Appalachian Figures
If you stand on the hill at Williamsburg and look toward the campus of the University of the Cumberlands, it can be hard to imagine that one of the U.S. Navy’s early carrier admirals began his life here. Yet the Navy’s own biographical files and memorial records list Vice Admiral Charles Adams Blakely as born at Williamsburg, Whitley County, Kentucky, on 1 October 1879, later serving long enough to retire with three stars after the rise of naval aviation and the coming of World War II.
For most of his career he signed his name “Blakely,” without the final “e,” even as the destroyer escort later named in his honor paired him with Johnston Blakeley, the War of 1812 privateer captain whose surname followed a different spelling. A modern U.S. Naval Institute article on that earlier Blakeley points out that the admiral’s claim to be the older captain’s nephew cannot be supported by the documented Blakeley family line. The tension between family story and archival record will feel familiar to anyone who has worked with Appalachian genealogies.
Family, school, and the 2nd Kentucky Volunteers
Genealogical compilations and family-history sites agree that Charles was born in Williamsburg to John Blakely and Susan (often listed as Sue Amelda or Susan S.) Blakely, part of a wider Blakely / Blakley clan that appears in early Whitley County settler lists. He grew up in a small county seat town built around the Cumberland River, the courthouse square, and denominational schools that would eventually evolve into Cumberland College and the modern University of the Cumberlands.
By the mid 1890s he was a student at Williamsburg Academy, a preparatory institution associated with what was then Cumberland College. The Navy’s modern biographical file places his graduation from Williamsburg Academy in 1897. University of the Cumberlands’ own alumni publications later remembered “Admiral Charles A. Blakely, 1900” among notable early students, linking him explicitly to the Williamsburg institution that now stands at the heart of town.
When the Spanish–American War came in 1898, the nineteen year old Kentuckian followed a path common to many mountain boys of his generation. Both the Navy’s biographical file and later compilers note that he enlisted in the 2nd Kentucky Volunteer Infantry that summer, briefly serving as a soldier before his long naval career. For Whitley County this meant that one of the boys who drilled in local fields and fairgrounds would not come home to farm, teach, or preach. Instead he went on to Annapolis.
From Williamsburg Academy to Annapolis
After his short volunteer service, Blakely received an appointment as a naval cadet and entered the United States Naval Academy in September 1899. The Annual Register of the Naval Academy for the early 1900s lists “Blakely, Charles A.” among the midshipmen, confirmation in a contemporary government publication that a young man from Williamsburg had made it into the Navy’s small pipeline for officers.
He graduated from Annapolis on 2 February 1903, served the customary two years at sea as a passed naval cadet, and was commissioned an ensign in 1905. Early duty took him through a string of surface ships that reflected the late nineteenth century fleet. The standard Navy biography and later ship histories record his service in the old sail frigate Santee, the protected cruisers Baltimore, Cleveland, and Denver, and the presidential yacht Mayflower.
By his late twenties he had already commanded two small fighting ships, the torpedo boat Thornton and the destroyer Macdonough, and had run the machinist school at the Charleston Navy Yard. For a boy who had started at Williamsburg Academy, the path from river town to steel decks had been remarkably fast.
Torpedo flotillas and a world on the brink
Between June 1911 and October 1914 Blakely was entrusted with a composite command that pointed toward his future. Navy histories of the torpedo boat Blakely and the protected cruiser Atlanta note that Captain Charles A. Blakely simultaneously commanded the Reserve Torpedo Flotillas and Atlanta, a job that required juggling small, fast craft and an older cruiser.
He then spent two years at the New York Navy Yard as the world slid toward war, before taking command of the new destroyer Rowan (DD-64). When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the Navy sent him and his ship into the North Atlantic submarine campaign that would define his reputation.
The Queenstown Patrol and a destroyer captain in war
By late 1916 Blakely had assumed command of the destroyer O’Brien (DD-51). Soon after America entered the war, O’Brien steamed to Queenstown, Ireland, to join the American destroyer squadron operating from that British base. An official World War I narrative on the “Queenstown Patrol” lists O’Brien among the destroyers assigned there and identifies Lieutenant Commander Charles A. Blakely as her commanding officer in Irish waters.
