Rear Admiral Reginald Rowan Belknap (26 June 1871 – 30 March 1959) was an officer in the United States Navy. He served in the Spanish–American War, Boxer Rebellion, Philippine–American War, and World War I. He gained distinction in 1909 for his relief work in Italy after the 1908 Messina earthquake and tsunami and for his work in command of the first offensive mining campaign in U.S. Navy history, the laying of the North Sea Mine Barrage in 1918. He was also a published author, an inventor, a member of many professional and social organizations, and an active member of the Episcopal Church, and he played a role in the selection of Amelia Earhart as the first female pilot to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Early life Belknap was born in Malden, Massachusetts, on 26 June 1871, the son of U.S. Navy Commander (later Rear Admiral) George E. Belknap and the former Frances Georgiana Prescott.Hamerlsy, pp. 314–315.Cherpak, pp. 5, 8.Nicholson, p. 3.

Naval career

Early career Belknap was appointed to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, from the 1st Congressional District of Arkansas by United States Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney. He entered the academy as a naval cadet on 5 September 1887 and graduated with distinction on 5 June 1891. His first assignment was to the protected cruiser , the flagship of Rear Admiral John Grimes Walker, in both the North Atlantic Squadron and the South Atlantic Squadron between 10 June 1891 and 30 April 1893. He was promoted to ensign on 1 July 1893.

From 31 July 1893 to 4 December 1894, Belknap served aboard the flagship of the Asiatic Squadron, the protected cruiser . After spending the winter of 1894–1895 at Tientsin, China, Belknap was attached to the Asiatic Squadron gunboat and, with the commander of the United States Marine Corps detachment from Baltimore, Captain George F. Elliott, was assigned to the American Legation at Peking, China, from 6 December 1894 to 17 May 1895. From 22 May 1895 to 27 July 1896 he was a watch officer aboard the gunboat , after which he commanded Yorktowns Marine detachment at the American Legation at Seoul, Korea, from 12 May to 17 July 1896.Hamerlsy, p. 315.

Returning to the United States, Belknap was on the staff of the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, from 1 October 1896 to 5 October 1897, the day the new gunboat was commissioned. He reported for duty aboard Newport that day. Newport then undertook hydrographic studies of Greytown Harbor and Roads in Nicaragua in support of the work of the Nicaragua Canal Commission.

Spanish–American War On 2 April 1898, Newport joined the North Atlantic Squadron in anticipation of war breaking out with Spain. When the Spanish–American War began on 25 April 1898, Newport was assigned to blockade duty at Mariel on the north coast of Cuba with Belknap aboard.

On 14 May 1898, Belknap became the secretary on the personal staff of Commodore George C. Remey, commander of the naval base at Key West, Florida. He remained on this duty through the end of the war in August 1898, successively aboard the monitor , the auxiliary cruiser , the gunboat , and the sloop-of-war as each ship served as Remeys flagship. The naval base moved to Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 18 August 1898 and was disbanded on 25 August 1898.

1898–1900 Belknap next served on the gunboat from 19 to 29 September 1898 and on the battleship from 1 October 1898 to 13 January 1899. From 16 January to 31 October 1899, he was aboard the auxiliary cruiser , cruising along the United States West Coast and to the Falkland Islands and Samoa, where she carried the Joint High Commission of the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. He was promoted to lieutenant, junior grade, on 3 March 1899 while aboard Badger. His next tour was aboard the gunboat from 1 November 1899 to 10 March 1900, during which she made a surveying cruise.

Asiatic Squadron From 1 April 1900 until 1901, Belknap had a second tour on the staff of George C. Remey—by now a rear admiral and the commander of the Asiatic Squadron—serving as aide with the duties of secretary aboard Remeys flagship, the armored cruiser . During this tour, he took part in the Philippine–American War, served off the Taku Forts during operations in China in the summer of 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion, was promoted to lieutenant on 2 July 1900, and visited New Zealand and Australia on the occasion of the opening of Australias First Commonwealth Parliament by The Prince George and Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, in May 1901.Venzon, p. 72.

1902–1917 From 1902 to 1904, Belknap had duty in the Navys Bureau of Navigation. He served aboard the battleship from 1904 to 1905, and from 1905 to 1906 he was navigator and later executive officer of the battleship . He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 8 July 1905.Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS): Commanders-in-Chief Biographies: Rear Admiral Reginald Rowan Belknap, Commander-in-Chief October 15, 1947 to October 9, 1951 states "Bureau of the Navigation of the Navy Department 1902–1904, battleship USS Maine, Lieutenant-Commander July 8, 1905, Navigator of the battleship USS Kearsarge and Executive Officer in 1906" in its biography of Belknap. Other sources (noted at the end of this paragraph) do not mention a Maine tour, but state that Belknap was aboard Kearsarge from 1905 to 1906 without mentioning his duties from 1904 to 1905. Apparently Belknap served aboard Maine in 1904–1905, although no other source corroborates a Maine tour and other sources state only a 1902–1904 Bureau of Navigation tour followed by a 1905–1906 Kearsarge tour, raising the possibility that he left the Bureau at the end of 1904 and reported aboard Kearsarge at the beginning of 1905 without an intervening Maine tour. From 1907 to 1910, he was the United States naval attaché to Germany at Berlin, and from 1908 to 1909 also was naval attaché to Italy at Rome and naval attaché to Austria-Hungary at Vienna. Following a devastating earthquake and tsunami at Messina, Italy, on 28 December 1908, he became the director of the American Red Cross relief ship effort that responded to the disaster and oversaw the construction of 16,000 homes at nine different locations in the vicinity of Messina and Reggio di Calabria. In 1910, he served as special ambassador and naval aide to former President Theodore Roosevelt at the funeral of King Edward VII in the United Kingdom.

