It is funny how in one minute the military thinks it has a great weapon, and in the next it is so outdated as to be useless. Even realizing this can happen, it does make one wonder why a modern navy would adopt a weapon that was thousands of years old and think that it had any place in modern warfare? Such a weapon was the USS Katahdin. She was a ship built for a special purpose. This was one of the oldest purposes in ship building. She was built as a ram. Many ancient ships of old were built to be able to ram the enemy in the side and be able to pull out by oars leaving the rammed ship to sink. Once cannons became commonplace on ships, the ramming ships were not being built, even though a few ships may have been able to survive a good ram. For wooden sailing ships a ram could be a disaster for both ships. The most popular tactic to survive from ancient times into the era of the wooden sailing ship was the fire ship. This is when you set a ship on fire and crash it into other ships setting them ablaze also. It was a really good tactic if you could catch a fleet when it was moored.

The USS Katahdin was built at Bath, Maine. She weighed in at 2155 tons and was commissioned in February of 1896. These dates are subject to differing opinions. Some say she was commissioned in 1897. It seems that this ship was commissioned twice in the space of a year due to the fact it was felt she was needed for the war after she had been decommissioned. She was a costal defense ship that was built for one purpose and one purpose only. She was to ram disabled ships, sending them to their watery graves. She saw little service and was used in the Spanish-American war as a coast-defense ship. Can you imagine we built a ram ship in 1896? Sure sounds far fetched doesn't it? Another thing that made it hard to understand why the ship was built, was that it was only to function as a ram when an enemy ship was already disabled. You would have to think that a disabled ship could be finished off with cannon fire more easily. You can understand why this ship had such a short life span. It was sunk in September 1909 after it had been used as a target. Yes a target. Talk about a waste of funds. So this ship was commissioned then decommissioned within a year then commissioned again. Notice the elements in construction that resemble a submarine.

The 'second' USS Katahdin the ram

This ship was not the first USS Katahdin. The first one was a gunboat which was commissioned in 1862 and used throughout the American Civil War. She was part of Admiral Farragut's fleet and participated in the blockade off the coast of New Orleans and also sailed to Vicksburg. She had helped to repulse a southern attack on badly outnumbered northern troops at Baton Rouge. Now here is the good part, she was assigned to guard the right flank of an attack while two other ships took on the Confederate ironclad ram CSS Arkansas. When iron clad ships first came out they were thought to make great rams because it was easy for them to smash through wooden ships, but this changed when all the ships became metal.

The 'first' USS Katahdin the gunboat