Battleship in the Panama Canal

Someone, perhaps a sailor but more likely an experienced ship's photographer, took a series of photos of his ship as it passed through the Panama Canal in the late 1910s or early 1920s. The ship isn't identified.

Actually, this wasn't that unusual. The Panama Canal was fairly new, having opened in 1914. Sailors, like soldiers, went into war with the new pocket-sized cameras that Kodak was putting out, and took lots of photos. Amateur snaps tended to look like their name - an image that may have blurred or been poorly composed, but was proudly printed up on a real photo post card.

Back to my postcards. One identifies itself as No. 1 View of Culebra Cut, and the other is No. 12 Dreadnought in Culebra Cut. There may be more than 12 in the series; I've only seen a couple of the others, numbered 4 and 9. They may have been sold as a set.

I really wanted to know what ship these might be from. I started with the theory that both were taken on the same ship.

 The front or forward cage mast.

You might guess that from the bits of the deck that can be seen, but I'm still fairly new at this "guess the battleship" game and I can't take much for granted.


Not much information to be gained from this postcard, not yet, as battleships in general are identified as "World War One" era primarily because of a cage mast.


Actually, a single cage mast indicates a pre-WW1 ship, usually even pre-1910. The second cage mast was added to most battleships around 1910-1911.

This photo has a lot more detail to work with.

The forward guns are two over two. A real expert might be able to identify them by caliber, again, that isn't me.

We also see three anchor chains.

The stacks are not visible; sometimes counting them helps with identification.


I started with the turret configuration. Using online images at sites including NavSource, Haze Gray and Imperial War Museum, I decided that battleships numbered 14 through 35 were where I needed to concentrate. Earlier than 14, they had only two guns. After 35, they were two over three, or three over three.

I learned that the Navy briefly thought that saving space (and weight) was important enough to "superimpose" the upper turret onto the lower. The four big guns all turned at the same time in the same direction, which I would think limited a captain's options. This style turret was used on BB-14 through BB-17. Some magnification lead me to think the turrets on my postcard are not superimposed - the upper guns are behind rather than simply above - and I eliminated these four ships from further investigation.

The Navy sent a number of battleships through the Panama Canal in 1919, and a large number of ships were removed from service in 1921-ish, under a de-armament treaty. I used 1919-1920 images for my references.

From there, it took a fair amount of squinting at images.

Part of the challenge of identifying battleships: After damage or just after enough time had passed, they went into dry dock for repairs and upfit to improve function or armament; they could come out looking very different. Images available online may not be correctly dated. Sometimes they're misidentifed by ship name ...

The two ships that most closely matched the cage mast (the platform on the top can have different shapes), the turret configuration, the bridge's "wings" and the anti-aircraft gun mounts (visible just above and to the sides of the big gun turrets), were the BB-34 and BB-35. And, of course, I had been going methodically upward in BB numbers ... it's always the last ones you look at.

BB-34, the New York, and BB-35, the Texas, are almost twins. They were built from the same design. During their lives, they did develop some differences. For example, the first set of mast spotlights on the Texas were mounted one over the other, not side by side as on the New York. This was modified at some point, I think the early 1920s, so they matched again.

The Imperial War Museum has two images that are almost identical to my two postcards. They are identified as the New York, taken by a Royal Navy photographer. The gunnery "clock" is missing from the cage mast, the crew is in blue rather than white uniforms, and there is no sign of land around the ship. It's likely that a ship's photographer used the same vantage points at a later date.

There is also a deck hatch on the New York that I don't see in images from the Texas.

Close enough.

I believe I've identified these two photos as being taken on the New York as it approached and transited the Panama Canal.