From 1910 to 1911, Belknap was executive officer of the battleship , and he was promoted to commander in 1911. He was assistant to the chief of the Navys Bureau of Navigation from 1912 to 1913 and attended the Naval War College as a student from 1913 to 1914.

In 1914, Belknap was aboard the armored cruiser as a naval aide and then was assistant to the naval attaché at Berlin, serving as an observer of the first three months of World War I there from August to October 1914 before becoming commanding officer of the minelayer on 12 December 1914. Relinquishing command of San Francisco on 16 December 1915, he became commander of the United States Atlantic Fleets Mining and Minesweeping Division.NavSource Online: Cruiser Photo Archive: USS SAN FRANCISCO (C 5)/USS TAHOE (CM 2)/USS YOSEMITE (CM 2)Nicholson, p. 4.

Insurrection at Santiago de Cuba In early 1917, Belknap became involved in an insurrection in Oriente Province in Cuba, where supporters of the Liberal Party who opposed the 1916 reelection of the Conservative Partys Mario García Menocal as President of Cuba took control. Belknaps squadron was in the harbor at Santiago de Cuba and, as senior American naval officer there, Belknap attempted to negotiate a local settlement between the two sides to avoid the loss of life and damage to property in the city if open fighting were to break out there. After meetings aboard USS San Francisco, he succeeded in brokering an agreement on 1 March 1917 which the United States Government ratified the next day, but Menocals central government rejected the agreement and its troops advanced on Santiago de Cuba. On 7 March, Belknap decreed that Menocals forces would not be allowed to enter the city and, at the request of Liberal officials, sent 400 officers and men from his squadron ashore the next day to patrol the city. By mid-March, however, the compromise Belknap had brokered had collapsed, and the commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Henry Thomas Mayo, reprimanded him for exceeding his authority in demanding that Menocals forces not enter Santiago de Cuba. On 25 March, the Americans patrolling the city were withdrawn to their ships and Menocals troops took control of Santiago de Cuba, with Belknap lamenting that "our Government has made up its mind to let the Cuban Government put the insurrection down irregardless [sic] of losses as a good precedent. It will discourage other revolutions to have this one fail."Pérez, pp. 53–61. This source refers to Belknap as "Admiral Reginald Belknap" on p. 53, but Belknap did not attain the rank of rear admiral until 1927.

World War I

Belknap was still in command of the Mining and Minesweeping Division when the United States entered World War I in April 1917. He transferred to duty in the Plans Section of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations that year. In 1918, promoted to captain, he invented and patented a collapsible antisubmarine net and in the spring became commander of Mine Squadron One, which was tasked with laying the North Sea Mine Barrage, a primarily American effort to end use of the North Sea by German submarines as a transit route between Germany and the Atlantic Ocean by laying a dense minefield between the Orkney Islands and Norway. After taking command, Belknap organized and trained the squadron, which was made up of ten large ships capable of carrying a combined total of 6,000 naval mines.Melia, p. 33.NavSource Online: Cruiser Photo Archive USS BELKNAP (DLG/CG 26)

Under Belknaps command, Mine Squadron One deployed to its bases in Scotland at Inverness and Invergordon in May 1918. He personally commanded the activities of the squadron during its first foray into the North Sea on 2 June 1918, beginning the first offensive mining campaign in the history of the U.S. Navy and one of the largest U.S. Navy contributions to the Allied naval effort during the war. He commanded the squadron on nine more excursions, the last of them in the last week of October 1918, by which time it had laid 56,611 Mark 6 "antenna" mines in 13 groups, with each group consisting of rows of mines across set at three preset depths of between , covering an area of 6,000 square miles. The British Royal Navy also contributed, laying 16,652 additional mines along the flanks of the American minefield. The war ended on 11 November 1918 before Mine Squadron One could finish a complete antisubmarine barrier, but the Barrage nonetheless is credited with sinking at least three German submarines and perhaps three more, as well as damaging three or four others. It also had a large psychological effect on German submarine crews, one of which mutinied when ordered to pass through the Barrage.Melia, pp. 33, 34.

In 1925, Admiral Henry Thomas Mayo, who had been the commander-in-chief of the Atlantic Fleet in 1918, said: "The Navy and our country owe to Captain Belknap a debt which can hardly be over-estimated; for it was the knowledge and experience acquired and the doctrine and methods established in the Mine Force under command of Commander [sic] Belknap that enabled the Navy to, first, fit out improvised by very efficient minelaying vessels and, second, to operate them under war conditions in a manner which brought commendation from all."

Later career