Hull Number: AD-37
Launch Date: 05/14/1966
Commissioned Date: 07/01/1967
Decommissioned Date: 10/25/1995
Call Sign: NATO
Namesake: SAMUEL GOMPERS
SAMUEL GOMPERS
Wikipedia (as of 2024)
Samuel Gompers (né Gumpertz; January 27, 1850 – December 13, 1924)[1] was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization’s president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining in order to secure shorter hours and higher wages, which he considered the essential first steps to emancipating labor.
He encouraged AFL member unions to take political action to “elect their friends” and “defeat their enemies”. In politics he mostly supported Democrats, and occasionally local Republicans. He led the opposition to immigration from China.[2] During World War I, Gompers and the AFL energetically supported the war effort, attempting to avert strikes and boost morale while raising wage rates and expanding membership. He strongly opposed the antiwar labor groups, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
Gompers was born Samuel Gumpertz on January 27, 1850, in Spitalfields, a working-class area in the East End of London into a Jewish family that originally hailed from Amsterdam.[3][4] He was the son of Sarah (Root) and Solomon Gumpertz, a cigar maker.[1][4][5] At age six, Samuel was sent to the Jewish Free School to receive a basic education. His education there was brief, however, and a mere three months after his tenth birthday Gompers was sent to work as an apprentice cigar maker and earn money for his impoverished family.[6]
Gompers continued his studies in night school, learning Hebrew and studying the Talmud—a process that he later likened to studying law.[7] While he appreciated Hebrew in his youth, he held Yiddish in low regard.[8]
Owing to dire financial straits, the Gompers family immigrated to the United States in 1863, settling in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Gompers’s father manufactured cigars at home, assisted for the first year and half by Samuel.[9] In his free time, the young teenager formed a debate club with his friends, gaining practical experience in public speaking and parliamentary procedure.[10] The club drew Gompers into contact with other upwardly mobile young men of the city, including young Irish-American Peter J. McGuire, who would later play a large role in the AFL.[10]
In 1864, at age 14, Gompers joined the Cigar Makers Local Union No. 15, the English-speaking union of cigar makers in New York City.[11] Gompers later recounted his days as a cigar maker at the bench in detail, emphasizing the place of craftsmanship in the production process:
“Any kind of an old loft served as a cigar shop. If there were enough windows, we had sufficient light for our work; if not, it was apparently no concern of the management. … Cigar shops were always dusty from the tobacco stems and powdered leaves. Benches and work tables were not designed to enable the workmen to adjust bodies and arms comfortably to [the] work surface. Each workman supplied his own cutting board of lignum vitae and knife blade. The tobacco leaf was prepared by strippers who drew the leaves from the heavy stem and put them into pads of about fifty. The leaves had to be handled carefully to prevent tearing. The craftsmanship of the cigarmaker was shown in his ability to utilize wrappers to the best advantage to shave off the unusable to a hairbreadth, to roll so as to cover holes in the leaf and to use both hands so as to make a perfectly shaped and rolled product. These things a good cigarmaker learned to do more or less mechanically, which left us free to think, talk, listen, or sing. I loved the freedom of that work, for I had earned the mind-freedom that accompanied skill as a craftsman. I was eager to learn from discussion and reading or to pour out my feelings in song.”[12]
The day after his seventeenth birthday he married his co-worker, sixteen-year-old Sophia Julian.[13] Together they had many children, but only six survived infancy.
In 1873, Gompers moved to the cigar maker David Hirsch & Company, a “high-class shop where only the most skilled workmen were employed”.[14] Gompers later called this change of employers “one of the most important changes in my life”, for at Hirsch’s—a union shop operated by an émigré German socialist—Gompers came into contact with an array of German-speaking cigar makers—”men of keener mentality and wider thought than any I had met before”, he recalled.[15] Gompers learned German and absorbed many of the ideas of his shop mates, developing a particular admiration for the ideas of the former secretary of the International Workingmen’s Association, Karl Laurrell.[16] Laurrell took Gompers under his wing, challenging his more simplistic ideas and urging Gompers to put his faith in the organized economic movement of trade unionism rather than the socialist political movement.