On 16 June 1917 O’Brien made contact with a German submarine. Later analysis by the Naval History and Heritage Command and a World War I “H-Gram” notes that the destroyer dropped depth charges, slightly damaging the U-boat and forcing it to break off its attack. The action helped build confidence in an escort system that was still experimental and dangerous.
For his leadership in what the Navy called the “important, exacting, and hazardous duty” of patrolling convoy routes “infested with enemy submarines and mines,” Blakely received the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. British records show that he was also awarded the Distinguished Service Order by the United Kingdom, reflecting the close cooperation between American and British destroyer forces.
In Appalachian terms it meant that a man from Williamsburg found himself fighting U-boats off Ireland, responsible for the lives of more than a hundred sailors and thousands of soldiers and merchant seamen who depended on safe passage.
Between wars: staff work and destroyer squadrons
The armistice did not send him home. Instead Blakely went to Washington to serve in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, part of the small staff that tried to digest lessons from the war.
By the early 1920s Navy directories and official registers list him in a series of influential billets. A 1923 Navy directory places “Blakely, Charles A., comdr” at the naval ammunition depot at Lake Denmark, New Jersey, as inspector of ordnance. The 1927 Navy directory lists “Capt. C. A. Blakely” as commander of destroyer squadrons, Asiatic Fleet, his staff embarked in the tender Black Hawk while the U.S. watched upheavals in China.
The 1930 Official Register of the United States shows “Capt. C. A. Blakely” on the staff of the Bureau of Navigation, the personnel bureau that managed officers’ careers, a reminder that by mid-career he was as much a manager of the fleet’s human system as a ship captain.
Learning to fly at midlife
Blakely’s story diverges from many contemporaries in the mid 1930s. Rather than finishing his career strictly as a surface-ship officer, he embraced aviation. The standard biographical sketch notes that after completing the senior course at the Naval War College in 1934, he went to Pensacola for additional flight training and, on 10 March 1936, at age fifty four, earned his designation as a naval aviator.
The Navy Log maintained by the U.S. Navy Memorial likewise lists his specialty as “Naval Aviator” and records his later role as commanding officer of Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. Secondary biographies of later admirals such as Hugh H. Goodwin remember him as the base commandant whose staff trained many future carrier officers.
For a Whitley County audience, it is worth pausing here. A man who started in a small mountain academy not only learned to fly in middle age but ran what was effectively the Navy’s main flight school on the eve of World War II.
Lexington and the fleet problems
Before Pensacola, Blakely had already stepped into the carrier world. Both Wikipedia and the Naval History and Heritage Command’s ship history for Lexington identify him as commanding officer of the aircraft carrier Lexington (CV-2) during the early 1930s.
A later master’s thesis on “United States Navy Fleet Problems and the Development of Carrier Aviation, 1929–1933” describes how Lexington and Saratoga became central to the Navy’s annual large-scale exercises. In those fleet problems, carrier air groups practiced surprise strikes on the Panama Canal and on Pearl Harbor and tested whether fast carriers could operate independently from the slower battle line.
Blakely’s performance as captain shows up in after-action critiques and official reports preserved on National Archives microfilm. Those documents, cited extensively in the thesis, depict a cautious but capable commander who sometimes differed with harder charging aviation advocates over how aggressively to risk his ship in simulated attacks. The archival record confirms that a Kentuckian stood at the center of the Navy’s first real experiments in carrier warfare.
Vice admiral of carriers and aircraft
After Pensacola, Blakely moved rapidly into higher aviation command. The Navy Log summarizes his significant duty stations as commanding officer of Lexington, commanding officer of NAS Pensacola, commander of Carrier Division Two, commander of Aircraft, Scouting Force, and finally commander of Aircraft, Battle Force, all before he took over the Eleventh Naval District.
By 1939 he had been promoted to vice admiral and was flying his flag in the new carrier Yorktown (CV-5), leading the Aircraft, Battle Force in Pacific Fleet exercises. The Official Chronology of the U.S. Navy in World War II, compiled from wartime records, notes that on 13 June 1940 at Lahaina Roads, Maui, Rear Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. relieved Vice Admiral Charles A. Blakely as Commander, Aircraft, Battle Force, receiving a temporary promotion to vice admiral at the same time.
