USS Inca, a 23-ton motor patrol boat, was one of a group of nine motor boats built by Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1917 in the expectation that their private owners would make them available for First World War service. Acquired by the Navy in July 1917, Inca operated through the summer in the Boston, Massachusetts, area on patrol and experimental duties. She was transferred in October 1917 to Hampton Roads, Virginia, and served there into 1919 as an aircraft rescue, seaplane tending, patrol and dispatch boat. Inca lost her name in 1918 and was thereafter called simply SP-1212. She was returned to her owner in April 1919, after the end of the wartime emergency.
This page features our only views of USS Inca (SP-1212).
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.
Photo #: NH 101827 USS Inca (SP-1212) (center, with her name penned on the photograph) Probably photographed circa July 1917, while undergoing conversion for Navy service. The boat at right is of identical design to Inca, and that at the left is the motor boat Needle, of Boston, which became USS Needle (SP-649). Some of the four craft in the background already are flying Navy jacks and are fitted with guns. The original print is in National Archives' Record Group 19-LCM. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Online Image: 71KB; 440 x 765 pixels |
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Photo #: NH 101791 USS Hiawatha (SP-183) Probably photographed in the Norfolk, Virginia, area in 1917-18. USS Inca (SP-1212) is at left, wearing the Naval Aviation star insignia. The Wallace Brothers gasoline engine machine shop is at right. The original print is in National Archives' Record Group 19-LCM. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Online Image: 62KB; 740 x 435 pixels |
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Photo #: NH 98558-A USS SP-1212 (ex-Inca), at right Hauled out of the water at the Norfolk Navy Yard, 15 February 1919. The stern of USS Agamemnon (ID-3004) is in the background. At left are Chicago and Northwestern Railway box car # 103784 and a Navy rowing boat. This image is cropped from a panoramic photograph taken by the G.L. Hall Optical Co., Norfolk, Va. See Photo # NH 98558 for the entire original image. Donation of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard Museum, Portsmouth, Virginia. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Online Image: 124KB; 740 x 615 pixels |
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Note: Another view, which might possibly show Inca prior to her Navy service, is Photo # NH 101884.
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Page made 18 March 2001
New image added 5 July 2003