Connecticut-class battleship

The Connecticut class was a group of six United States Navy pre-dreadnought battleships built between 1903 and 1908: Connecticut, Louisiana, Vermont, Kansas, Minnesota and New Hampshire, the penultimate class of that type. They carried a mixed battery of 12-inch, 8-inch and 7-inch guns, an arrangement made obsolete by the all-big-gun HMS Dreadnought, and were driven by two-shaft triple-expansion steam engines fed by twelve coal-fired Babcock and Wilcox boilers. Newport News Shipbuilding built the second ship, Louisiana, which was laid down there on 7 February 1903, launched in August 1904 and commissioned in June 1906. The first five ships sailed with the Great White Fleet in 1907 to 1909, from 1909 they were the workhorses of the Atlantic Fleet, and they took part in the 1914 occupation of Veracruz. In the First World War they trained sailors and then escorted convoys and brought American soldiers home from France. Under the Washington Naval Treaty all six were sold for scrap by 1924; Louisiana was decommissioned in October 1920 and broken up in 1923.