USS Ajax (AG-15)
.jpg)
USS Scindia (1898–1925, later renamed Ajax) Moored in the stream off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, circa 1899.
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Name: | USS Ajax |
| Builder: | D & W Henderson Ltd., Glasgow, Scotland |
| Launched: | 1890 |
| Acquired: | by purchase, 12 May 1898 |
| Commissioned: | 21 May 1898, as USS Scindia |
| Decommissioned: | 8 July 1925 |
| Renamed: | Ajax, 1 January 1901 |
| Reclassified: |
|
| Struck: | 8 July 1925 |
| Fate: | sold, 14 August 1925 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Collier |
| Displacement: | 9,250 long tons (9,400 t) |
| Length: | 387 ft 6 in (118.11 m) |
| Beam: | 24 ft 8 in (7.52 m) |
| Draft: | 30 ft (9.1 m) |
| Speed: | 10 kn (12 mph; 19 km/h) |
| Complement: | 101 officers and enlisted |
| Armament: | 4 × 6-pounders |
USS Ajax (AC-14/AG-15) was a collier in the United States Navy. Originally she retained her previous name of Scindia, and was renamed for the mythical Ajax in 1901. In 1921, she became a receiving ship and was redesignated AC-14. She was reclassified as a seaplane tender and given the hull designator AG-15 in 1924.
The screw steamer Scindia was a steel-hulled freighter built in 1890 by D & W Henderson Ltd., Glasgow, Scotland. Purchased on 12 May 1898—three weeks after the opening of the Spanish–American War—by the U.S. Navy at New York. She was fitted out at the New York Navy Yard for service as a collier, and was placed in commission there on 21 May 1898, Commander Eugene W. Watson in command.
Following a round-trip voyage carrying coal from New York to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from 2 June – 1 July 1898, the ship departed New York on 12 October with a cargo of coal for the Hawaiian Islands. She made a number of goodwill calls en route—both before and after rounding Cape Horn—and delivered her cargo at Honolulu. Scindia then headed east for the California coast and, after reaching San Francisco Bay early in the spring of 1899, was surveyed at the Mare Island Navy Yard and decommissioned there on 27 May for repairs to her boilers and machinery.
Recommissioned on 23 December 1899, the collier got underway on 18 January 1900 and headed westward across the Pacific and proceeded via Guam to the newly acquired Philippine Islands laden with coal for the ships of the Asiatic Fleet. After unloading at Manila, she transited the Strait of Malacca, crossed the Indian Ocean, and continued on via the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar to Cardiff, Wales, where she filled her bunkers with coal before crossing the Atlantic to Norfolk, Virginia, where she arrived on 1 March 1901. During her first circumnavigation of Earth, the steamer was renamed Ajax on 1 January 1901. She was decommissioned on 16 March.
...
Wikipedia