Armored Ram Katahdin

If there’s one piece in our two series of naval games that generates more questions than any other, it’s the American armored ram Katahdin from Great War at Sea: 1898, The Spanish American War. It appears, as a game piece, to be utterly useless.

It is. Therefore, its role in the game is entirely accurate. We prefer to design games rooted in historical reality, and lean to this side of the equation rather than creating interesting game puzzles with a historical veneer. It’s almost impossible to hurt an enemy ship using Katahdin, and she doesn’t even appear in any of the game’s scenarios.

Katahdin at sea.

Katahdin was authorized in 1889 as a political sop tossed to those who preferred that the United States build a coast-defense navy rather than the deep-water fleet represented by the three battleships of the Indiana class authorized a few months later. Rear Admiral Daniel Ammen, head of the coast-defense faction, designed the ship himself. She was named for a mountain in Maine, whose Congressional delegation pushed the project through for home-state Bath Iron Works to build, a name also sometimes used for a Bigfoot-like monster said to roam the north woods. The idea was to build many such rams, but only one actually appeared.

Katahdin’s design was inspired by a misunderstanding of the British torpedo ram Polyphemus. While Polyphemus did have a ram, this was an afterthought and her primary weapons were her five torpedo tubes and the 18 reloads she carried (an unusually high number for the day). Her basic hull form was curved (a unique design feature for the time) and protected by thick armor. In essence, she was intended to operate much like surfaced submarines would a few years later: as a semi-submerged torpedo boat. Polyphemus was completed in 1882, and attracted a great deal of international attention.

When Congress authorized Katahdin, the U.S. Navy had not yet adopted the self-propelled torpedo. Therefore, the American version carried only four light guns to repel boarders and no torpedoes. Just before action, she would take on extra water ballast into her double bottom (yet another unique feature) to lower her profile even deeper into the water, and then attempt to ram enemy ships. She had a heavily-armored conning tower and very few deck fittings; she resembled a submarine more than a surface warship and in many ways was a very technically advanced craft. At 2,300 tons full load, she had a crew of 97.

Katahdin’s crew prepares
to sail for the war zone, 1898.

But while Polyphemus was slightly faster than battleships of her day, by the time Katahdin was commissioned in Februiary 1896, most foreign battleships were fast enough to run away from her pretty easily. Katahdin came in a full knot short of her contracted 17-knot speed on trials and had trouble making 14 knots in normal conditions, and the Navy refused to accept her. But Bath Iron Works had enormous political pull and a special bill was rammed through Congress forcing the Navy to accept the ship. She spent only a little over a year in commission, almost all of that tied to a pier in New York, before going into reserve.

When war with Spain broke out a year later, the green-painted ram came back into service, but now the admirals refused to take her with them to Cuba. Instead she steamed from city to city on the East Coast as part of the North Atlantic Squadron, reassuring citizens that the Spaniards would be kept at bay. In June 1898, Capt. George F. Wilde received orders to report to the blockading squadron off Santiago de Cuba, but the Spanish fleet exited the port and met their total destruction before Katahdin arrived to provide them a target. In October, Katahdin once again was decommissioned. She rusted for another 11 years at Philadelphia Navy Yard before being towed out into the Atlantic and finally providing the Navy a useful service, as a gunnery target.

In the game, Katahdin is of little use. There is an optional rule for ramming, and a number of ships are eligible to try it. But for all the complaints about the “useless ship” (and we’ve gotten many), it seems the designers forgot to include her in any of the scenarios. She does not take part in the game at all.

That seems needlessly cruel. Katahdin should be added as an American reinforcement in Step 10 of the campaign games. In game terms, she’s not likely to ram anything unless it’s a ship struck dead in the water.