Friday 15 August 2014

Maine Maritime Museum

The Maine Maritime Museum in Bath is mainly focused on the old wooden schooners built there in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.  However like the great Museum in Paris (see here), there are some lovely warship models and these caught my eye during my visit last week:

USS Katahdin
Built in 1893, she was an innovative ironclad ram designed for inner harbour defence.  Armament was four 6pdrs but the maim weapon was the ram.  Rendered rapidly obsolete she was decommissioned and sunk as a target vessel in 1909.



pic from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Katahdin_(1893)
USS Machias
Built in 1893 this was a schooner rigged gunboat.  Her main armament was eight 4 inch guns, backed up by four 6 pdrs and four 1 pdrs.  She had three separate commissions and ranged far and wide before being sold to the Mexican Navy in 1920.

pic from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Machias_(PG-5)
USS Dahlgren
Coastal Torpedo Boat built in 1900 she was fitted with four 1 pdrs and 2 torpedo tubes

Pic from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Dahlgren_(TB-9)

2 comments:

jmilesr said...

Its a great museume - I really like the Wyoming sculpture even if it is a bit "modern"

Paul O'G said...

It certainly gives a great impression of the scale of the massive 6 master. Hard to believe she was built in a mere 9 months!


An exploration of debauchery, vice and other reasons to be a man!

An exploration of debauchery, vice and other reasons to be a man!