Launching U.S. training ship ANNAPOLIS [sic]

Launching U.S. training ship ANNAPOLIS [sic]

Image of the launch of the training bark USS CHESAPEAKE at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. Visible in image: The ship'ssabalo white hull, with davits fitted but devoid of rigging, is on the ways before entering the Kennebec River. Sightseers on three small launches and a gaff-rigged loop observe from the river. A throng of onlookers stands next to the launching ways. Several vessels are visible moored along the shore, including (from left): a passenger steamboat, a tug waiting off the ways to maneuver the hull, another passenger steamboat, and what appears to be the Maine Central railroad ferry HERCULES. The gray shape behind the rightmost steamboat appears to be a long, low hull being fitted out, but no vessels with a similar hull profile appear to have been launched from the B.I.W. yards around the time this photograph would have been taken. Prominent buildings on the horizon line include the Sagadahoc County Courthouse (above the main B.I.W. building) and the spire of the Central Church (now the Chocolate Church Arts Center) at right. USS CHESAPEAKE was launched at Bath Iron Works in summer 1899 and commissioned in the spring of 1900. From 1900 until 1910 she was the training ship at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, being renamed USS SEVERN in 1905. SEVERN served as a submarine tender from 1910 until her decommissioning and disposal in 1916. Cataloger's note: Second-hand (i.e. non-Perkins) labeling on the negative plate and envelope incorrectly identifies the ship as USS ANNAPOLIS; the first ANNAPOLIS was a gunboat launched in 1896 in New Jersey and the second was a World War II-era frigate.