receivingship

The ship appears to be the armored cruiser USS Brooklyn (CA-3), judging by the three tall, thin funnels, and the barely visible name on the stern. The Brooklyn also had a main armament of 8x8" guns, so the 8" shells were probably being added to or removed from her magazines.

In the uncompressed archival TIFF version of this photo, "B_OOKL_N" (missing the R and Y) is readable on the stern.

League Island is aka Philadelphia Naval Shipyard en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_Island

no question about what ship it is, it's the one of a kind Uss Brooklyn (1896-1922). no other Us ship had such a shapely design, with the tumble down sides and conter protruding sponsoons. and those give away 100 foot of the deck stacks, no other ship even came close close i t he us navy to her artistic beuty, all the other where utilitarian at best, if not down right ugly. she was built along french designs, and was the epitome of effiency,speed, beauty and power on the open seas in her day. " they don't make em like that anymore".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Memphis_(CA-10)

If this is indeed USS Memphis (it is certainly an Omaha-class Light Cruiser), it would be CL-13, and the photo would date no earlier than the mid-1920s, not 1910 (or thereabouts). USS Memphis (CL-13) was launched at the William Cramp & Sons shipyard in Philadelphia in April 1924, and commissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in February 1925. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Memphis_(CL-13)

I have to respectfully disagree. The USS Memphis (ex-Tennessee) (ACR-10/CA-10) was a very different ship than the one photographed above. USS Memphis (ex-Tennessee) (ACR-10/CA-10) featured a tumblehome/ram bow and casement gun positions along her hull, and, while approximately 50' shorter in length than an Omaha-class cruiser, was almost 20' greater in beam and twice the displacement . Also, an identifying feature of the Omaha-class cruisers (such as USS Memphis (CL-13)) was the relatively unique placement of casement guns in the superstructure (four each fore and aft), as depicted above. Of course, radical changes to a ship's appearance may come about after various refits and upgrades, but that was not the case with USS Memphis (ex-Tennessee) (ACR-10/CA-10). Here's a link to a photo of USS Memphis (CA-10) as she meets her demise in Santo Domingo harbor: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Tennessee_ACR-10_-_photo_N... I would still maintain that the ship photographed above is the later USS Memphis (CL-13), and if not, one of her Omaha-class sister-ships.

Yes, the photos definitely show two different ships. And I confess that I know virtually nothing about Navy ships -- or any ships, really. So the explanation we are left with is that the Bain negative of the Memphis has been filed more than ten years out of order -- something that happens infrequently, but does happen, perforce.

Wystan: The filing is all Bain's doing! The Library obediently follows the photo agency's original order, indicated by the identification number scratched into the glass plate -- in this case 3019-3. Significant date anomalies have appeared before, though. It's speculation still, but we're wondering if the Bain agency sometimes replaced an old view of a subject with a newer view and kept the same number. Their card index already cited the ship "Memphis" as "3019-3," and when a new boat became the "Memphis" they kept the same index number and replaced the old negative with a new photo to avoid publishing a picture of the wrong boat. I'll try to track down the other example and send it along.

The ship appears to be the armored cruiser USS Brooklyn (CA-3), judging by the three tall, thin funnels, and the barely visible name on the stern. The Brooklyn also had a main armament of 8x8" guns, so the 8" shells were probably being added to or removed from her magazines.

Thank you for the information about the ship. We will add the information to our source data and reload the description.