USAT Burnside was the first American cable ship in the Pacific. Between 1900 and 1905 she laid 3,000 miles of submarine cable which connected many parts of the Philippines and Alaska to the rest of the world for the first time in history. She was responsible for maintenance of the Army cables on the Pacific coast of the United States for two decades.
The ship was built in England in 1882 for general freight service between London and Australia. Her initial name was Yeoman. She was sold in 1891 to a Spanish steamship company which renamed her Rita. The ship was at sea when the Spanish-American War was declared and had the bad luck to be taken as a prize by USS Yale in 1898. The US Army purchased her as a transport, and in 1900 converted her into a cable ship named Burnside.
Burnside was replaced by USAT Dellwood in 1923. She was sold and scrapped in 1924.
Construction and characteristics Yeoman was ordered by Wilhelm Lund for his steamship company, the Blue Anchor Line. She was built by Campbell, Macintosh, and Bowstead at the Scotswood Shipyard in Newcastle, England and launched on 25 March 1882.
Yeoman's hull was built of iron plates. She was long, with a beam of and a depth of hold of . Her gross register tonnage was 2,226, and her net register tonnage was 1,427.
Her propeller was originally powered by a coal-fired double-expansion steam engine which was built by T. Clark and Company of Newcastle. It had high, and low-pressure cylinders with diameters of 35 inches, and 68 inches, respectively, with a stroke of 48 inches. The engine was rated at 300 horsepower. This was replaced in 1887 by a triple-expansion engine with cylinders of 25, 38.5 and 63 inches with a stroke of 44 inches. This second engine was built by Wigham Richardson and Company of Newcastle. The more modern engine gave the ship a cruising speed of 12 knots.
Electric lighting and refrigeration were installed on Burnside at the shipyard of Lewis Nixon in Elizabethport, NJ in December 1898 after the ship was taken over by the Army.
She had a 3 kilowatt radio transmitter aboard in 1909, and was assigned the call sign, "BS". In 1913 her call sign was changed to, "WXR".
In 1913 Burnside was taken out of service briefly to have new oil-fired boilers installed.
Blue Anchor Line (18821891) The Blue Anchor Line pioneered regularly scheduled cargo and passenger service between London and Australia. Yeoman sailed this route, via the Suez Canal, stopping for coal and water at several points along her route. She carried as many as 400 immigrants to Australia on a single trip, and general cargo. Her cargo included livestock, musical instruments, china, furniture, stationary, cutlery, dolls, toys, purses, vases, and more. She made port calls in Adelaide, Fremantle, Albany, Hobart, Launceston, and Sydney.
Linea de Vapores Serra (18911898) Sometime in 1891 Lund sold Yeoman to a Spanish steamship company, Linea de Vapores Serra. Her name was changed to Rita, and her homeport became Bilbao.
The ship hauled general cargos between ports in North America across the Atlantic to Europe. North American port calls include Boston, Galveston, Norfolk, Pensacola, Puerto Rico, and St John. European port calls included Liverpool, and Havre.
In October 1892 Rita caught fire outside of Galveston while bound for Liverpool. The fire was extinguished, but 123 bales of cotton were damaged. US Army service (18981924)
Spanish-American War (18981900) On 25 April 1898, Congress declared war on Spain, beginning the Spanish-American War. An immediate objective was to defeat Spain in the Caribbean, taking Cuba and Puerto Rico. The US Navy began patrolling off the islands. On 8 May 1898 Rita was sailing from Liverpool to Puerto Rico with a cargo of coal when she encountered USS Yale off Culebra Island. A chase ensued, but Yale was somewhat faster, and armed with 6-inch guns. Several warning shots were fired which Rita ignored, but when a shell exploded over the head of her captain, the ship was surrendered. A nine-man prize crew, under the command of Yale's first officer, W. B. Porter, took her in to Charleston, South Carolina.
Rita was purchased by the US Army Quartermaster's Department from the U.S. Prize Court on 9 July 1898 for $125,000 and assigned to the Army Transport Service. The Army reckoned her capacity at 15 officers and 700 men. The day after her purchase she began her new career as a troop transport.
On 10 July 1898 Rita sailed for Cuba with reinforcements for the American campaign. She was filled to capacity with the 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 6th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, less Companies D and M. She sailed from Tampa to Ponce, Puerto Rico on 27 July 1898. Over the next two years the ship made numerous trips between the American mainland, Cuba, and Puerto Rico laden with personnel, food, medical supplies, and other equipment for the Army.
To mark her transition to military service, the ship was renamed in February 1899. Rita became United States Army Transport Burnside, named for Civil War General Ambrose Burnside.
Prior to the Spanish-American War there was a Cuban revolutionary army on the island seeking independence from Spain. This army assisted American forces to defeat the Spanish. Spain's ceding of Cuba to the United States did not address the fate of the 30,000 revolutionary soldiers still in the field and owed substantial back pay. Seeking to buy peace on the island, the United States offered to pay each Cuban soldier $100 in return for the orderly disbanding of this Cuban Army. Burnside found herself with $3 million in cash aboard, including 2,500,000 dimes and 200,000 nickels, anchored in Havana harbor on 18 March 1899. Cuban officials sought more money for their soldiers, so Burnside sat at anchor while negotiations continued. On 4 April 1899 the Cuban Military Assembly voted to disband the Cuban Army. Burnside circumnavigated the island with two Army paymasters aboard to distribute the funds.
