National Affairs: Rochester’s Head Up

When cannon boomed from Santiago de Cuba in 1898, Rear Admiral William Thomas Sampson, temporarily down the coast on his crack, three-funneled flag-cruiser New York, turned her and raced back in time to see the last ship of Cervera’s squadron sink, in the second and decisive naval battle of the Spanish War. That cruiser, then five years old, has served ever since, is now the oldest active U. S. fighting ship. In 1912, on the launching of the battleship New York, she was rechristened Saratoga and relegated (though as flagship) to the Asiatic fleet. In the World War she convoyed transports, captured off Ensenada, Mexico, a shipload of German spies and U. S. draft-dodgers. In 1925, when the aircraft carrier Saratoga was launched, the old New York became the Rochester. Remodeled in 1927, she was robbed of one of her funnels. She is now flagship of the special service squadron in the Caribbean, conveyor of U. S. Marines to Haiti and Nicaragua, but she is far out of date, destined soon to be scrapped. She will die with her head up. Last week the Navy Department announced that the Rochester’s seamen, with the Rochester’s equipment, had won the Battle Efficiency Pennant—for excellence in gunnery, engineering and communications— most coveted ship honor, during the last competitive year in the cruiser class.