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USS Oregon was laid down in San Francisco in 1891,
immediately in the wake of the publication of the
first volume of Alfred Thayer Mahan's Influence of
Seapower on History. USS Oregon carried a
heavy main armament, displacing 11,000 tons, carried
4 13" and 8 8" guns, and could make 16 knots.
She represented the starting point of the US Navy's
creation of the world's most powerful navy.
On
February 15, 1898, in the context of increasing
tensions between Spain and the United States over
Spanish control of Cuba, the armored cruiser USS Maine
blew up in Havana.
USS Oregon
raced from the Pacific to the Atlantic at
the outbreak of hostilities.
Her captain opted to take the Straits of
Magellan to save time, which put the battleship in
grave danger during a gale. Nevertheless, she
survived and arrived in the Cuba theater of operations on May 24.
USS
Oregon took part in the destruction of the Spanish
Fleet at Santiago, Cuba, and is credited for actions
against the Spanish vessels Infata, Maria, Teresa,
Viscaya, Almirante, Oquendo, Pluton, and Furor in
that engagement. She was called a "McKinley's
bulldog" at the battle. She appeared as a tough dog, speeding into a
fight, and the white wake off her bow was said to
appear as a "bone" clenched in her teeth.
The experience of
the battleship Oregon was critical in building
support for the construction of the Panama Canal,
as the existence of a canal would have cut three
weeks off Oregon's travel time. Consequently, the
United States fomented a rebellion in Colombia that
led to the independence of Panama, and purchased
French equipment and property in what came to be
known as the Canal Zone.
USS
Oregon was redeployed to the Pacific after the war,
and spent considerable time in East Asia, including
duty on station during the Boxer Rebellion. In
1900, an
uncharted rock nearly sent Oregon to the bottom. In 1906, Oregon decommissioned. Oregon
went from construction and commissioning to
decommissioning and obsolescence in a mere ten
years. She was refit and recommissioned in 1911,
decommissioned again in 1914, and
commissioned/decommissioned several more time before
1920. In 1923, Oregon was demilitarized and loaned
to the state of Oregon as a floating museum. She was
moored for what was expected to be a permanent stay
in Portland, Oregon. However, World War II
intervened, and the USN decided that Oregon was more
useful as scrap metal than as a war monument.
Oddly, the Navy determined that it didn't actually
need the scrap, and the process was halted after
Oregon's guns and superstructure had been removed. The hulk
then was reclassified and used as a munitions
ship in the Pacific campaign. Moored in Guam after
the war, her hulk broke free during a storm and
floated about the Pacific for a month in 1948. In
1956 the hulk was sold to a Japanese scrapyard, and
Oregon's story ended.
USS
Oregon's foremast survives today in Tom McCall
Waterfront Park in Portland, Oregon. In 1992, an
author convinced a young woman that the entire
battleship was actually buried beneath the Park,
with only the mast above ground.
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This model feature plank-on-frame
construction. All parts are wooden and metal.
40" L
x 19"W x 22" T
$1,650
S & H is $130
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