On paper this was a routine change of command. In hindsight it marked a generational handoff. A son of Appalachian Kentucky had helped pioneer carrier operations; a younger aviator, Halsey, would take those skills into a coming war.
The Eleventh Naval District and a West Coast at war
In June 1940 Blakely received his last major active duty assignment. The Navy’s official chronology records that he relieved Rear Admiral Joseph R. Defrees as Commandant, Eleventh Naval District, and Commandant, Naval Operating Base, San Diego, California. The Navy Log repeats the role and lists it among his signature commands.
From this post he oversaw naval activities across a wide swath of the Southwest, including North Island, the destroyer and submarine bases, depots, and communications stations. Time magazine’s 1940 article “The Navy Gets Tough” quoted “Rear Admiral Charles A. Blakely” during a labor dispute over shipyard work in San Diego, presenting him as a firm voice arguing that national defense needs would not bow to strikes at key naval facilities.
Local San Diego histories show another side of his wartime role. A city history covering 1940 to 1970 notes that Blakely worked closely with civic leaders to push for road improvements such as Harbor Drive in order to untangle wartime traffic around bases and shipyards. The same narrative describes 7 December 1941 from the San Diego perspective and records that the Eleventh Naval District headquarters under Blakely coordinated Army, Navy, and Marine Corps defenses along the Southern California coast.
Perhaps most striking for modern readers, the same account preserves a public statement in which Blakely cautioned against anti-Japanese hysteria after Pearl Harbor, reminding San Diegans that many residents of Japanese ancestry were loyal Americans and should not be subjected to witch-hunts. It did not stop later mass removal and incarceration, but it shows that a Kentucky born admiral used his position to argue in public for restraint.
Another contemporary example of his civic engagement comes from a 1941 newspaper story about William Tompkins, a teenage model builder whose miniature fleet impressed visiting naval officers. Tompkins’s later recollection quotes Rear Admiral C. A. Blakely praising the models for encouraging Americans to think seriously about naval defense, evidence that the district commandant took time to encourage local youth who engaged with seapower.
Illness, retirement, and remembrance
Ill health ended his active career suddenly. The Navy’s biographical file and later histories agree that he was relieved from duty as commandant on 9 December 1941 for medical reasons and transferred to the retired list on 1 October 1942. He remained in San Diego, where he died on 12 September 1950 at age seventy, a fact confirmed by California death indexes and contemporary obituaries.
The destroyer escort Blakely (DE-1072, later reclassified as frigate FF-1072) was commissioned in 1970 and named jointly for Capt. Johnston Blakeley and Vice Adm. Charles A. Blakely. The Naval History and Heritage Command’s ship history and NavSource photo archive both emphasize the Williamsburg connection, noting that the admiral was born in Williamsburg, Kentucky, graduated from Williamsburg Academy, and rose through the destroyer and carrier commands described above.
When Blakely was christened and later decommissioned, press releases and local memories mention his daughter, Lila Blakely Morgan, as a participant, a reminder that the family’s Kentucky roots continued into the late twentieth century.
Blakely and Whitley County memory
Back home in Whitley County, the admiral’s name surfaces in surprising places. The Kentucky Historical Society’s marker for “Cumberland College” lists “Charles Blakely” among notable graduates, alongside several major generals, bringing his story into the same narrative as local educators and ministers who built the college.
Genealogical projects like “Early Settlers of Whitley County, Kentucky Prior to 1812” and Blakely family compilations trace the wider clan through land records, tax lists, and census schedules, placing farmers named Blakely or Blakley in the county decades before Charles’s birth. Public trees on FamilySearch and Geni tie him explicitly to John and Susan Blakely of Williamsburg and to his wife, Virginia Allen Lyons of Mobile, Alabama, mapping a life that stretched from the Cumberland River to the Gulf Coast and the Pacific.
That combination of deeply local origins and far flung service is characteristic of many Appalachian figures who left the region in uniform. In Blakely’s case, the scale simply became global.
