USS Asheville (Gunboat No. 21/PG-21), the lead ship in her class of two United States Navy gunboats, was the first ship of the United States Navy named for the city of Asheville, North Carolina. The ship was built at the Charleston Naval Shipyard of North Charleston, South Carolina, from her keel laying in June 1918, her launching in July 1918, and her commissioning in July 1920.
Asheville began her career in the early 1920s on power-projection missions ("showing the flag") in Central America. After her 1922 conversion to oil power from coal, Asheville sailed through the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean to join the Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines. She spent the rest of the 1920s protecting American interests and showing the flag in China. Between 1929 and 1931, Asheville protected American lives and property in Nicaragua. She returned to the Asiatic Fleet and protected American interests as the Second Sino-Japanese War began.
With increasing tensions with Japan, Asheville was withdrawn to the Philippines in the summer of 1941, where she performed local patrol duty. After the American entry into World War II and the Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Asheville, and most of the surface ships in the Philippines, moved to Java to defend the Malay Barrier against the Japanese advance. When the Allied defense crumbled in early March, the remaining American ships were ordered to retreat to Australia. Sailing alone, Asheville was spotted, attacked, and sunk south of Java by a Japanese surface force of a heavy cruiser and two destroyers on 3 March 1942.
Construction and commissioning The keel for Asheville was laid down on 9 June 1918, at the Charleston Naval Shipyard, North Charleston, South Carolina. She was launched on 4 July 1918; sponsored by Miss Alyne J. Reynolds, daughter of Dr. Carl V. Reynolds, MD, a prominent citizen of Asheville; and commissioned on 6 July 1920, with Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) Elliott Buckmaster, who would later command the carrier during World War II, in temporary command. One week later, on 13 July, Commander Jesse B. Gay relieved Buckmaster. On 17 July, the ship was given the designation PG-21.
Design
Asheville was long overall, with a beam of wide and a draft of . She displaced as designed and up to at full combat load. Powered by a one-shaft Parsons steam turbine rated at and three Thornycroft Bureau Modified Steam boilers, generating a top speed of . Asheville was armed with three /50 caliber guns, two 3-pounder guns, two 1-pounder ( guns and four .30 Lewis MGs.
Modifications Asheville was originally built to hold a crew of 159, but in 1942, she was modified to hold a crew of 166.
Service history
Gulf of Mexico Assigned to Cruiser Division 1, Cruiser Squadron 1, US Atlantic Fleet, for temporary duty at the beginning of her career, Asheville departed her builder's yard for Galveston, Texas, on 7 October 1920. Developing an engine casualty en route, however, the new gunboat put into Key West for repairs before proceeding on to her destination. She was based at Galveston for the next six months, operating in the Gulf of Mexico and making port visits at Tampa and Key West, several times during the course of that period. She also visited Havana, Cuba, from 4 to 7 January 1921.
At one point during her stay at Galveston, an oil tanker nearby caught fire and exploded. Asheville rendered prompt assistance in evacuating injured men, providing medical aid, and in preventing the blaze from spreading to nearby ships and docks.
Following overhaul, Asheville departed Galveston on 12 May 1921, for Charleston, where she arrived on 19 May, and stayed for over a month. She was then dry docked during her stay at Norfolk Naval Yard from 25 June to 2 July, and conducted various trials off Provincetown, Massachusetts, before she visited that port on Independence Day, 1921. She then visited New York City, 10 to 25 July, before she proceeded back down the eastern seaboard to pay return calls at Norfolk and Charleston, undergoing repairs and alterations at the latter.
Nicaragua – 1921
Asheville, now assigned to the Special Service Squadron, then departed Charleston on 17 August 1921, for Havana, arriving there on 20 August. Although slated to relieve on the east coast of Mexico, Asheville was ordered to proceed "without delay" to Nicaragua, as the Commander, Special Service Squadron had received word on 26 August, of a revolution in that country. The gunboat sailed thence for Bluefields, Nicaragua, where she arrived on 29 August 1921. Asheville "showed the flag" briefly at Bluefields; and, since the government had suppressed the revolution, the gunboat sailed for Port Limón, Costa Rica, where she visited briefly before steaming to her new base at Cristobal, Canal Zone, which she reached on 8 September.
She departed the following day, and paid a return visit to Bluefields, 11 to 13 September 1921, and to Port Limón, 14 to 22 September, before she returned to Cristobal on 23 September and commenced her first transit of the Panama Canal, reaching Balboa later the same day.
Panama Canal Zone and refit Asheville spent the next few months operating off the Pacific coast of Central America, her ports of call including Puntarenas, Costa Rica; Puná and Guayaquil, Ecuador; Talara, Peru; Corinto, Nicaragua; and La Unión, El Salvador. In early January 1922, Asheville carried the governor, Jay Johnson Morrow, and physicians to the port of La Palma, Panama, to alleviate the suffering in the wake of floods that had devastated the region of Darién. Arriving on the morning of 7 January 1922, Asheville carried out relief work at La Palma until departing the following day to return to Balboa.
