The Latest, Briefly

The USS North Dakota passes by the Brooklyn Bridge in 1913, presumably on the way to the Brooklyn Navy Yard:

Sometime between 1910 and 1920, the North Dakota in Dry Dock number 4 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard:

Sometime between 1911 and 1915, the North Dakota heading out to sea, with the Manhattan skyline visible on the left:

The design of battleships was advancing rapidly in the early twentieth century and the North Dakota and the sister ship USS Delaware were built because the previous generation of US battleships, built very shortly earlier, were felt to not match the capabilities of the UK’s HMS Dreadnought. Commissioned in 1910, the North Dakota was used for training in US waters during World War I. The North Dakota and Delaware were decommissioned as battleships under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1923, to be replaced by the roughly-fifty-percent larger USS Colorado and USS West Virginia. In short, a career abbreviated by an arms race.

The lattice masts held observation platforms and, while ultimately impractical, are very cool.