Shipscribe Quick Links Menu.

Rappahannock (AF-6): Photographs

These photographs were selected to show the original configuration of this class and major subsequent modifications. For more views see the former NHHC (now Hyperwar) Online Library of Selected Images and the NavSource Photo Archive.

Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.

S.S. Pommern

This German freighter was interned at Honolulu in August 1914 and was seized by the U.S. there in April 1917. In this view her German commercial markings have been painted out and she appears to have empty American-style gun platforms at both ends. The photo may show her in Shipping Board hands before the Navy took her over in December 1917.

Photo No. NH 44060
Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.

 
USS Rappahannock (ID-1854)

A postcard view of the ship in pattern camouflage circa 1918, possibly while operating for the Naval Overseas Transportation Service.
Note the guns on platforms fore and aft.

Photo No. NH 105921
Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.

 
USS Rappahannock (ID-1854)

Off the Isle of Wight near Cowes, England, in late March 1919 supporting the delivery to the Allies by Germany of ocean liners that had remained in Germany during World War I.
The liners were turned over under the terms of the Armistice to bring American troops home from Europe and were then retained by the Allies as war reparations. The Navy operated several of them, including USS Mobile, formerly the German Cleveland. The photo is from a scrapbook created by George Graham Smith of USS SC-254 that was broken up and sold on Ebay. SC-254 was at Cowes during the turnover.

Photo No. None
Source: Shipscribe.

 
USS Rappahannock (AF-6)

A colorized photo taken circa the early 1920s.
The guns and their platforms had been removed by late March 1919.

Photo No. NH 74665
Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.

 
USS Rappahannock (AF-6)

At anchor circa the early 1920s.

Photo No. NH 1342
Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.

 
USS Rappahannock (AF-6)

At San Diego, California, circa 1922.
Rappahannock came out of reserve on the East Coast in mid-1921 and arrived at San Diego in December 1921. Although reassigned to Train, Atlantic Fleet, during 1922 she continued to visit the West Coast and was decommissioned there in 1924. One of the destroyers in the background, USS Woodbury (DD-309) was lost on Honda Point, Calif., on 8 September 1923.

Photo No. NH 69440
Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.