USS Kearsarge (hull number: BB-5), was the first ship in the of pre-dreadnought battleships. Instead of being named after a state, she was named in honor of the , a sloop-of-war that sank in the Battle of Cherbourg, being the only United States Navy battleship to deviate from the established naming conventions.
Her keel was laid down by the Newport News Shipbuilding Company of Virginia, on 30 June 1896. She was launched on 24 March 1898, sponsored by Mrs. Elizabeth Winslow (), the wife of Rear Admiral Herbert Winslow, and commissioned on 20 February 1900.
Between 1903 and 1907 Kearsarge served in the North Atlantic Fleet, and from 1907 to 1909 she sailed as part of the Great White Fleet. In 1909 she was decommissioned for modernization, which was finished in 1911. In 1915 she served in the Atlantic, and between 1916 and 1919 she served as a training ship. She was converted into a crane ship in 1920, renamed Crane Ship No. 1 in 1941, and sold for scrap in 1955.
The Kearsarge-class battleships were designed to be used for coastal defense. They had a normal displacement of , an overall length of , a beam of and a draft of . The three-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines each drove one propeller shaft using steam provided by five Scotch marine boilers. The engines were designed to produce and give the ship a speed of , but Kearsarges engines produced a total of and gave a maximum speed of during the ship's sea trials. She normally carried of coal, but could carry a maximum of which gave her a range of at a speed of . The ship was manned by 40 officers and 514 enlisted men, a total of 554 crewmen.
Kearsarges had two twin-gun turrets, each with two / 35-caliber guns and two 8"/35 caliber guns (), stacked in two levels. Their secondary battery consisted of fourteen quick-firing 5"/40 caliber guns () on single casemate mounts on the main deck, seven on each broadside. Anti-torpedo boat defense was provided by twenty 6-pounder () guns, eight of which were positioned in casemates on the berthing deck in the hull. The remaining guns were located above the 5-inch guns in single pivot mounts as were four Hotchkiss 1-pounder () guns. Two 1-pounder guns from Maxim-Nordenfelt were mounted in each of the lower fighting tops on the military masts, and two machine guns were in each of the upper fighting tops. Four 18 in () torpedo tubes were located on the berthing deck in rotating mounts. Kearsarge had a very low freeboard, which resulted in her guns becoming unusable in bad weather. At some point during 1906 the number of 6-pounder guns was reduced to 12, all of the 1-pounder guns were removed as were her torpedo tubes. Two years later six Hotchkiss 1-pounder guns were re-installed and the machine guns were removed.
The armor of the Kearsarge class was made of harveyized steel. The waterline armor belt was thick covering the propulsion machinery and uniformly tapered down to a thickness of below the waterline. Forward of this it reduced to a maximum thickness of until it reached the forward barbette and then extended to the bow with a thickness of . From the rear barbette aft, the rear hull was unarmored. The main-gun turrets were protected by of armor, while the secondary turrets had of armor. The barbettes were thick, while the conning tower had of armor.
Kearsarge was authorized on 2 March 1895, the contract for her construction was awarded on 2 January 1896, and the keel of the vessel was laid down on 30 June 1896 by Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company in Virginia. The total cost was US$5,043,591.68. She was soon named after the American Civil War sloop-of-war , and was the only US battleship not named after a state. She was christened on 24 March 1898 (the same day as her sister ship, ) by Mrs. Elizabeth Winslow (née Maynard), the wife of Captain Herbert Winslow, daughter-in-law of Captain John Ancrum Winslow, the commander of the original Kearsarge. She was commissioned on 20 February 1900, under the command of Captain William M. Folger.
As flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron, Kearsarge navigated along the Atlantic seaboard and the Caribbean Sea. By May 1902 the ship was being commanded by Captain Joseph Newton Hemphill. Reassigned as flagship of the European Squadron, she sailed from Sandy Hook on 3 June 1903, on her way to Kiel, Germany. She was visited by Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany on 25 June, and by the Prince of Wales â who would later become King George V of the United Kingdom â on 13 July.
