I spent a little time on Saturday with the Yantic River clean up. My contribution was small but better than no contribution at all. Anyway, I kept thinking about all that I know about the Yantic River and recalled writing this blog back in 2014.

The Yantic River was important enough that a ship was named in its honor. Wouldn’t it be nice if the City honored the military ships named for this area? By no means is this information complete but it is what I have.

The USS Yantic was launched on March 19, 1864, and over a 60 year career she was in three wars, several skirmishes, and an expedition to Greenland.

The Yantic was commissioned on August 12, 1864. On August 13^th, she patrolled the Atlantic Coast north and east of Nantucket.

The Yantic joined the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Wilmington, N.C and on December 24, 1864, attempted to capture Fort Fisher, North Carolina and then moved to participate in the capture of Fort Anderson, N.C. and for the last two months of the Civil War, the Yantic performed blockade duties, part of the successful Union operation that prevented the Confederacy from trading successfully with overseas nations.

On April 25, 1881, the Yantic’s crew took part in celebrations at the unveiling of Admiral David G. Farragut’s statue in Washington D.C., before she sailed on to Mexican waters. In June at Progreso, Yucatan, she investigated the detention of the American bark Acacia .

After that, the Yantic  returned north to the eastern seaport where in October 1881, she took part in ceremonies commemorating the centennial of the Battle of Groton Heights (the closest she would get to her namesake) and in the festivities celebrating the centennial of the American victory at Yorktown, Virginia.

The Yantic was the reserve ship of the Greely Relief Expedition in Greenland, and picked up the members of the expedition in Melville Bay after the Proteus , the relief ship which born them and their supplies, was crushed in the ice.

In 1889 the American Navy, including the Yantic entered Haitian waters to intimidate Legitime partisans feeling that negotiations led by Frederick Douglass with the Haitians should be backed up by cannon.

Then the Yantic is transformed into a Great Lakes Training ship, then pressed into service again during the Spanish American War, then the United States Navy assigned the Yantic as a training ship on the Great Lakes and a training base for sailors for many years and then  brought back into service as a training Ship for World War I Sailors when America entered the First World War in 1917.

On October 22, 1929, the Yantic sank alongside her moorings at the foot of Townsend Avenue, prompting more romantic mariners to remark that the “old lady had gone to her well earned rest.”

Her anchor and silver alloy bell were displayed at the Brodhead Armory for many years Her hull is buried in a filled in boat slip in Gabriel Richard Park on the Detroit Riverfront near the Belle Isle Bridge. The Navy struck the Yantic from its list on May 9, 1930.

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don’t hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs.

People are funny. We all see the same things in such different ways. In my blogs I have written about the USS Norwich, The Miantonomoh, Yantic and Shetucket ships. Please read my past blogs to learn more about them. Most of them had at least one but some had many magnificent adventures. The Navy has many of their logs, histories and photos available because these ships are so old there are no more secrets that have not been told.

So let’s stop keeping these huge bits of history secret and start being loud and proud of who we are that encouraged the Navy to name ships after who and what we hold dear in the City of Norwich, CT.

Each of the three rivers in the City of Norwich, CT has some kind of a green, grassy, park somewhere along its lengthy border. Does anyone besides me, think it would be a great teaching moment if on the grass by the edge of the Yantic River, is a small replica of the U.S. Yantic just large enough to climbed upon and commanded by an ever inquiring mind. Nearby or mounted to its deck or hull is its tale, a tribute to its commanders or its crew. Or perhaps it will be the U.S.S. Shetucket on its very own shore. By the Thames River could be a replica of the Miantonomoh, forever keeping a watch for its namesake or maybe it’s the USS Norwich standing proudly to the city that shares its name.

Maybe the future of Norwich, CT is to focus on the positive contributions it has made to this country or at least beyond its own city limits and to stop wallowing in self-pity, finding targets to blame (because it’s obviously not our fault) crumbling architecture, failing neighborhoods, and lack of jobs. Maybe it is time we put on our adult drawers and our boots and stopped waiting for someone else or our selected or elected leaders to do something. I would like this small project to be a starting point. Let’s put the ships of Norwich, Ct back on its shores. Let’s encourage our youth to climb aboard and learn how to face storms, and work together.  You know that together we can build a new and better Norwich, CT. One project and one day at a time.

Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com

View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs01?taxid=1172 and please read the daily 225th Bulletin Anniversary Nuggets in the newspaper daily.

Thank you for sharing my blog with your friends.

Have you heard the tale of the USS Norwich? Neither had I.  From the Naval Historical Center I learned the USS Norwich was a 431-ton gunboat built in Norwich, Connecticut in 1861 as a wooden-hulled civilian steamship. It was purchased by the U.S. Navy in September 1861, and refitted as a warship and assigned to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off the Georgia and Florida coast.

Fort Pulaski is located on Cockspur Island between Savannah and Tybee Island, Georgia. The fort was built in the old style of thick brick and mortar for protection and then the tale is told.

“It was cool morning air greeting the men on either side of the sound on the morning of April 11, 1862. The Norwich, a U.S. gunboat with artillery mounted on a barge in Tybee Creek joined the battle already raging. By noon the walls of Fort Pulaski had been breached in two places and Union forces were preparing to launch an assault. Gillmore, breveted to a brigadier general, ordered the artillery fire to concentrate on the remaining parapets to reduce the Rebel’s ability to withstand a direct assault. Now shells were passing through the breach and striking the north magazine where 40,000 pounds of powder were stored. Colonel Olmstead ordered the Confederate flag lowered at 2:30pm, and then raised the white flag of surrender. Gillmore demanded an unconditional surrender. Olmstead had no other options. “

New technology was proving its use during the Civil War. The Union army had used cannon rifles and compelled the Confederate garrison inside Fort Pulaski to surrender. The siege was a landmark experiment in the history of military science and invention.   

The USS Norwich continued to perform blockade duty along the coast and in the rivers of Florida and Georgia through the end of the Civil War. She was decommissioned in Philadelphia in June 1865 and was sold there and used as a merchant ship until she was lost at sea on February 17, 1873.  

Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com

View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs01?taxid=1172  and please read the daily 225^th Bulletin Anniversary Nuggets in the newspaper daily.

In May 1941, the United States was neutral until a sturdy merchant ship the SS Robin Moor was torpedoed by the German Unterseeboot 69 1,200 miles off the coast of Freetown, Sierra Leone.

The SS Robin Moor was built in 1919 in the Hog Island Shipyard near Philadelphia. Her beam was laid as the SS Shetucket, named for the Shetucket River in Connecticut, completed as the SS Nobles, renamed the SS Exmoor and renamed again as SS Robin Moor.

The SS Shetucket aka SS Robin Moor carried a general cargo of  trucks, tractors, tin plate, rails, refrigerators and other commercial items. No airplane motors, ammunition or armament supplies of any kind. Captain Jost Metzler told Captain W.E. Myers he had 20 minutes to remove his crew before the ship would be sunk and warned the Captain not to use his wireless to call for help before leaving the ship.

After the sinking, the U69 came up to Captain W.E. Myers’ lifeboat, left him with four tins of bread and two tins of butter, and explained that the ship had been sunk because she was carrying supplies to Germany’s enemy. U-69’s Captain Jost Metzler reportedly promised the ship’s crew would radio their position. Yet nearly two weeks passed before any of her four lifeboats of survivors were discovered drifting 600 miles off the coast. The most hardy of the passengers was a two year old boy, traveling with his parents. He remained the most cheerful and enjoyed the hardtack as the adults grew to hate it over the 13 days adrift.

President Roosevelt reacted angrily to this event. He ordered all German and Italian Consulates in the USA to close. And demanded reparation. Part of his address to Congress said:

“In brief, we must take the sinking of the Robin Moor as a warning to the United States not to resist the Nazi movement of world conquest. It is a warning that the United States may use the high seas of the world only with Nazi consent. Were we to yield on this we would inevitably submit to world domination at the hands of the present leaders of the German Reich. We are not yielding and we do not propose to yield.”

Yes. There is much more to this story than I have room to write here. Please do read all about it!

In two years this German submarine was able to sink 69,000 tons of shipping, 137 souls on the New Foundland Ferry SS Caribou and 2 other American ships before being rammed and sunk with a crew of 46  in February 1943 by the destroyer HMS Fame.

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