USS South Carolina (BB-26), the lead ship of her class of dreadnought battleships, was the fourth ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the eighth state. She was also the first American dreadnought; though she did not incorporate turbine propulsion like , South Carolinas design included revolutionary aspects as well, primarily the superfiring arrangement of her main battery. The ship was laid down in December 1906 and launched in July 1908 before being commissioned into the US Atlantic Fleet in March 1910.
South Carolina spent much of her career in the Atlantic and Caribbean patrolling the eastern coast of the United States. She made two trips to Europe in 1910 and 1911 and participated in a visit by a German cruiser squadron in 1912. In 1913–14, she frequently patrolled the coast of Mexico to protect American interests during the Mexican Revolution, and in April 1914 she took part in the United States occupation of Veracruz. After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, South Carolina trained sailors for the rapidly expanding wartime navy, and in late 1918, she was assigned to convoy escort duty. An accident with her propellers in September kept her from active service for the remainder of the conflict. In 1919, she made four trips to bring American soldiers back from Europe. Midshipmen training cruises followed in 1920–21, but the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 cut her career short. She was broken up for scrap as part of the arms limitation treaty, starting in mid-1924.
Design
South Carolina was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of . She displaced as designed and up to at full load. The ship was powered by two-shaft vertical triple-expansion engines rated at and twelve coal-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers, generating a top speed of . The ship had a cruising range of at a speed of . She had a crew of 869 officers and men.
The ship was armed with a main battery of eight /45 caliber Mark 5 guns in four twin gun turrets on the centerline, which were placed in two superfiring pairs forward and aft. The secondary battery consisted of twenty-two /50 guns mounted in casemates along the side of the hull. As was standard for capital ships of the period, she carried a pair of torpedo tubes, submerged in her hull on the broadside.
South Carolinas main armored belt was thick over the magazines, over the machinery spaces, and elsewhere. The armored deck was thick. The gun turrets had 12 inch thick faces, while the supporting barbettes had 10 inch thick armor plating. Ten inch thick armor also protected the casemate guns. The conning tower had 12 inch thick sides.
Service history
The keel for South Carolina was laid down at the William Cramp & Sons shipyard in Philadelphia on 18 December 1906. The completed hull was launched on 11 July 1908. Fitting-out work was completed by the end of February 1910, and she was commissioned into the fleet on 1 March. She was then assigned to the Atlantic Fleet. Five days after her commissioning, the ship steamed out of Philadelphia for her shakedown cruise, which took the ship to the Caribbean Sea and included stops in the Danish West Indies and Cuba, before returning to the United States for a visit to Charleston in her namesake state, which lasted from 10 to 15 April. Sea trials followed; they were conducted off the Virginia Capes and outside Provincetown, Massachusetts. South Carolina then visited New York City on 17–18 June to take part in a reception for former President Theodore Roosevelt. The ship spent most of the rest of the year conducting fleet maneuvers, training naval militia, and receiving repairs at Norfolk, Virginia.
On 1 November 1910, South Carolina left the United States for a trip to Europe with the 2nd Battleship Division. During the tour, the Division stopped in Cherbourg and Portland. The ships arrived back in Norfolk on 12 January 1911, where South Carolina entered the shipyard for maintenance. She then returned to the fleet, which conducted battle training off the coast of New England. The ship made a short stop in New York City before joining the 2nd Battleship Division for another tour of Europe. This trip included stops in Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Kronstadt. On the way back from Kronstadt, South Carolina stopped in Kiel, where the German Kaiser Wilhelm II was hosting the annual Kieler Woche (Kiel Week) sailing regatta. South Carolina arrived off Provincetown on 13 July and continued to the Chesapeake Bay, where she conducted battle practice.