Gompers later recalled:
I remember asking Laurrell whether in his opinion I ought to keep in touch with the Socialist movement. He replied, ‘Go to their meetings by all means, listen to what they have to say and understand them, but do not join the Party.’ I never did, though it was my habit to attend their Saturday evening meetings. There were often good speakers present and the discussions were stimulating. Time and again, under the lure of new ideas, I went to Laurrell with glowing enthusiasm. Laurrell would gently say, ‘Study your union card, Sam, and if the idea doesn’t square with that, it ain’t true.’ My trade union card came to be my standard in all new problems.[17]
Gompers complained that the socialist movement had been captured by Lassallean advocates of “political party action” rather than the “militant economic program of Marx”.[18] He warned delegates to the 1900 annual convention that when men became enthusiastic about socialism, “they usually lost interest in their union”.[19]
Gompers was elected president of Cigar Makers’ International Union Local 144 in 1875.
As was the case with other unions of the day, the Cigar Maker’s Union nearly collapsed in the financial crisis of 1873–77, in which unemployment skyrocketed and ready availability of desperate workers willing to labor for subsistence wages put pressure upon the gains in wages and the shortening of hours achieved in union shops. Gompers and his friend Adolph Strasser used Local 144 as a base to rebuild the Cigar Makers’ Union, introducing a high dues structure and implementing programs to pay out-of-work benefits, sick benefits, and death benefits for union members in good standing.
Gompers told the workers they needed to organize because wage reductions were almost a daily occurrence. He believed that the capitalists were only interested in profits, “and the time has come when we must assert our rights as workingmen. Every one present has the sad experience, that we are powerless in an isolated condition, while the capitalists are united; therefore, it is the duty of every Cigar Maker to join the organization”. “One of the main objects of the organization”, he concluded, “is the elevation of the lowest paid worker to the standard of the highest, and in time we may secure for every person in the trade an existence worthy of human beings.”[20]
He was elected second vice president of the Cigar Makers’ International Union in 1886 when he was 36 and first vice president in 1896. Despite the commitment of time and energy entailed by his place as head of the American Federation of Labor, Gompers remained first vice president of the Cigar Makers until his death in December 1924.
Gompers helped found the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881 as a coalition of like-minded unions. In 1886 it reorganized into the American Federation of Labor, with Gompers as president. With the exception of the year 1895, he would remain president of the organization until his death. In 1894 he became editor of the Federation’s publication, The American Federationist.[21]
Under Gompers’s tutelage, the AFL coalition gradually gained strength, undermining the position previously held by the Knights of Labor, which as a result, had almost vanished by 1900. He was nearly jailed in 1911 for publishing, with John Mitchell, a boycott list, but in 1914 the Supreme Court overturned the sentence in Gompers v. Buck’s Stove and Range Co..[22]
Gompers, who had ties with the Cuban cigar workers in the U.S., called for American intervention in Cuba; he supported the resulting war with Spain in 1898. After the war, however, he joined the Anti-Imperialist League to oppose President William McKinley‘s plan to annex the Philippines. Mandel (1963) argues that his anti-imperialism was based on opportunistic fears of threats to labor’s status from low-paid offshore workers and was founded on a sense of racial superiority to the peoples of the Philippines.[23]
By the 1890s, Gompers was planning an international federation of labor, starting with the expansion of AFL affiliates in Canada, especially Ontario. He helped the Canadian Trades and Labour Congress with money and organizers, and by 1902, the AFL dominated the Canadian union movement.[24]
