USS Orion, a 19,132-ton (displacement) fleet collier, was built at Sparrows Point, Maryland, as one of several large ships intended to refuel the Navy's coal-burning warships under operational conditions. She was commissioned in late July 1912 and operated with the Atlantic Fleet for most of the next four and a half years. Orion also deployed to the Philippines but had returned to the Western Hemisphere by the time the United States entered World War I in April 1917. During that conflict she steamed to the Azores and to South America, as well as transporting coal along the U.S. East Coast.
Soon after the November 1918 Armistice brought an end to the fighting, Orion carried coal to European waters. She then served with the Atlantic Fleet until mid-1919, when she went to the Pacific for a year's operations along the west coasts of North and South America. For the rest of her active career Orion was assigned to the Naval Transport Service, mainly providing fuel to Navy units in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas. With the Fleet now largely converted to oil fuel, thus greatly reducing its need for colliers, she was decommissioned in June 1926, stricken from the Navy list in July 1931 and sold in late August 1933.
This page features, and provides links to, all the views we have concerning USS Orion (Collier # 11, later AC-11).
For more images related to this ship, see:
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.
The ship seen in the following image is either USS Orion, or her sister ship, USS Jason:
Related image: The ship seen in Photo # NH 44048 is identified on the original print as USS Orion (Collier # 11). However, it is actually USS Neptune (Collier # 8).
For more images related to USS Orion, see:
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Page made 31 December 2004