Dr. Nathaniel M. Sims collection of Sims and Hitchcock family papers (MSC-354)

Biographical note

William Sowden Sims (1858-1936) was born on October 15, 1858, in Port Hope, Ontario Province, Canada to Alfred William (1826-1895) and Adelaide Sowden Sims (1835-1914). He was the eldest of six children: Louisa Peacock (b. 1861), James Peacock (1862-1863), Alfred Varley (1864-1944), Mary S. (b. 1868), and Adelaide Clarke (1874-1967). The Sims family lived in Canada until 1872 and then moved to Orsbisonia, Pennsylvania.

Sims was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy from Pennsylvania in 1876. After graduation in 1880, he served on the USS Tennessee and later the USS Swatara, where he was promoted to ensign. Between 1882 and 1897, he served on USS Yantic, Saratoga, USS Philadelphia, USS Charleston, and the receiving ships Colorado and Richmond. In 1887, he received permission from the Navy Department to live in Paris for a year, where he perfected his French and absorbed French culture. This experience qualified him for an appointment as naval attaché to Paris, France; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Madrid, Spain in 1897, a position he held until 1900. During this time, he collected intelligence on Spain’s preparation for war and studied the gunfire systems of foreign navies.

In 1900, Sims was assigned to the China Station with the USS Kentucky, the Navy’s newest battleship. For the next two years, he continued to observe and report on the superiority of a new system of British naval gunnery that used the continuous aim method of firing developed by Royal Navy Captain Percy Scott (1853-1924). Sims felt that the U.S. Navy’s gunfire systems had deficiencies that imperiled the service’s effectiveness as a fighting force. After his pleas to the Bureau Chiefs and the Secretary of the Navy were ignored, Sims wrote directly to President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) about this in November 1901. President Roosevelt recalled Sims from China in 1902 and appointed him Inspector of Target Practice after the Atlantic Fleet had scored poorly in target practice. Sims held this position for six and a half years and also served as a naval aide to the president during the last two years of this assignment.

As a reward for his loyalty and service, Sims was named commanding officer of the Navy’s premier battleship, USS Minnesota. He held this post for two years until he was detached for instruction at the Naval War College as a member of the 1911 Summer Conference. He continued as a student in the 1911-1912 Long Course and remained on staff through June 1913. Following his tenure at the Naval War College, he assumed command of the Destroyer Flotilla, Atlantic Fleet and worked to devise new tactical maneuver doctrines for destroyers.

After a year as commanding officer of USS Nevada, Sims was selected as president of the Naval War College in February 1917 and promoted to rear admiral. The college closed two months later when the United States entered World War I and Sims was sent to London to act as a liaison with the Royal Navy. Soon after he was appointed Commanding Officers, U.S. Naval Forces in European waters as a vice admiral. In order to combat the heavy losses of merchant shipping from U-boat attacks, he devised a plan to use destroyers as escorts. The convoy system worked remarkably well and cut shipping losses in half. He directed the operations of nine admirals under his command and worked harmoniously with the other allied powers while sanctioning the laying of the North Sea Mine Barrage.

When the war was over, Sims returned to Newport and the presidency of the Naval War College, where he remained until he retired in 1922 at the age of sixty-four. During his tenure at the college, he increased the number of faculty and students and defended the college as a citadel of naval thought and intellectual training in warfare. He spent the last fourteen years of his life in Boston, where he wrote, lectured, and testified before Congress regarding what he considered deficiencies in the Navy. In 1921, Sims won the Pulitzer Prize for Victory at Sea, a factual and reasoned account of World War I. William S. Sims died on September 28, 1936, in Boston and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Throughout his distinguished career, Admiral Sims received the following medals: Spanish Campaign Medal, Philippine Campaign Medal, Mexican Service Medal, Victory Medal, Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (Great Britain), Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor (France), Grand Cordon, Order of the Rising Sun (Japan), Grand Cordon, Order of Leopold (Belgium), and Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy. He refused to accept the Distinguished Service Medal because he objected to the Navy’s policy of awarding medals to undeserving officers.

He also received honorary degrees from the following universities: Yale, Harvard, Tufts, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Cambridge (England), McGill (Montreal, Canada), Queens (Kingston, Canada), and from Williams, Union, and Juniata Colleges, and the Stephens Institute.

Three U.S. ships bore his name. The destroyer USS Sims (DD-409) was launched in 1939 and sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. The destroyer escort USS Sims(DE-154, then APD-50) was commissioned in 1943 and served during World War II. The third USS Sims (DE-1059) was commissioned in 1970 and served with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.

William S. Sims married Anne Erwin Hitchcock (1875-1960), the eldest daughter of Ethan Allen (1835-1909) and Margaret Dwight Collier Hitchcock (1840-1912), on November 21, 1905, in Washington, DC. The couple enjoyed a close, supportive relationship and had the following children: Margaret H. Hopkins (b. 1907), Adelaide Fiske (b. 1910), William Sowden (b. 1912), Anne H. Morison (b. 1914), and Ethan A. H. Sims (1916-2010).

Ethan Allen Hitchcock (1835-1909) was the youngest son of Henry Hitchcock (1792-1839), a successful lawyer and Supreme Court judge, and Anna Erwin (1803-1854). Hitchcock married Margaret Dwight Collier Hitchcock in 1869 and besides Anne Hitchcock Sims, they had two other daughters: Sarah Collier Shepley (1870-1957) and Margaret Dwight Hitchcock (1878-1926). Ethan Allen Hitchcock was involved in mercantile pursuits in St. Louis, Missouri, before moving to China to work for Olyphant & Company in China from 1855 to 1872. President William McKinley appointed Hitchcock an envoy and then later as the first ambassador to Russia, a position he held until 1898 when he was recalled to serve as the Secretary of the Interior in the presidential cabinet. He remained in this position until 1907 serving under both President McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt. Hitchcock died on April 9, 1909 in Washington, D.C.

Chronology