Gompers, like most labor leaders, opposed unrestricted immigration from Europe because of the fear that it might lower wages of domestic union workers. He strongly opposed all immigration from Asia because it lowered wages and, in his judgement, represented an alien culture that could not be assimilated easily into that of the U.S.[25] Gompers bragged that the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU), later renamed the American Federation of Labor (AFL), “was the first national organization which demanded the exclusion of coolies from the United States”.[26] He and the AFL strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned the immigration of Chinese, and published a pamphlet entitled “Some reasons for Chinese exclusion. Meat vs. Rice. American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism. Which shall survive?” in 1901.[27] The AFL was instrumental in passing immigration restriction laws from the 1890s to the 1920s, such as the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the Immigration Act of 1924 signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge. At least one study concludes that the link between the AFL and the Democratic Party rested in large part on immigration issues, as the owners of large corporations wanted more immigration for cheaper labor and thus supported the Republican Party.[28] Other scholars have seriously questioned this conclusion, arguing it oversimplifies the politics and unity of labor leaders and the major parties. As one reviewer argued in The Journal of American History, major Republican leaders, such as President William McKinley and Senator Mark Hanna, made pro-labor statements, many unions supported their own independent labor parties (or the Socialist Party), and unity within the AFL was never so extensive as claimed.[29]
During World War I Gompers was a strong supporter of the war effort. He was appointed by President Wilson to the Council of National Defense, where he chaired the Labor Advisory Board. He was also elected president of the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, which was organized to suppress anti-war propaganda among workers.[22] He attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as an official advisor on labor issues.[30] He was appointed chairman of the Commission on International Labour Legislation,[22] whose recommendations for a workers’ rights charter were incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles.[31]
In addition to his work with the Commission on International Labour Legislation, Gompers was chairman of the US labor delegates at the International Federation of Trade Unions initial conference in Amsterdam, in July, 1919.[22]
Despite his support for the war, he later supported amnesty for political prisoners who were convicted under Wartime Emergency Acts.[32] He worked with Lucy Robins Lang, who became the executive secretary of the amnesty committee.[33] Lang and Gompers also became friends.[32]
During a severe period of national economic recession in the early 1890s, labor unrest was at its height. A volatile situation in Chicago in August 1893 caused the city’s then mayor, Carter Henry Harrison, to warn that the preponderance of the unemployed would lead to riots that would “shake the country”, unless Congress interceded. In late August 1893, Gompers addressed 25,000 unemployed workers who had massed on the shore of Lake Michigan. As reported in the Chicago Tribune on August 31, Gompers inveighed against the controllers of capital and the titans of industry and finance. “Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it on riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots?”[34] Workers were also consumers, he asserted, and cuts to their wages would hurt not only their personal well-being but the economy as a whole. “When workers’ wages are reduced, they necessarily use less, consume less, because of their reduced purchasing power”, he wrote. “Only those who ignorantly or grabbingly believe in their avarice that business can prosper with wage reductions have yet to learn the lesson of industrial life and progress.”[35]
Gompers began his labor career familiar with, and sympathetic to, Georgism[36] and the precepts of socialism,[37] but gradually adopted a more conservative approach to labor relations. Labor Historian Melvyn Dubofsky has written, “By 1896 Gompers and the AFL were moving to make their peace with Capitalism and the American system … Although the AFL had once preached the inevitability of class conflict and the need to abolish ‘wage slavery‘, it slowly and almost imperceptibly began to proclaim the virtues of class harmony and the possibilities of a more benevolent Capitalism.”[38] For example, Alex Heron attributes the following quote to Gompers: “The greatest crime an employer can perpetrate on his employees is to fail to operate at a profit”.[39] Gompers began to take a neutral stance in politics after the failure of the efforts to elect Henry George as mayor of New York, but Gompers remained a Single Tax Georgist later in life.[36]
Gompers’ philosophy of labor unions centered on economic ends for workers, such as higher wages, shorter hours, and safe working conditions so that they could enjoy an “American” standard of living—a decent home, decent food and clothing, and money enough to educate their children.[40] He thought economic organization was the most direct way to achieve these improvements, but he did encourage union members to participate in politics and to vote with their economic interests in mind.
