The losses of HMS Blenheim and HMS Java are just two of hundreds on the world’s oceans in the Age of Sail, and the fate of the two ships is mere speculation. Yet the disaster that took them both is history that deserves to be remembered.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.