coral reefs in the world. The recent discovery of the 19th century shipwreck site by NOAA researchers has opened the door on a part of o ur maritim e heri tage.
S
The Ship Launched in 1859 at Mare Island Navy Yard near San Francisco, USS Saginaw 1 was the fi rs t naval vessel built on the ' West Coast. O f shallow d raft and only 15 5 feet in length , she was a small ship, lightly ri gged as a two-masted brig. A transitional craft of the Old Steam Navy, she was powered with two oscillating, inclined steam engines-a side-wheel steamer with sails. Saginaw was built no t for war but for peace. In 1857 the US Navy was redefining its needs fo r shallow-draft vessels. "What we m ore especially need in time of peace is a larger number of vessels capable of entering the rivers and harbors of all foreign countries as well as our own .... The fre quent presence of a ship-of-war, though no t of the largest class, exerts a powerful restraining influence." 1 C hina fit the bill for a region deemed in need of a US N aval presence. By 1842 America stood to benefit from expanded commerce followin g the first Opium War, and the United States was anticipating another clash between China and Britain . By 1853 Japan, thanks to Matthew
Galbraith Perry, had been forced open to trade after some 250 years of near isolation from the west. W ith the decline of monopolies such as the British East India Company and the changing fortun es of
I
\
Painting by Marshall C. Campbell, 1861; courtesy Robert McGuffin Sr.
8
The Last Mission
Saginaw's las t service involved M idway Old World Spanish colonies, the Pacific represented a new phase of economic potential. Saginaw was judged an appropriate too l fo r the job. Her Service In M ay 1860 Saginaw arrived at Shanghai and took up various duties including showing the flag, searching for pirates, and in general "exerting an influence." Her service in East Asia cam e to a quick end, however, with the outbreak of the American Civil War. In 1861 the las t thing any American officer wanted, northern or southern, was assignment to a distant station abroad.
USS Saginaw (right) was built at the Navy Yard on Mare Island, California, in 1859. She was the first US naval vessel built on the west coast. (Photo was published in 1912 in The Last Cruise of the Saginaw by George H Read; photographer unknown.)
.
Fortunately, an answer to Saginaw's predicam ent was at hand. In D ecember 186 1, an inspection revealed timbers on the port side to be unsound, "ro tten as junk .. . destroyed from the inside." 2 Ship's stores were transferred ashore, and on 3 January 1862 Saginaw was condemned as unseaworthy and abandoned at H o ng Ko ng. Jam es T. Watkins, a civilian skipper, and a fresh crew brought the decommissioned and "unseaworthy" ship back to the Uni ted States with little tro uble. There she was repaired and recommissioned into naval service with the Pacific squadron by March 1863. The next few years saw her operating between Alaska and Central America, escorting steamers, monitoring rumored Confederate activity, and even assisting in laying submarine cable in the Puget Sound.
Atoll in the remo te No rthwes tern H awaiian Islands. Later the location of the pivotal World War II sea battle, Midway's importance was equally clear to nineteenth-century strategists as well. The low sandy islands, some 1,200 miles from Honolulu, were the first lands claimed o utside US co ntin ental borders, the first fr uits of Secretary of State W illiam Seward's expansionist policies. The charts of the survey represent .. . a perfectly secure harbor, accessible to vessels drawing less than twenty feet, and affording an abundant supply of pure, fresh water. These islands .. . on the track of the mail steamships, furnish the only known refuge for vessels passing directly between the two continents . . . the bar at the entrance of the harbor might be deepened at a very small expense, and a port vastly superior to Honolulu be thus opened to mariners, where a depot might be established for the supply of provisions, water, and fuel.. .3 Though this description is a wild exaggeration of Midway's barren and exposed setting, thousands of miles away Congress forged ahead. A coal depot required clearing a channel into the lagoon. In 1869 Congress appropriated $50,000 for im-
SEA HISTORY 112, AUTUMN 2005