USS Terry at Queenstown and the U.S. Navy Campaign Against German Submarines, 1918 to 1919

USS Terry WWI Navy

Photograph

Fred J. Ulmer World War I naval photograph and postcard album, 1918 to 1919, documenting service aboard USS "Terry" as the Allies fought German U boats. Photographs show convoy escort, torpedo firing, smoke screens, damaged and torpedoed ships, coaling operations, and the destroyers and sailors engaged in the campaign. "Terry" had sailed with the first American Expeditionary Force convoy from New York in June 1917 and joined the American destroyer force at Queenstown, Ireland, in February 1918, escorting troop and merchant shipping through waters heavily threatened by German submarines. Ulmer’s photographs, captions, postcards, correspondence, and contemporary newspaper clippings record that campaign from an enlisted sailor’s perspective, connecting life aboard a working destroyer with the larger Allied effort to keep American troops and supplies moving across the Atlantic.

Photo album containing approximately 182 real photo postcards and postcards, with three additional loose photographs and eight newspaper clippings, principally United States, Ireland, Britain, France, Bermuda, and Atlantic waters, circa 1918 to 1919. Assembled and extensively captioned by Fred J. Ulmer, a sailor aboard USS Terry, the album includes shipboard photographs captioned “The stern from foretop,” “The stern on deck,” “Smoke screen,” “On convoy duty,” “Firing a torpedo,” “Ship torpedoed & sunk,” “U.S.S. Dipton torpedoed & sunk,” “Coaling ship U.S.S. Dixie,” and “U.S.S. Spectator’s last smoke.” Other images show sailors at their stations and at leisure, deck machinery and ventilation equipment, torpedo apparatus, ships underway, damaged and sunken vessels, coaling operations, harbors, and dazzle painted naval craft; one photograph taken during convoy duty records an airship passing close to the ship. Ulmer also photographed Queenstown from the water, including a view captioned “U.S.S. Terry leaving Queenstown Ireland Dec. 16 1918,” fixing the album to the destroyer’s documented departure for the United States on that date. Photograph postcards extend the record ashore and beyond Terry, with European, Bermudian, and American scenes, naval cartoons, portraits of sailors and soldiers, correspondence, and a crowded troopship identified by Ulmer as “Erickson & troop ship.” Postal material preserves messages sent during and immediately after the war, while the album’s final section incorporates contemporary clippings concerning Terry, its crew, visiting destroyers, and the 1919 Victory Loan campaign. One clipping announces “The Navy Hawks Are Here” and “U.S. Destroyers Paulding and Terry,” describing the vessels’ arrival for Victory Loan activities and advertising fire and gun drills for visitors. A textile fragment is also retained in the album. Ulmer’s frequent identifications, supplemented by inscriptions on the versos of many photographs and postcards, establish names, locations, ships, and activities beyond what can be recovered from the images alone.

At the time of these photographs in 1918, Queenstown had become the center of an American naval presence in Europe created specifically in response to the German submarine campaign. The first six American destroyers arrived there in May 1917; eventually nearly 7,000 U.S. Navy personnel and 92 vessels served from the base, including 47 of the 80 American destroyers deployed overseas. Queenstown sailors carried out 43 percent of the 1,577 escort duties completed by American forces during the war, meeting troopships and merchant convoys in the Western Approaches and accompanying them through the waters where submarine attack was most likely. The photographs record the rapidly changing technology of that campaign, showing smoke screens, torpedo equipment, convoy formations, coaling operations, and damaged ships at a moment when destroyers were being adapted from torpedo attack craft into antisubmarine escorts armed with depth charges and operating within an increasingly coordinated convoy system. During "Terry’s" final months overseas, the influenza pandemic disabled crews at Queenstown badly enough that some destroyers could not be manned, while American sailors were serving in an Ireland still under British rule and increasingly convulsed by the political struggle that would lead to independence. "Terry" left Queenstown on December 16, 1918, little more than a month after the Armistice, and Ulmer’s postcards, shore photographs, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and Victory Loan material follow the transformation of the destroyer sailor from an anonymous component of the wartime convoy system into a returning serviceman whose ship and crew were presented to American civilians as visible representatives of victory. Album binding and leaves show wear consistent with age and use, with occasional fading, toning, edge wear, and handling marks; newspaper clippings are browned and brittle with some edge losses. Overall in good condition.

Item #23894

Price: $2,250.00