Cable ship in the Philippines (19001904)
When Commodore Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on 1 May 1898, there were two undersea cables which landed in Manila. One provided telegraph communication from the Philippines to the rest of the world via Hong Kong, and the other connected the city to major islands of the archipelago. Both belonged to the British firm Eastern Extension, Australasia, and China Telegraph Company (Limited). The day after his victory, Dewey approached the British Consul in Manila to arrange for American use of the telegraph service. The Spanish, who still controlled Manila, refused to allow the Americans to send telegrams. Dewey replied by cutting the cables in Manila Bay. The link to Hong Kong was cut on 2 May 1898, and Capiz on 23 May 1898, isolating Luzon from the rest of the world.
Undersea cables became a military priority for the Army commanders in the Philippines. While the British cables were ultimately repaired, they did not reach all the major islands. General Otis, and General MacArthur complained of communication difficulties. The Army in the Philippines was dependent on slow, ship-borne mail for communications to many locations. To build its own inter-island telegraph system, the Army sent the cable ship USAT Hooker to Manila. She was wrecked on Corregidor in August 1899 before she was able to commence her work. Much of Hooker's cable laying machinery and testing equipment was salvaged, and was installed on Burnside when she arrived in Manila.
On 30 June 1900, the Army contracted with the Morse Iron Works shipyard in Brooklyn, New York to convert Burnside into a cable ship. The reported cost of this conversion was $130,000. Burnside was chosen as Hooker's replacement because of her relatively shallow draft for her size. Three large copper tanks were built in her cargo holds in which submarine cable could be coiled. The tanks were in diameter and deep. Each had an iron core at its center to hold the cable in position while it was unspooled. Each tank had capacity to hold 250 miles of cable. Burnside departed New York on 26 September 1900 with 553 miles of deep-sea cable and 8 miles of the thicker, more heavily-armored shore-end cable aboard. She had on board a crew of 104 men to run the ship, and a 25-man Signal Corps detachment led by Captain George O. Squier who were in charge of laying the cable. As she was sailing into a war zone, she was armed with three 6-pounder and four 1-pounder rapid-fire guns.
Burnside reached Gibraltar on 10 October 1900. She stopped at Malta, Port Said, Aden, Colombo, and Singapore, before arriving in Manila on 7 December 1900. She sailed from Manila on 23 December 1900 to begin laying cable. The first segment connected Dumaguete on Negros Island to Misamis on Mindanao, approximately 100 miles away. In the first six months of 1901, Burnside completed seven cables which were, in aggregate, 447 nautical miles long. Between July and November 1901 she laid another 14 cables of 607 miles and repaired 13 cables. While in the Philippines, she was not employed continuously as a cable ship, but spent part of her time as a transport.
A notable aspect of the Burnside's operations was the large number of Filipino crew. Her job in the Philippines was not merely to lay submarine cable, but to trench the cable ashore, build cable offices, and do whatever else was required on land and sea to make the links work in wilderness locations. The ship needed more manpower, so the bosun went ashore in Manila to hire whoever he could. These men stuck with the ship and gained cable-laying skills. There were 116 Filipino crew aboard in 1904 when the ship came to Seattle. They were highly regarded by their officers, but were paid roughly two-thirds of what the Army would pay a white crew. Filipino crew worked on Burnside until at least 1912 despite the fact that the ship left the islands in 1904.
Laying the Alaska cable (19031905) In the wake of the discovery of gold in the Klondike and at Nome, in May 1900 Congress appropriated $455,550 to build a telegraph cable from St. Michael to the rest of the military network in Alaska. Since Burnside was the only American cable ship in the Pacific, and fully engaged in the Philippines, little could be done immediately. Congress extended the availability of these funds through the 1903 fiscal year. A further $485,000 was voted to connect the Alaska network with continental America. Congress approved $321,580 in April 1904 for a cable between Valdez and Sitka, and another $95,000 in March 1905 for a cable between Valdez and Seward. Burnside laid all of these cables.
In March 1903 Burnside sailed to Hong Kong for shipyard maintenance prior to crossing the Pacific. She departed Manila on 8 June 1903, made a coaling stop in Nagasaki, and reached Juneau on 11 July 1903. She laid a 17-mile-long cable connecting Skagway and Haines, and repaired the existing cable between Juneau and Skagway. Burnside then sailed south to Seattle surveying the proposed route of the cable to Alaska. She arrived in Seattle on 4 August 1903.
The contract for 1,200 miles of cable for the Alaska project was awarded to the Safety Insulated Wire and Cable Company of Bayonne, New Jersey on 7 March 1903. It was the longest submarine cable manufactured in the United States at the time. The cable was shipped from New York to Puget Sound via Cape Horn in two sections. The first 580 miles shipped in June 1903 aboard the American-Hawaiian Line steamer Texan. She arrived in Seattle on 1 September 1903. This cable was loaded aboard Burnside by the morning of 15 September.