JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

[A detail from:]

This great photograph was made in 1918 and stamped on the reverse “Photo by Central News Photo Service” of NYC. It shows the launching of the U.S.S. Agawam, the first standardized ship launched by the U.S. Navy (according to a New York Times article for May 3, 1918, (“FIRST FABRICATED SHIP; The Agawam, Forerunner of Standardized Fleet, to be Launched Today”).  [This image is actually available for purchase via the World War I Photography section of this blog, here.]

The image reminds me in a way of the launching of the Dreadnought, which in some ways was another beginning of WWI, or at least of the naval race right before the war and of the competition for naval superiority between the Germany and England.  And I remember how King Edward VII, rickety with illness, climbed the stairs to deliver his speech, and to break open the bottle of Australian wine against the Dreadnought‘s bow. Except that the bottle didn’t break on the first attempt–a somewhat forbidding element, except that it was her bow that Dreadnought used to sink a German sub.  The ship revolutionized naval technology and Germany played catch-up to it (and in effect an entire new class of battleship) right to the beginning of the war.  Less than 15 years later, the Dreadnought was sold for scrap.