Kearsarge returned to Bar Harbor, Maine, on 26 July, and resumed her position as flagship. On 1 December the ship sailed from New York for Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where she was present as the United States took formal possession of the Guantanamo Naval Reservation on 10 December. On 26 March 1904 Captain Raymond P. Rodgers assumed command of the ship. Following maneuvers in the Caribbean Sea, Kearsarge left with the North Atlantic Squadron for Lisbon, Portugal, where she met King Carlos I of Portugal on 11 June 1904. Independence Day was celebrated in Phaleron Bay, Greece, with King George I of Greece and his son and daughter-in-law, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. The squadron visited Corfu, Trieste, and Fiume before returning to Newport, Rhode Island, on 29 August 1904.
On 31 March 1905, replaced Kearsarge as flagship of the North Atlantic Fleet, although she remained with the fleet. Captain Herbert Winslow took command of the ship during December. On 13 April 1906, while participating in an exercise off Cape Cruz, Cuba, the gunpowder in a 13-inch gun ignited accidentally, killing two officers and eight men.
Attached to the Fourth Division of the Second Squadron, and under command of Captain Hamilton Hutchins, she sailed on 16 December 1907 with the Great White Fleet. The fleet left from Hampton Roads, passed by Trinidad and Rio de Janeiro, and then passed through the Straits of Magellan. From there she passed by the west coast of South America, visiting Punta Arenas and ValparaÃÂso, Chile, Callao, Peru, and Magdalena Bay, Mexico. The fleet reached San Diego on 14 April 1908 and moved on to San Francisco on 6 May. Two months later the warships sailed for Honolulu, Hawaii, and from there to Auckland, New Zealand, arriving 9 August. The fleet made Sydney, Australia, on 20 August, and after a week sailed for Melbourne.
The battleships departed Albany, Western Australia, on 18 September for ports in the Philippine Islands, Japan, China, and Ceylon before transiting the Suez Canal. The fleet split at Port Said, with Kearsarge leaving on 10 January 1909 for Malta, and arriving in Algiers on 24 January, before reforming with the fleet at Gibraltar on 1 February. She returned to Hampton Roads on 22 February, and was inspected by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.
As with most of the Great White Fleet ships, Kearsarge was modernized on her return. She was decommissioned at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on 4 September 1909, and the modernization was completed in 1911, at a cost of US$675,000. The ship received cage masts, new water-tube boilers, and another four 5-inch guns. The remaining 1-pounder guns were removed, as were eight of the 6-pounders. The last four 6-pounders were eliminated sometime in 1915. She was recommissioned on 23 June 1915, and operated along the Atlantic coast. On 17 September she left Philadelphia to land a detachment of US Marines at Veracruz, Mexico, remaining there from 28 September 1915 to 5 January 1916. She then carried the Marines to New Orleans, Louisiana, before joining the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Philadelphia on 4 February. Until the United States joined World War I, she trained naval militia from Massachusetts and Maine. During the war she was used to train Armed Guard crews and naval engineers during cruises along the Atlantic seaboard. Ten of the 5-inch guns were replaced by a pair of 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft guns during 1917. On 18 August 1918 Kearsarge rescued 26 survivors of the Norwegian barque Nordhav which had been sunk by , bringing them to Boston.
Between 29 May and 29 August 1919, Kearsarge trained United States Naval Academy midshipmen in the Caribbean. Kearsarge sailed from Annapolis, Maryland, to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where she decommissioned on either 10 May or 18 May 1920.
Kearsarge was converted into a crane ship, and was given hull classification symbol IX-16 on 17 July 1920, but it was changed to AB-1 on 5 August. Her turrets, superstructure, and armor were removed, and were replaced by a large revolving crane with a lifting capacity of 250 tons (230 tonnes), as well as blisters, which improved her stability. The crane ship was utilized often over the next 20 years, including the raising of in 1939.
On 6 November 1941, Kearsarge was renamed Crane Ship No. 1, allowing her name to be given to the aircraft carriers (temporarily), and later to . She continued her service, however, handling guns, turrets, armor, and other heavy lifts for vessels such as , , , , and .
She was transferred to the San Francisco Naval Shipyard in early 1945 and taken out of service in April when her crew was transferred elsewhere. The crane was subsequently manned by a civilian crew. On 14 May 1947, she was ordered to operate from Long Beach Naval Station at Terminal Island, California and was reactivated with a naval crew on 6 October 1947. One of her last projects was performing heavy lifts during the reassembly of another crane vessel, YD-171 (ex-Schwimmkran nr. 1) on Terminal Island. In 1948 she left the West Coast for the Boston Naval Shipyard. On 22 June 1955 her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register, and she was sold for scrap on 9 August.