Why Vice Admiral Blakely’s story matters for Appalachian history
Charles Adams Blakely’s career touches almost every major transformation in the early twentieth century U.S. Navy. He marched with a Kentucky volunteer regiment in the Spanish–American War, trained as a line officer in the age of coal-burning cruisers, commanded destroyers in the North Atlantic submarine war, helped manage personnel and doctrine in the interwar years, learned to fly in midlife, and finally led carrier forces and a major naval district on the eve of World War II.
For Appalachian history his story offers several points of reflection. It shows how institutions like Williamsburg Academy and Cumberland College could launch young people into national service long before the modern GI Bill. It highlights the ways Appalachian volunteers carried local values into far-flung settings, from Queenstown to San Diego. It gives us an example of a senior officer who, at least in some public statements, pushed back against wartime prejudice even as he prepared his district for conflict. And it reminds us that the history of aviation and seapower, usually told from coastal or metropolitan perspectives, also belongs to small inland counties whose sons rode trains out of the mountains to Annapolis and beyond.
For readers in Williamsburg and Whitley County, Blakely’s life invites both pride and curiosity. Pride in knowing that a vice admiral of carriers grew up along the same streets and hillsides we know today. Curiosity about the records that remain to be examined in National Archives officer files, in Whitley County deed and tax books, and in Cumberland College catalogs and yearbooks that may preserve a student’s name in faded ink. His story stands as one more reminder that the global history of the twentieth century cannot be separated from the local stories of Appalachian Kentucky.
Sources & Further Reading
Navy Department Library, “Blakely, Charles Adams,” Modern Biographical Files, Naval History and Heritage Command. Naval History and Heritage Command+1
“CHARLES ADAMS BLAKELY,” Navy Log entry, U.S. Navy Memorial, confirming birthplace, dates of service, aviation specialty, and major flag commands. Navy Log
“Charles Adams Blakely,” Wikipedia entry summarizing his career from Williamsburg Academy through vice admiral and retirement, with cross references to ship histories and official documents. Wikipedia+1
Navy directories and government registers, including Navy Directory: Officers of the United States Navy, 1 January 1927, and Official Register of the United States, 1930, listing Capt. C. A. Blakely with Asiatic destroyer squadrons and the Bureau of Navigation. Internet Archive+2Internet Archive+2
World War I operational sources such as The Queenstown Patrol, 1917 and the Naval History and Heritage Command’s H-Gram 008-1, documenting O’Brien’s June 1917 depth-charge attack and Blakely’s subsequent American and British decorations. Naval History and Heritage Command+4World War 1+4Naval History and Heritage Command+4
Navy Distinguished Service Medal citations compiled in the Navy Book of Distinguished Service and the Hall of Valor project, giving the full wording of Blakely’s decoration for commanding O’Brien in convoy escort duty. Hall of Valor+2Ibiblio+2
Ryan David Wadle, “United States Navy Fleet Problems and the Development of Carrier Aviation, 1929–1933” (M.A. thesis, Texas A&M University, 2005), especially sections on Lexington and carrier employment in Fleet Problems IX–XIII. pdfcoffee.com
The Official Chronology of the U.S. Navy in World War II, Robert C. Cressman, entries for 13 June 1940 and for June 1940 and 1941, noting Blakely’s commands of Aircraft, Battle Force and the Eleventh Naval District. Internet Archive+1
San Diego History Center, “City of the Dream, 1940–1970,” chapter on the coming of war, including discussion of Blakely’s role as commandant, his health in December 1941, and his public comments about Japanese American residents. sandiegohistory.org+1
Naval History and Heritage Command and NavSource entries for Blakely (DE-1072 / FF-1072), the destroyer escort / frigate named in honor of Vice Adm. Charles A. Blakely and Capt. Johnston Blakeley, with notes on the admiral’s Williamsburg origins and family. Naval History and Heritage Command+2NavSource+2
FamilySearch, Geni, and OurFamilyTree genealogical entries for Vice Admiral Charles Adams Blakely, his parents John and Susan Blakely of Williamsburg, and his marriage to Virginia Allen Lyons of Mobile, Alabama, tying Whitley County records to his later life on the coasts. WW2DB+2Yumpu+2