USS Bancroft (1892)
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Date: 2022-01-11

USS Bancroft (1892), by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10068898 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Gunboats_of_the_United_States_Navy
#United_States_Naval_Academy
#1892_ships
#Spanish–American_War_gunboats_of_the_United_States
USS Bancroft was a United States Navy steel gunboat in commission from 1893 to 1898 and again from 1902 to 1905.
She saw service during the Spanish–American War.
After her U.S. Navy career, she was in commission in the United States Revenue Cutter Service from 1907 to 1915 as the revenue cutter USRC Itasca,
and in the Revenue Cutter Service's successor service, the United States Coast Guard, as the cutter USCGC Itasca from 1915 to 1922.
During her Coast Guard career, she saw service during World War I. Bancroft was laid down in 1891 at Elizabethport, New Jersey, by Samuel L. Moore & Sons Shipyard and launched on 30 April 1892.
She was commissioned on 3 March 1893 at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York, with Miss Mary Frances Moore as sponsor.
Bancroft was designated as a training ship for the United States Naval Academy midshipmen and stationed at Annapolis, Maryland.
Similar in shape to a small gunboat, the ship had a steel hull and a relatively heavy armament, ranging from 4-inch rapid-fire guns to a Gatling gun and a torpedo tube, to give midshipmen experience on the Navy's latest weaponry.
Between 1893 and 1896, she cruised along the United States East Coast, visiting various shipyards with groups of midshipmen embarked.
Naval expansion brought a corresponding increase on the Naval Academy's enrollment, and Bancroft quickly proved to be too small.
After the practice cruise of 1896, she was converted into a conventional gunboat with a reduced armament and the original three-masted barkentine rig cut down to the two masts of a brigantine.
On 15 September 1896, Bancroft sailed to join the European Squadron and for the next 15 months protected American interests in the eastern Mediterranean.
Called home as relations between the United St...