The Legacy of Ships Named Enterprise

[Major Shaitan Singh]

RED SEA (June 21, 2011) The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65) transits the Strait of Bab el Mandeb in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Brooks B. Patton Jr./Released)

by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Eric Lockwood, Naval History and Heritage Command, Communication and Outreach Division

On March 6, 1822, a 12-gun schooner named Enterprise captured four pirate vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. The event is little known, not well documented, and it was one of her last operations before sinking in the West Indies a year later. But her actions on this day stand alongside a proud history in the legacy of the Enterprise.

There have been eight U.S. Navy ships named Enterprise, creating a legacy that will carry well into the future as PCU Enterprise (CV 80) is designed, constructed and joins the fleet a decade from now.

The first Enterprise was originally a British ship named George. Photo courtesy of USS Enterprise CVN 65’s official website.

ENTERPRISE I (1775-77)

The first Enterprise originally belonged to the British and was named George. She cruised on Lake Champlain and supplied English posts in Canada. On May 18, 1775, Col. Benedict Arnold captured the ship, outfitted her with guns and thereafter defended American supply routes in New England from British attacks. The ship was one of many that embarked more than 1,000 troops in August that year as part of an expedition against three Canadian cities: St. Johns, Montreal and Quebec. British reinforcements caused the Americans to retreat. Regrouping in October, Arnold’s soldiers disrupted the British invasion into New York. Enterprise was one of only five ships to survive the two-day battle. The following year, the British would be defeated at Saratoga, N.Y., which helped bring about a French alliance with the colonists, and with them, their powerful navy. Enterprise, however, wasn’t around for the Battle of Saratoga. The sloop had been run aground on July 7, 1777 during the evacuation of Ticonderoga and was burned to prevent its capture.

The second Enterprise was an 8-gun schooner. Photo courtesy of USS Enterprise CVN 65’s official website.

ENTERPRISE II (1776-77)

The second Enterprise,a schooner, was a successful letter-of-marque before she was purchased Dec. 20, 1776 for the Continental Navy. Commanded by Capt. Joseph Campbell, Enterprise operated principally in Chesapeake Bay. She convoyed transports, carried out reconnaissance, and guarded the shores against foraging raids by the British. Only meager records of her service have been found; they indicate she was apparently returned to the Maryland Council of Safety before the end of February 1777.

USS Enterprise, circa 1799, a 12-gun schooner shown capturing a Tripolitan corsair in 1801. Drawing by N. Hoff. National Archives and Records Administration

ENTERPRISE III (1799-1823)

The third Enterprise was the schooner used to capture the pirate ships during the Barbary Wars. At her time of service, anti-piracy operations were a major part of the Navy’s mission. American shipping vessels were frequently attacked in the Caribbean, and the Navy was tasked with fighting them. It was her commanding officer, Lt. Stephen Decatur Jr., who pulled off the daring expedition to burn the frigate Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli in 1804. She would be refitted as a brig during the War of 1812. On Sept. 5, 1813, Enterprise chased down the British brig Boxer in a close-combat battle that took the lives of both ships’ commanding officers, Lt. William Burrows and Capt. Samuel Blyth. From 1815 to 1823, Enterprise suppressed smugglers, pirates and slavers until July 9, 1823, the ship became stranded and broke up on Little Curacao Island in the West Indies, without any loss of her crew.

The fourth Enterprise was a 10-gun schooner. Photo courtesy of USS Enterprise CVN 65’s official website.

ENTERPRISE IV (1831-1844)

The fourth Enterprise was a schooner built by the New York Navy Yard where it launched on Oct. 26, 1831. Its original complement was nine officers and 63 men and, for most of its life, it protected U.S. shipping around the world. After spending time guarding American interests near Brazil, the schooner spent time in the Far East (Africa, India and East Indies). She was back cruising South America until March 1839 when she left Valparaiso, Chile, to round the Horn, make a port call at Rio de Janeiro, and then head north to Philadelphia, where she was inactivated on July 12. Recommissioned a few months later, Enterprise sailed from New York back to South America on March 16, 1840. After four years, she returned to the Boston Navy Yard, decommissioned June 24, 1844, and sold four months later.