Transiting the Panama Canal again on 10 January 1922, Asheville paused briefly at Guantánamo Bay, 17 to 18 January, before she pressed on the Charleston, reaching that port on 25 January 1922. On 11 February 1922, the gunboat was detached from the Special Service Squadron. During April and May 1922, Asheville underwent conversion from a coal-burning vessel to an oil-burning one, the first of her type to be so altered, and within a month of her leaving the navy yard had won the engineering trophy for ships of her class.
Asiatic Fleet – 1922 On 5 June 1922, Asheville, now commanded by Commander, later Admiral, James O. Richardson departed Charleston, and sailed to join the Asiatic Fleet via the Mediterranean. After calling at Bermuda and the Azores en route, Asheville reached Gibraltar on 2 July, and celebrated Independence Day there, clearing that port on 5 July for Valletta, Malta, which she reached on 10 July 1922. Steaming thence to Alexandria, Egypt, where she visited from 17 to 23 July, Asheville then transited the Suez Canal on the 24th and then visited a succession of ports, Aden, Arabia, from 31 July to 3 August 1922; Bombay, India, 10 to 15 August; Colombo, Ceylon, 19 to 24 August; and Singapore, Straits Settlements, 1 to 5 September, before she ultimately reached Cavite, near Manila, on 11 September 1922.
Chinese unrest Asheville was based at Cavite into mid-October 1922; during this period, she conducted short range battle practice off Corregidor. However, unrest in China due to a revolution in Fujian, soon prompted her dispatch to Chinese waters with a detachment of Marines embarked. Departing the Philippines on 16 October, she sailed for Fuzhou, a major port city on the coast of China, and arrived soon thereafter, anchoring at the mouth of the Min River. She landed her Marines on the day of her arrival, the Leathernecks transported up the river in motor sailers to Fuzhou. For the next six weeks, Asheville remained at Pagoda Anchorage, at the mouth of the Min, while the Marines were quartered at the American consulate.
Asheville remained at Fuzhou until 5 December 1922, when she sailed for Qingdao, to be present during the transfer of the former German-leased territory of Jiaozhou Bay from Japanese authority to Chinese under the 1922 Japanese-Chinese Shantung Agreement. She "showed the flag" at that North China port, ready to protect American lives and property if the need arose, for the balance of the month of December before she sailed for Shanghai on the last day of 1922, and arrived at her destination to take on stores, fuel, and for recreation for her crew, on 2 January 1923.
With concern over the movement south from Shanghai to Canton, a traditional hotbed of unrest in China, of the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, Asheville was sent south to Shantou. Sailing on 27 January 1923 for South China, Asheville reached Shantou on the 30th. Asheville remained at that port until 24 February before she shifted to Hong Kong for fuel, supplies, a dry docking and minor repairs; she stayed there for a month before she returned to Shantou on 27 March. While she had been at Hong Kong, Sun Yat-Sen had assumed the title of Generalissimo on 2 March and established his party firmly at Canton.
On 10 April 1923, Asheville departed Shantou for Cavite, and arrived there three days later. The ship conducted day spotting, long-range battle, and night battle practice in Philippine waters until 1 May, when she sailed for Hong Kong to transfer new enlisted men. Asheville reached Hong Kong on 4 May, and soon resumed her operation on the coast of South China. Over the next few months, she used Hong Kong as her recreation port and stood by, watchfully waiting, at the ports of Shantou, Canton, Fuzhou, Amoy, and Yangjiang. Asheville witnessed three changes of government during her visits to Shantou and, as the occasion demanded, sent Marines ashore to protect American lives and property. At Yangjiang, her bluejacket landing party carried bacon, rice, and flour to beleaguered foreigners. She lay at Canton during the repeated attempts by the Chinese warlord General Ch'en Chiung-Ming to wrest it from the hands of Sun's troops.
After a visit to Hong Kong from 20 October to 6 November 1923, Asheville returned to Canton as a diplomatic crisis arose because of the avowed threat by Sun Yat-Sen to seize customs revenue at Canton, hitherto under international control. Sun's threat jeopardized the "Treaty Powers," whose loans to China had been financed by the revenues of the Chinese maritime customs. This "acute diplomatic tangle" found American interests represented by Ashevilles captain, Commander Richardson, who was concurrently Commander, South China Patrol.
Richardson reported daily to the Commander in Chief, US Asiatic Fleet, Admiral Thomas Washington, and the American Minister in China, on events as they unfolded and, even though the junior force commander on the scene, eventually commanded the largest force, Asheville and six destroyers that had been sent to Canton, involved in the united effort to stand firm in the face of Sun's threats. Ordered by CinCAF to concentrate the necessary force at Canton and to prevent Sun's seizure of the customs "by all measures short of war," Richardson interpreted the order as allowing him to stop Sun's attempt to seize the customs by force, but not to pursue his men if they fled. Eventually, the "firm stand and cooperation shown" by the Treaty Powers "compelled Sun Yat-Sen to recede from his threat ..." As Richardson later reflected in his memoirs, he had been entrusted with "more responsibility, more independence, and power of decision than usually come to an officer of the rank of Commander . . . ."
Showing the flag