(Battleship No. 9: dp. 11,564 (n.); 1. 373'10", b. 72'2.5", dr. 23'8.1" (mean); s. 16 k., cpl. 531; a. 4 13", 14 6", 16 6-pers., 6 1-pdrs., 4 .30-cal. mg.;cl. Illinois)

First Wisconsin (Battleship No. 9) was laid down on February 9, 1897, at San Francisco, Calif., by the Union Iron Works, launched on November 26, 1898, sponsored by Miss Elizabeth Stephenson, the daughter of Senator Isase Stephenson of Marinette, Wis., and commissioned on February 4, 1901, Capt. George C. Reiter in command.

Departing San Francisco on March 12, 1901, Wisconsin conducted general drills and exercises at Magdalena Bay, Mexico, from March 17 to April 11 before she returned to San Francisco on April 15 to be drydocked for repairs. Upon completion of that work, Wisconsin headed north along the western seaboard, departing San Francisco on May 28 and reaching Port Orchard Wash., on June 1. She remained there for nine days before heading back toward San Francisco.

She next made a voyage—in company with the battleships Oregon and Lowa, the cruiser Philadelphia, and the torpedo-boat destroyer Farragut to the Pacific Northwest, reaching Port Angeles, Wash., on June 29. She then shifted to Port Whatcom, Wash., on July 2 and participated in the 4th of July observances there before she returned to Port Angeles the following day to resume her scheduled drills and exercises. Those evolutions kept the ship occupied through mid-July.

Following repairs and alterations at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Wash., from July 23 to October 14, Wisconsin sailed for the middle and southern reaches of the Pacific, reaching Honolulu, Hawaii, on October 23. After coaling there, the battleship then got underway for Samoa on the 26th and exercised her main and secondary batteries en route to her destination.

Reaching the naval station at Tutuila on November 5, Wisconsin remained in that vicinity, along with the collier Abarenda and the hospital ship Solace, for a little over two weeks. Shifting to Apia—the scene of the disastrous hurricane of 1888—Wisconsin hosted the Governor of German Samoa before the man-of-war departed that port on the 21st, bound—via Hawaii—for the coastal waters of Central and South America.

Wisconsin reached Acapulco on Christmas Day, 1901, and remained in port for three days. After coaling, the man-of-war twice visited Callao, Peru, and also called at Valparaiso, Chile, before she returned to Acapulco on February 26, 1902.

Wisconsin exercised in Mexican waters—at Pichilinque Bay and Magdalena Bay—from 5 to March 22, carrying out an intensive and varied slate of exercises that included small arms drills, day and night main battery target practices, and landing force maneuvers. She conducted further drills of various kinds as she proceeded up the west coast, touching Coronado, San Francisco, and Port Angeles before she reached the Pu~et Sound Navy Yard on June 4.

The battleship underwent repairs and alterations until August 11. She then conducted gunnery exercises off Tacoma and Seattle, Wash., before she returned to the Puget Sound Navy Yard on August 29 for further work. : She remained there until September 12, when she sailed for San Francisco en route to Panama.

Wisconsin—as flagship, Pacific Squadron—with Rear Admiral Silas Casey embarked and arrived at Panama, Colombia, on September 30, 1902, to protect American interests and to preserve the integrity of transit across the isthmus. Casey offered his services as a mediator in the crisis that had lasted for three years and invited leaders of both factions—conservatives and liberals— to meet onboard Wisconsin. Over succeeding weeks through October and into November, prolonged negotiations ensued. Ultimately, however, the warring sides came to an agreement and signed a treaty on November 21, 1902. The accord came to be honored in Colombian circles as "The Peace of Wisconsin." When Rear Admiral Henry Glass, Admiral Casey's successor as Commander in Chief of the Pacific Squadron, wrote his report to the Secretary of the Navy for the fiscal year 1903, he lauded his predecessor's diplomatic services during the Panama crisis. "The final settlement of the revolutionary disturbance," Glass wrote approvingly, "was largely due to his efforts."