USS Enterprise off New York City during the early 1890s. NHHC photo

ENTERPRISE V (1877-1909)

The fifth Enterprise was a bark-rigged screw sloop-of-war. She was built at the Portsmouth Naval Yard in Maine by John W. Griffith, launched June 13, 1874, and commissioned March 16, 1877. Decommissioned and recommissioned several times, she primarily surveyed oceans, littoral areas, and river founts around the world, including the Amazon and Madeira Rivers. When not on hydrographic survey cruises, she spent time sailing the waters of Europe, the Mediterranean and east coast of Africa. From 1891 to 1892 Enterprise was the platform on which cadets at the Naval Academy trained and practiced. Then she was lent to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for duty as a maritime schoolship for 17 years. Returned to the Navy on May 4, 1909, Enterprise was sold five months later.

The sixth Enterprise was a 66-foot motor patrol craft purchased by the Navy on Dec. 6, 1916. Photo courtesy of USS Enterprise CVN 65’s official website.

ENTERPRISE VI (1916-19)

The sixth Enterprise (No. 790), a 66-foot motorboat, was purchased by the Navy on Dec. 6, 1916. Placed with the 2nd Naval District on Sept. 25, 1917, the noncommissioned motorboat performed harbor tug duties at Newport, R.I. before going to New Bedford, Mass., Dec. 11, 1917. The motorboat was transferred to the Bureau of Fisheries Aug. 2, 1919.

USS Enterprise (C 6), was the most decorated ship in U.S. Navy history when she was decommissioned in 1946.

 

[Major Shaitan Singh]

ENTERPRISE VII (1938-1947)

Once again a proper warship, this time a Yorktown-class carrier, Enterprise (CV 6) earned her nickname—Big E. In World War II, she earned 20 battle stars, the most for any U.S. warship in World War II, for the crucial roles she played in numerous battles, including Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, and the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. During the Battle of Guadalcanal, Enterprise took three direct hits, killing 74 and wounding 95 crew members. It was the Enterprise that took on the Hornet’s aircraft after that carrier was abandoned during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Island Oct. 26, 1942.

U.S. Navy ships firing at attacking Japanese carrier aircraft during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, Oct. 26, 1942. USS Enterprise (CV-6) is at left, with at least two enemy planes visible overhead. In the right center is USS South Dakota, firing her starboard 5/38 secondary battery, as marked by the bright flash amidships. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.
Catalog #: 80-G-20989

By the end of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on Nov. 15, Enterprise had shared in sinking 16 ships and damaging eight more. After an overhaul for much of 1943, Enterprise was back in the fight when, on Nov. 26, 1943, the Big E introduced carrier-based night fighter operations in the Pacific. The Big E suffered the last of her damage on May 14, 1945, after a kamikaze plane struck the ship near her forward elevator, killing 14 and wounding 34 men. The most decorated ship in U.S. naval history entered the New York Naval Shipyard on Jan. 18, 1946 for inactivation and was decommissioned Feb. 17, 1947. She was sold July 1, 1958.

USS Enterprise (CVN-65) Underway, probably in the 1990s. This photograph was received in 1998. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command.

ENTERPRISE VIII (1961-2012)

In 1954, Congress authorized the construction of the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the eighth U.S. ship to bear the name Enterprise. The giant ship was to be powered by eight nuclear reactors, two for each of its four propeller shafts. This was a daring undertaking, for never before had two nuclear reactors ever been harnessed together. As such, when the engineers first started planning the ship’s propulsion system, they were uncertain how it would work, or even if it would work according to their theories. Three years and nine months after construction began, Enterprise (CVN 65) was ready to present to the world as “The First, The Finest” super carrier, and the construction was proven capable. Her long career, consisting of 25 deployments and 51 years of service to the United States, has been well documented and this space can’t begin to list her accomplishments, but those can be found here at the Naval History and Heritage Command’s website and in libraries across the country. The ship was inactivated Dec. 1, 2012; she is not expected to be decommissioned until 2016 following four years of nuclear defueling, dismantlement and recycling.

For more than two centuries, Enterprise Sailors have set the standard for excellence aboard the eight ships to proudly bear her name and will continue to do so upon the future commissioning of PCU Enterprise (CVN 80), the third Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier that is scheduled to be delivered to the fleet between 2025-27.