Gompers’ trade union philosophy and his devotion to collective bargaining with business proved to be too conservative for more radical leaders, such as Ed Boyce, president of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), and, later, WFM secretary-treasurer Bill Haywood. In 1905, Haywood and the WFM helped to establish the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members were known as Wobblies, with the goal of organizing the entire working class. The IWW’s long-term goal was to supplant capitalism with a workers’ commonwealth.[41] Nonetheless, when government abuses against the leaders of the WFM seemed too egregious, Gompers relented and offered assistance.[42]
Gompers and his AFL unions vigorously fought the IWW in the U.S. and in Latin America, viewing them as a disruptive dual union that tried harder to destroy capitalism than to help workers. He cooperated with widespread government arrests of union leaders for the IWW’s militant opposition to the World War. He said, “the IWW’s … are exactly what the Bolsheviki are in Russia, and we have seen what the IWW Bolsheviki in Russia have done for the working people.”[43]
Gompers led the anti-Socialist faction inside the AFL, losing to Socialists only once, in 1894. He argued that socialists believed workers and unions could never co-exist with business interests and wanted to use the labor unions to advance their more radical political causes. By 1920 Gompers had largely marginalized Socialist influence to a few unions, notably coal miners and the needle trades.[44][45]
Gompers was a leading Freemason, reaching the 32º in the Scottish Rite Valley of Washington D.C. in 1906. In 1920 he wrote, “In my Masonic life, I have visited lodges in many lands, and I have learned that Freemasonry in many countries, particularly in Latin countries, is the principal means whereby freedom of conscience, of thought, and expression is preserved.”[46]
Gompers’s health went into serious decline starting in February 1923, when a serious bout of influenza sent him to the hospital, sidelining him from work for six weeks.[47] No sooner had he recovered from the influenza, than he was stricken by a case of bronchitis that laid him low again.[47] By June 1924 Gompers, who suffered from diabetes, could no longer walk without assistance, and he was hospitalized again, this time suffering from congestive heart failure and uremia.[47]
He collapsed in Mexico City on Saturday, December 6, 1924, while attending a meeting of the Pan-American Federation of Labor. It was recognized that his condition was critical and that he might not survive for long. Gompers expressed the desire to die on American soil and he was placed aboard a special train that sped toward the border.[48] He died in San Antonio, Texas. Gompers was buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Gompers is buried only a few yards away from industrialist Andrew Carnegie, another important figure of industry in the Gilded Age.[49]
Gompers inspired later generations of labor leaders, such as George Meany, who paid tribute to Gompers as a European immigrant who pioneered a distinctly American brand of unionism.[50] Reuben Soderstrom, president of the Illinois State Federation of Labor and the Illinois AFL-CIO from 1930 to 1970, cited his 1923 encounter with Gompers as particularly formative. Gompers chided Soderstrom after the latter expressed frustration with the slow pace of progress being made in a local strike, telling him “Young man, you know you can climb the highest mountain if you’ve got the patience to do it one step at a time.” Reuben never forgot those words, stating decades later “that philosophy had a lot to do with guiding the activities I’ve been engaged in.”[51]
His belief led to the development of procedures for collective bargaining and contracts between labor and management that remain in use today. In practice, AFL unions were important in industrial cities, where they formed a central labor office to coordinate the actions of different AFL unions. Issues of wages and hours were the usual causes of strikes, but many strikes were assertions of jurisdiction, so that the plumbers, for example, used strikes to ensure that all major construction projects in the city used union plumbers. In this goal they were ideally supported by all the other construction unions in the AFL fold.[52]
Gompers is the subject of statuary in several major American cities. A bronze monument honoring Gompers by the sculptor Robert Aitken is in Gompers Square on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. On September 3, 2007, a life-size statue of Gompers was unveiled at Gompers Park, named after the labor leader in 1929, on the northwest side of Chicago. This is the first statue of a labor leader in Chicago. Local unions throughout Chicago donated their time and money to build the monument.[53] A U.S. Navy destroyer tender was named for Gompers. The Samuel Gompers Houses, a public housing development on the Lower East Side of New York, is named in his honor.[54][55] There are schools named for Gompers in Philadelphia, Madison, Wisconsin, San Diego, Phoenix, Arizona and The Bronx, New York, a school in Chicago renamed to Jesse Owens Community Elementary, and a school in Detroit.[56][57][58]