Her task completed, the battleship departed Panama's waters on November 22 and arrived at San Francisco on December 5 to prepare for gunnery exercises. Four days later, Rear Admiral Casey shifted his flag to the armored cruiser New York, thus releasing Wisconsin from flagship duties for the Pacific Squadron. The battleship consequently carried out her firings until December 17, when she sailed for Bremerton. Reaching the Puget Sound Navy Yard five days before Christmas of 1902, Wisconsin then underwent repairs and alterations until May 13, 1903, when she sailed for the Asiatic Station.

Proceeding via Honolulu, Wisconsin, arrived at Yokohama, Japan, on June 12, with Rear Admiral Yates Stirling embarked; three days later, Rear Admiral Stirling exchanged flagships with Rear Admiral P. H. Cooper, who broke his two-starred flag at Wisconsin's main as Commander of the Asiatic Fleet's Northern Squadron while Admiral Stirling hoisted his in the tender Rainbow.

Wisconsin operated in the Far East with the Asiatic Fleet over the next three years before she returned to the United States in the autumn of 1906. She followed a normal routine of operations in the northern latitudes of the station—China and Japan—in the summer months because of the oppressive heat of the Philippine Islands that time of year but in the Philippine Archipelago in the winter. She touched at ports in Japan and China, including Kobe, Yokohama, Nagasaki, and Yokosuka; Amoy, Shanghai, Chefoo, Nanking, and Taku. In addition, she cruised the Yangtze River (as far as Nanking), the Inland Sea, and Nimrod Sound. The battleship conducted assigned fleet maneuvers and exercises off the Chinese and Philippine coasts, intervening in those evolutions with regular periods of in-port upkeep and repairs. During that time, she served as the Asiatic Fleet flagship, wearing the flag of Rear Admiral Cooper.

The battleship departed Yokohama on September 20 and, after calling at Honolulu en route between 3 and 8 October, arrived at San Francisco on the 18th. After seven days' stay at that port, she headed up the west coast and reached the Puget Sound Navy Yard on October 28. She was decommissioned there on November 15, 1906.

Recommissioned on April 1, 1908, Capt. Henry Morrell, in command, Wisconsin, was fitted out at the Puget Sound Navy Yard until the end of April. After shifting to Port Angeles from April 30 to May 2, the battleship proceeded down the western seaboard and reached San Francisco on May 6 to participate in a fleet review at that port. She subsequently returned to Puget Sound to complete the installation of her fire control equipment between May 21 and June 22.

Soon thereafter, Wisconsin retraced her southward course, returning to San Francisco in early July. There, she joined the battleships of the Atlantic Fleet in setting out on the transpacific leg of the momentous circumnavigation of the globe. The cruise of the "Great White Fleet" served as a pointed reminder to Japan of the power of the United States—a dramatic gesture made by President Theodore Roosevelt as signal evidence of his "big stick" policy. Wisconsin, during the course of her part of the voyage, called at ports in New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Ceylon, and Egypt, transited the Suez Canal, visited Malta, Algiers, and Gibraltar before arriving in Hampton Roads on Washington's Birthday, 1909, and passing in review there before President Roosevelt. The epic voyage had confounded the doomsayers and critics, having been accomplished without any serious incidents or mishaps.

Wisconsin departed from the Tidewater area on March 6 and arrived at the Portsmouth (N.H.) Navy Yard three days later. The pre-dreadnought battleship there underwent repairs and alterations until June 23, giving it her bright "white and spar color" and donning a more businesslike gray. The man-of-war joined the Atlantic Fleet in Hampton Roads at the end of June, but she remained in those waters only a short time, for she sailed north to Portland, Maine, arriving there on July 2 in time to take part in the 4th of July festivities in that port.

The battleship next headed down the eastern seaboard, cruising off Rockport and Provincetown, Mass., before she returned, with the fleet, to Hampton Roads on August 6. Over the ensuing weeks, Wisconsin fired target practices in the southern drill grounds, off the Virginia capes, breaking those underway periods with upkeep in Hampton Roads.

Wisconsin steamed with the fleet to New York City— where she anchored in the North River to take part in the Hudson-Fulton celebrations between September 22 and October 5—before she underwent repairs at the Portsmouth (N.H.) Navy Yard from October 7 to November 28. She then dropped down to Newport, B.I., upon the conclusion of that yard period, picking updrafts of men for transportation to the Atlantic Fleet at Hampton Roads.

