USS Buffalo, a 6888 ton (displacement) auxiliary cruiser, transport, and tender, was built as a freighter at Newport News, Virginia, as S.S. El Cid and entered commercial service in August 1893. In November 1893 the Brazilian Government purchased her, renamed her Nichteroy, and fitted her with a 15-inch dynamite gun (like those in USS Vesuvius) for use against the Brazilian Navy, which had rebelled. This naval rebellion ended in 1894, and Nichteroy was one of the surplus warships that the U.S. Navy was able to purchase abroad at the outbreak of the Spanish American War. Nichteroy was in U.S. hands at Rio de Janeiro in early May 1898, was formally purchased by the Navy and placed in commission in ordinary as USS Buffalo in July, and was placed in full commission in September 1898. In April 1898 the Navy had acquired three earlier sisters that had been built at Newport News, USS Yosemite, Yankee, and Dixie and one that had been built at Philadelphia, USS Prairie. All five were rated as auxiliary cruisers, although Buffalo was fitted out after most of the fighting was over and received a lighter armament than did the others. Buffalo made a cruise from New York to Manila and back between December 1898 and May 1899 and was decommissioned in July 1899.
Buffalo was recommissioned in April 1900 as a training ship for newly recruited personnel. While on training duty, the ship made four voyages from east coast ports to Manila with replacement crews for the Asiatic Fleet. On the last of these voyages she also convoyed the five destroyers of the 1st Torpedo Flotilla to Manila. Buffalo was decommissioed at Mare Island in April 1905. When recommissioned in November 1906 she began a decade of service as a transport in the Pacific. In addition to transport missions such as carrying Marines to Nicaragua in 1909 and supporting operations off Mexico in 1914 and 1916, she carried out a number of special missions, including the 1911 Alaskan Radio Expedition, which built a number of radio stations in Alaska, and the 1914 Alaskan Radio Expedition, which provided additional support to those stations. In May and June 1917 Buffalo carried the Special Diplomatic Mission of the United States to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), Russia. Upon her return in August she entered the Philadelphia Navy Yard for conversion to a destroyer tender.
Upon completion of conversion in June 1918 Buffalo sailed to Brest, France, and then proceeded to Gibraltar, where whe operated as station and repair ship for the U.S. destroyers and submarine chasers in the western Mediterranean. After performing similar duty in the Azores between February and September 1919 the tender returned to New York. In December 1919 she commenced duty as a destroyer tender at San Diego, California, and in 1921 she was ordered to the Asiatic Fleet. After a cruise in Chinese and Japanese waters, Buffalo returned to San Diego and was decommissioned there in November 1922. She was used as a barracks ship until stricken from the Navy List in May 1927 and sold in September 1927.
This page features, or provides links to, the only views we have concerning USS Buffalo, the Brazilian Navy's Nichteroy, and S.S. El Cid.
For other images concerning this ship, see:
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Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.
For other images concerning this ship, see:
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Page made 23 February 2008