On 27 January 1950, the centennial of Gompers’s birth, the U. S. Post Office Department issued a 3¢ commemorative postage stamp in the Famous Americans series with his picture.[59] Gompers enjoyed listening to the services of the Episcopal National Cathedral which memorialized him on a stained glass window.[60][61]
Disposition:
On 2 October 1995 Samuel Gompers arrived in Norfolk, Virginia in preparation for decommissioning ceremonies, which took place 27 October. The principal speaker was Rear Admiral James F. Amerault, Commander, Western Hemisphere Group, and a former Samuel Gompers skipper. The ship had completed 28 years of active service by then, being awarded the Vietnam Service, Southwest Asia, Navy Expeditionary, and Humanitarian Service medals; Navy Unit and Joint Meritorious Unit commendations; Letter of Commendation from the Secretary of the Navy; and five Battle "E" Ribbons. USS Samuel Gompers Article Talk Read Edit View history Tools Appearance hide Text Small Standard Large Width Standard Wide Color (beta) Automatic Light Dark Coordinates: 31°17′N 73°51′W From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia USS Samuel Gompers History United States Name USS Samuel Gompers Operator U.S. Navy Awarded 31 October 1963 Builder Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington Laid down 7 September 1964 Launched 14 May 1966 Acquired 30 September 1967 Commissioned 1 July 1967 Decommissioned 27 October 1995 Stricken 7 April 1999 Homeport Alameda, California Motto Service Supreme Nickname(s) FAT Sam, Sammy G Fate Sunk as target, 22 July 2003 General characteristics Class and type Samuel Gompers-class destroyer tender Displacement 13,458 long tons (13,674 t) light 20,132 long tons (20,455 t) full load Length 645 ft (197 m) Beam 85 ft (26 m) Draft 22 ft 6 in (6.86 m) Propulsion Steam turbines, 1 shaft Speed 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) Complement 1056 officers and enlisted Armament 2 20 mm cannon 4 0.5 in (12.7 mm) machine guns USS Samuel Gompers (AD-37) was a destroyer tender, the first of her class, and designed to be a floating repair shop for ships of the U.S. Navy either in port or at sea. The vessel was named for Samuel Gompers, a distinguished American labor leader during the late nineteenth century. Samuel Gompers was laid down on 9 July 1964 by the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington and launched on 14 May 1966; sponsored by Mrs. Joseph Holmes. The destroyer tender was commissioned on 1 July 1967. Service history 1967–1969 After her commissioning, Samuel Gompers spent the next several months in initial outfitting, with acceptance trials taking place from 28 August to 1 September. On 3 October, she got underway for her designated home port, San Diego. The next month, the destroyer tender underwent various inspections as she was to be deployed to the western Pacific without the benefit of a prior shakedown cruise. This necessitated that a high degree of readiness be attained in a short period of time. All inspections showed that the ship was ready for sea, and she departed San Diego on 10 November for Pearl Harbor. Following a weapons transfer from Prairie, Samuel Gompers stood out of Pearl Harbor on 20 November bound for Yokosuka, Japan. Upon arriving there on 30 November 1967, she began providing fleet repair support to the operating forces of the Pacific Fleet. In the first month of availability, her repair department accomplished job orders for 54 different ships and other activities. Samuel Gompers departed Yokosuka for Sasebo on 13 January 1968. Her "in port" period there was originally scheduled on 25 January. However, the capture of USS Pueblo by North Korea brought increased activity by the Pacific Fleet in the Sea of Japan as part of Operation Formation Star. The destroyer tender's services were required to maintain the destroyer screen for the five aircraft carriers then alternating port visits to Sasebo. Seventy-one ships were serviced there before the AD departed. On 18 March, Samuel Gompers sailed to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, for three weeks. She anchored in mid-stream and serviced 17 ships before departing for Hong Kong, B.C.C.; Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines; and San Diego. Her first deployment ended on 8 May when she arrived at her home port. One month later, she moved to Bremerton for a period of yard availability. She embarked over 200 dependents to make the voyage up the west coast. On 27 July, Samuel Gompers stood out of Bremerton, with the dependents aboard, and returned to San Diego. From 30 July to 15 November, she serviced ships there. On 15 November, the tender departed San Diego, with Task Unit (TU) 15.8.2, bound for Subic Bay, via Pearl Harbor and Guam, and her second WestPac deployment. The Task Unit included the destroyers Hopewell, Swenson, Duncan and destroyer leader Coontz. She provided underway replenishment for the accompanying ships three times during the transit, including hi-lining a seaman from Swenson for an emergency operation on Thanksgiving Day, 28 November. From 8 December 1968 to 13 May 1969, she performed fleet repair