A sub, a monitor and a destroyer walk into a (dry) bar in Philly, 93 years ago today

Here we see a vintage Prohibition-era gathering that shows the old 3,300-ton Arkansas-class monitor-turned submarine tender USS Cheyenne (IX-4) (ex-Wyoming BM-10), inboard at left with the early S-class submarine USS S-12 (SS-117), while outboard at left is the Clemson-class four-piper destroyer USS Dale (DD-290).

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 55117

The display, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, 14 June 1926, was during the National Sesquicentennial (150th) exhibit there. The small boat and Sailor, in the foreground, are on life-saving service to protect exhibit visitors.

All three of these vessels would go on to an extremely mixed bag of service.

The youngest of the trio is the submarine S-12, which joined the fleet scarcely three years before this meeting in Philly. After spending most of her active career in the Panama Canal Zone, she would return to the…