The
keel for
North Carolina was
laid down at the
Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard in
Newport News, Virginia, on 21 March 1905. She was
launched on 6 October 1906, and after completing
fitting-out, was
commissioned into the fleet on 7 May 1908. She thereafter began a
shakedown cruise along the eastern coast of the United States, down to the
Caribbean Sea. After returning to the United States, she embarked
President-elect William Howard Taft for a tour of the
Panama Canal, then still under construction. The voyage lasted from January to February 1909. Starting on 23 April,
North Carolina began a cruise in the
Mediterranean Sea to protect United States citizens from domestic unrest in the
Ottoman Empire. While in
Adana on 17 May, the ship sent a landing party ashore to render medical aid to sick and wounded Armenians who had been attacked in
an anti-Armenian massacre.
North Carolina also sent food, water, and other supplies to help the situation, before continuing her patrol in the eastern Mediterranean. She returned to the United States on 3 August. For the next eight years,
North Carolina conducted training exercises in the
Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean and visited other countries in the region to
show the flag. She represented the United States at Argentina's centennial celebration of its independence in May and June 1910, followed by Venezuela's centennial in June and July 1911. She carried the
United States Secretary of War,
Henry L. Stimson, on a tour of the Caribbean, stopping in
Puerto Rico,
Santo Domingo, Cuba, and the Panama Canal in July and August. At the conclusion of that trip, she returned to New York City with the remains of a sailor from the armored cruiser , which had been destroyed in 1898 in
Havana, Cuba. In October,
North Carolina underwent maintenance at
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard—during her stay, a team of her crew played against the
1911 New Hampshire football team in nearby
Durham, New Hampshire. The rest of her early career passed uneventfully. On 7 August 1914, as
World War I broke out in Europe,
North Carolina was sent on a patrol in the Mediterranean to protect then still neutral United States citizens in the region. She visited
Jaffa,
Beirut, and
Alexandria before returning to Boston on 18 June, where she underwent an overhaul. The ship thereafter went to
Pensacola, Florida, where she arrived on 9 September, to conduct experiments with naval aviation. She became the first ship to launch an aircraft using a
catapult while underway on 5 November; these tests led to the widespread use of aircraft catapults aboard
battleships and
cruisers through the 1940s. Following the United States' entry into World War I on 6 April 1917,
North Carolina was employed as an escort for
troop ships traveling between Norfolk and New York. Starting in December 1918, after the war had ended, she assisted in the repatriation of American soldiers from the
American Expeditionary Force; this effort lasted until July 1919. On 7 June 1920,
North Carolina was renamed
Charlotte so that her name could be used for a new
South Dakota-class battleship then under construction.
Charlotte remained in service only briefly under her new name before being decommissioned on 18 February 1921 at the
Puget Sound Navy Yard in
Bremerton, Washington. She was stricken from the
Naval Vessel Register on 15 July 1930 and was sold for
scrap on 29 September. ==Footnotes==