services in Subic Bay. Capt. Risch was relieved by Captain Claiborne S. Bradley on 3 January 1969. The period was broken by one five-day visit to Hong Kong. On 13 May, the AD sailed to Yokosuka for a short period of rest and recreation, from whence she sailed to the west coast, arriving on 4 June. 1970–1973 Samuel Gompers operated in the San Diego area until 13 March 1970 when she again deployed to the western Pacific, under command of her executive officer, Commander Pete Watson, while Capt. Bradley was on emergency leave. After making a port call at Pearl Harbor, she moored at Subic Bay. Except for five days rest and recreation in Hong Kong in June, with 164 Navy dependents from Subic Bay, the tender operated out of that port until 7 July 1970 when she sailed for Yokosuka, Japan, arriving 10 July. The ship's second change of command took place on 1 August 1970 when Captain Daniel L. Banks relieved Captain Bradley. She departed Japan and arrived in San Diego on 13 September 1970. She remained there until 2 November 1971 when she steamed west on another deployment. She made port calls in Pearl Harbor and Yokosuka. During her next nine-month deployment period, Samuel Gompers made two trips to Da Nang, South Vietnam, from 9 to 16 April; and from 22 to 30 April. During her deployment she picked up the nickname "FATSAM" for Fast Attack Tender, Samuel Gompers. When she reached her home port on 31 July, she remained there to provide repair services to fleet units until mid-July 1973. At this time, she moved up the coast to Portland, Oregon, entering a dry dock period at Swan Island Shipyard and was in dry dock having significant modifications to service areas far below the waterline. Boiler and fuel system modifications took place at this time. She was converted from burning Navy Bunker C, black oil to Naval Distillate fuel. Flooring in the mess decks and most crew heads was updated. She was reported to be the largest vessel ever to cruise up the Columbia River. A large metal hinge had to be welded to the top few feet of the mast and then the mast was cut and tipped down to allow passage under one of the bridges encountered along her Columbia River passage. Samuel Gompers remained there until returning to San Diego in early December. In 1972 the ship was deployed to Da Nang Harbor. The ship carried very few large weapons, which left her constantly vulnerable to enemy attack. In that deployment the ship was nicknamed "FAT Sam", a humorous suggestion that she was a "Fast Attack Tender."[citation needed] Female crewmembers In October 1978, while in San Diego, Samuel Gompers took women on board as crew members for the first time; one of the first ships in the fleet to do so. In the next few years, all destroyer tenders, and all non-combative auxiliaries, would have women aboard. Combat ships other than submarines would follow suit beginning in the 1990s. 1984–1988 During WestPac 1984, Samuel Gompers would score another first: it became the first ship to do a major engine changeout while deployed, and not in port. The service was provided to the Spruance-class destroyer Kinkaid while both were anchored together off the coast of Oman in the Indian Ocean. Just a few months after this WestPac ended, the ties with San Diego ended, and Samuel Gompers docked at her new homeport of Alameda, California. The destroyer tender sailed for WESTPAC on 17Jul1986 and returned on 17Jan1987. The destroyer tender deployed on another WESTPAC in January 1988. Samuel Gompers stayed in the Gulf of Oman from March 1988 until late June 1988 supporting Operation Ernest Will and Operation Praying Mantis before returning to her home port. Decommissioning and awards On 2 October 1995 Samuel Gompers arrived in Norfolk, Virginia in preparation for decommissioning ceremonies, which took place 27 October. The principal speaker was Rear Admiral James F. Amerault, Commander, Western Hemisphere Group, and a former Samuel Gompers skipper. The ship had completed 28 years of active service by then, being awarded the Vietnam Service, Southwest Asia, Navy Expeditionary, and Humanitarian Service medals; Navy Unit and Joint Meritorious Unit commendations; Letter of Commendation from the Secretary of the Navy; and five Battle "E" Ribbons. Sinking On 22 July 2003, Samuel Gompers was sunk in the Atlantic as part of a fleet training exercise (SINKEX). EX-Samuel Gompers departed Portsmouth at 08:30 on 18 July 2003 under tow of USNS Apache en route to her SINKEX position. Three ships were sent to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Carolina: destroyer tender Samuel Gompers, fleet tug Seneca and submarine tender Dixon. Of the three ships, Samuel Gompers was the last to be sunk, and slipped beneath the waves at 00:06 on 22 July 2003. The first Harpoon missile to strike Samuel Gompers was from the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole, designation Cole 4. Reports indicate it took 16 Harpoon missiles (400 lb (180 kg) each) and over 40,000 pounds (18,000 kg) of ordnance to sink Samuel Gompers. When the Harpoons finished, a squadron of bombers dropped 2,000-pound (910 kg) bombs on her to sink her.[citation needed] The wreck of Samuel Gompers is reported to lie at 31°17′N 073°51′W.