USS Amphitrite (1883)
 The USS Amphitrite moored at the Boston Navy Yard. |
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| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
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| Name: | Amphitrite |
| Ordered: | 23 June 1874 |
| Cost: | $1,487,277 (hull and machinery) |
| Laid down: | 1874 |
| Launched: | 7 June 1883 |
| Commissioned: | 23 April 1895 |
| Decommissioned: | 30 November 1901 |
| Recommissioned: | 1 December 1902 |
| Decommissioned: | 3 August 1907 |
| Recommissioned: | 14 June 1910 |
| Decommissioned: | 31 May 1919 |
| Struck: | 24 July 1919 |
| Fate: | scrapped, 1952 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Amphitrite class monitor |
| Displacement: | 3,990 tons |
| Length: | 262 ft 9 in (80.09 m) |
| Beam: | 55 ft 1 in (16.79 m) |
| Draft: | 14 ft 6 in (4.42 m) |
| Speed: | 10.5 kn (19.4 km/h; 12.1 mph) |
| Complement: | 171 |
| Armament: |
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The second USS Amphitrite—the lead ship in her class of iron-hulled, twin-screw monitors—was laid down (dimantled and reconstructed), on June 23, 1874 by order of President Ulysess S. Grant's Secretary of Navy George M. Robeson at Wilmington, Delaware, by the Harlan and Hollingsworth yard; launched on 7 June 1883; sponsored by Miss Nellie Benson, the daughter of a Harlan and Hollingsworth official; and commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, on 23 April 1895, Captain William C. Wise in command.
Rapid changes in naval technology and doctrine during the two decades she was under construction had repeatedly delayed her progress, and she was redesigned twice while still under construction.
During the course of the late spring and summer, the monitor, assigned to the North Atlantic Squadron, visited eastern seaboard ports: Savannah, Georgia (17–23 May), Port Royal, South Carolina (23 May-8 June), Brunswick, Georgia (23–28 July), Southport, North Carolina, (2–10 August) and a return visit to Port Royal (12–20 August), interspersing these port visits with operations out of Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay. Early in the course of this period of operations, the combination of defects in the design of monitors in general (inadequate ventilation for engine room forces, particularly) and the summer heat produced hellish conditions aboard Amphitrite, in some cases actually felling members of the "black gang" who had to carry out their tasks in the ship's engine and fire rooms.
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