Original U.S. WWI USS Arizona Inscribed Book with Photo Kept by Sailor Serving Aboard Ship in Europe During World War I

Original Item. Only One Available. This is an interesting book titled “The Sketch Book”, but it is not a sketch book, instead it’s a collection of short stories to help a soldier or sailor pass the time. The book comes with a small 2 ¼ x 4 ¼” photo of a US Navy sailor next to some old ruins, likely in Europe or a Caribbean country.

The first page of the book, which has now broken away from the spine, is inscribed:

Christmas, 1918.
To
Dearest Mother & Dad,
From Bill.

Portland, England, 
On board the
U.S.S. Arizona

This doesn’t name the sailor with a last name, but it does denote that he served aboard the USS Arizona during World War I. There are no other inscriptions in the book, but this is certainly a great artifact from the early service of one of the most important ships in U.S. Naval history!

Comes ready for display.

Arizona left the yard on 3 April 1917, and three days later, the United States declared war on Germany. Assigned to Battleship Division 8 operating out of the York River, Arizona was employed only as a gunnery training ship for the crewmen on armed merchant vessels crossing the Atlantic in convoys. Shortly after the war began, eight of her 5-inch guns (the four guns farthest forward and the sternmost four guns) were removed to equip merchant ships. When the ship sailed near the wreck of the old San Marcos (ex-Texas), the wreck was sometimes used as a target for the 14-inch guns. Arizona rarely ventured into the ocean for fear of U-boats, and when she did, it was only in the company of other battleships and escort ships. Four coal-fired American dreadnoughts (it was easier to obtain coal than oil in the United Kingdom) were eventually sent across the Atlantic in December 1917 as Battleship Division Nine, but Arizona was not among them. Life for Arizona's crew was not all training, as the race-boat team from Arizona was able to win the Battenberg Cup in July 1918 by beating the team from Nevada by three lengths over the three-mile course.

The fighting ended on 11 November 1918 with an armistice. A week later, the ship left the United States for the United Kingdom, arriving on 30 November 1918. After two weeks berthed at Portland Harbor in Dorset, Arizona sailed for France. On 13 December 1918, Arizona joined nine battleships and twenty-eight destroyers escorting President Woodrow Wilson on the ocean liner George Washington into Brest for one day on Wilson's journey to the Paris Peace Conference. The ten battleships departed France the next day, taking less than two weeks to cross the Atlantic, and arrived in New York on 26 December to parades, celebrations, and a full naval review by Secretary Daniels. Arizona was the first in line and rendered a nineteen-gun salute to Daniels. Along with many of the other members of the recently returned fleet, she was anchored off New York City for the next several weeks and open to the public.