Name/Title
USS Houston (CA 30) [Cover]Description
A hand drawn First Day Cover displaying the Alamo on a red, white , and blue star, on the state of Texas and "Centennial / 1936." Postmarked on June 6, 1936 aboard USS Houston with “TEXAS • CEN / FIRST DAY” in killers.Context
"The Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast" was a heavy cruiser of the Northampton class, launched at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, Newport News, Virginia, on September 7, 1929. The Houston was the flagship of the Asiatic Fleet when war with Japan began in 1941 and was reported sunk by the Japanese so many times during the early months of World War II that she was nicknamed the "Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast."
On February 27, 1942, the task force moved to intercept a gigantic Japanese invasion force believed to contain fifty to sixty transport and support ships, the carrier Ryujo, four heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, and numerous destroyers. Samuel Eliot Morison describes the battle as "Houston's great fight, the last half hour of it waged against overwhelming odds...one of the most gallant in American Naval annals." It began with a cryptic message received by the naval radio station on Corregidor in the Philippines at 11:30 P.M., February 28, 1942: "Enemy forces engaged." Nothing more was heard, and the fate of the Houston was not learned until some three years later, after the war. Hemmed in on all sides by a growing concentration of enemy ships, the Houston was sunk at 12:30 A.M., March 1, 1942. Of her crew of 1,015 officers and men, 655 were killed in action, drowned, or slaughtered, and 360 escaped ship and were captured. Seventy-five of those prisoners of war died, and 285 survived 3½ years in Japanese prison camps.