It was rare at the time for ships to be built in dry dock – most were built on the shipways – but these vessels set a precedent for dry dock construction that would be invaluable in the Second World War, when tank landing ships and aircraft carriers would be built in dry dock at the yard. You can see the ships positioned stem-to-stem at the christening in 1937 inside the yard’s dry dock #4 – this article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle describes the occasion (though it erroneously places them in dry dock #2, which was much too small to accommodate both ships). Spencer and Alexander Hamilton being christened at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, January 6, 1937. Spencer also hailed from New York, which is what bound the ships together. While the latter was named for a Founding Father and America’s first Secretary of the Treasury (the Coast Guard was then part of the US Treasury), the former was named for Hamilton’s successor in the forgettable administration of President John Tyler – like Hamilton, John C. One of the few ships ever built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for a client other than the US Navy, the Spencer and her sister ship Alexander Hamilton where laid down almost simultaneously in 1935 and launched in 1937. Spencer, a ship built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. January, the photo depicts an attack on the German submarine U-175 launched from the USCG Cutter John C. Taken on April 17, 1943, by US Coast Guard Reserve Warrant Photographer Jess W. In the middle distance of this grey seascape is a rising mound, an explosion of a depth charge, launched from the very ship the photographer was standing on. When you step inside the exhibition, one of the oft-overlooked aspects of war is worth attention, in the section “Patrol and Troop Movement.” There you will find a photo taken from the deck of a ship leaden skies hang overhead, and a string of ships – a convoy – dot the horizon. January, “USCG Cutter Spencer destroys Nazi sub, April 17, 1943.” From WAR/PHOTGRAPHY
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