U.S.S.ROANOKE
I read about a Navy cruiser named the USS Roanoke, and I like to think the vessel was named after the City of Roanoke,Virginia ,or, perhaps, after Roanoke Island off North Carolina.
Six hundred and eight feet long, sleek looking in the water the keep was started May 25, 1945 - that's fifty-eight years ago the week after next. The ship was “laid down”, as shipbuilder say, at the New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden, NJ on that date. Two years later June 26, 1947 she was launched.
Th official record show she was the Fourth vessel in the US Navy to be named “Roanoke”, and I have been searching around a bit this afternoon for some facts about the other three, as well.
One has wide scope in which to seek such information - the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II. I have been led to continue my search as I wondered if any of them have been named after the City of Roanoke. Virginia. Some could have been named in honor of the Roanoke Island settle settlement 1558 or so , but there is a hint contained in facts about the USS Roanoke – number 4 - launched in 1947, which pretty well settles that point for me. The USS Roanoke - the fourth one so designated was a CL-145) vessel - a cruiser. The young lady who “sponsored” the ship was a named Miss Julia Ann Henebry and that is a distinctively local name for the Roanoke, Virginia community area in my memory The ship served 22.2 years and was decommissioned in October 1958. She was berthed for a time of a time at Mare Island and sold to a used metal company in San Jose, Ca. In 1972.
What an end? Certainly there was nothing dramatic or exotic about the career of the USS Roanoke She had extended deployment as a part of the 6th fleet Battleship-Cruiser force in 1950 50 and from that time on alternated between 6th Fleet placements and operations until the spring of 1952 when she was started midshipmen's cruises in Europe and The Caribbean. On September 22, 1955 she departed Norfolk,Va. for the Panama Canal and was home ported at Long Beach Ca. where she conducted a series of Naval Reserve Cruises and other duties.
Among the other ships named “Roanoke” was a “Replenishment Oiler”...659-feet long, 640 at the waterline... and a smaller “Science Ship” and there is another somewhere in the records which, thus far, has eluded me.
.A.L.M. May 11, 2003 [c677wds]