Wisconsin operated with the fleet off the Virginia capes through mid-December before she headed for New York for the Christmas holidays in port. Subsequently cruising to Cuban waters in early January 1910, the battleship operated out of Guantanamo Bay for a little over two months, from January 12 to March 19.

The pre-dreadnought battleship then visited Tompkinsville, N.Y., and New Orleans, La., before she discharged ammunition at New York City on April 22. Later that spring, 1910, she moved to the Portsmouth (N.H.) Navy Yard, where she was placed in reserve. She was moved to Philadelphia in April 1912 and, that autumn, took part in a naval review off Yonkers, New York, before resuming her reserve status with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. Placed "in ordinary" on October 31, 1913, Wisconsin remained in that status until she joined the Naval Academy Practice Squadron in the spring of 1915, assuming training duties along with the battleships Missouri and Ohio. With that group, she became the third battleship to transit the Panama Canal, making that trip in mid-July 1915 en route to the west coast of the United States with her embarked officers-to-be.

Wisconsin discharged her duties as a midshipman's training ship into 1917 and was moored at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on April 6 of that year, when she received word that the United States had declared war on Germany. Two days later, members of the Naval Militia began reporting on board the battleship for quarters and subsistence.

On April 23, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Ohio were placed in full commission and assigned to the Coast Battleship Patrol Squadron. Within two weeks, on May 2, Comdr. (later Admiral) David F. Sellers reported on board and took command. Four days later, the battleship got underway for the Virginia Capes, and she arrived at Yorktown, VA., on the 7th.

From early May through early August, Wisconsin operated as an engineering school ship on training cruises in the Chesapeake Bay-York River area. She trained recruits as oilers, watertenders, and firemen— who, when qualified, were assigned to the formerly interned merchantmen of the enemy taken over by the United States upon the declaration of war, as well as to submarine chasers and the merchant vessels then building in American yards.

Wisconsin then maneuvered and exercised in company with the battleships Kearsarge, Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, and Maine between 13 and 19 August, en route to Port Jefferson, L.I. Over the ensuing weeks, Wisconsin continued training and tactical maneuvers based on Port Jefferson, making various training cruises into Long Island Sound.

She subsequently returned to the York River region early in October and resumed her training activities in that locale, operating primarily in the Chesapeake Bay area. Wisconsin continued that duty into the spring of 1918, interrupting her training evolutions between October 30 and December 18, 1917, for repairs at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

After another stint of repairs at Philadelphia from May 13 to June 3, 1918, Wisconsin got underway for a cruise to Annapolis but, after passing the Brandywine Shoal Light, received orders to stick close to shore. Those orders were later modified to send Wisconsin Up the Delaware River as far as Bombay Hook since an enemy submarine was active off Cape Henlopen. Postwar examination of German records would show that U-l 51—reportedly the first of six enemy submarines to come to the eastern seaboard in 1918—sank three schooners on May 23 and other ships over ensuing days.

Getting underway again on June 6, Wisconsin arrived at Annapolis on the following day. On the next day, the battleship embarked 175 3d class midshipmen and got underway for the York River. The ship conducted training evolutions in the Chesapeake Bay region until August 29, when she returned to Annapolis and disembarked midshipmen. Underway for Yorktown on the 30th, Wisconsin there. She embarked on the task of training 217 men as firemen, water tenders, engineers, steersmen, and signalmen, resumed her training duties, and continued the task through the signing of the armistice on November 11.

She completed her training activities on December 20, sailed north, and reached New York City three days before Christmas. Wisconsin was among the ships reviewed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels from the deck of the yacht Mayflower and by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt from Azlec (SP-690) on the day after Christmas, December 26.

Wisconsin cruised with the fleet in Cuban waters that winter and, in the summer of 1919, made a midshipman training cruise to the Caribbean.

Placed out of commission on May 15, 1920, Wisconsin was reclassified BB-9 on July 17, 1920, while awaiting disposition. She was sold for scrap on January 26, 1922, as a result of the Washington Treaty.