Statue honors naval officer
One of Spokane’s largest downtown statues stands as a century-old testament to the community’s strong connections to the U.S. Navy.
On a small island at the intersection of Monroe Street and Riverside Avenue, between the Spokane Athletic Club and the U.S. Courthouse, stands the statue of John Robert Monaghan, a Navy ensign who gave his life to help a fallen comrade.
Monaghan was born in Chewelah, Wash., in 1873. The son of regional pioneer James Monaghan, he was among the first students in 1887 to enroll in the newly founded Gonzaga College in Spokane. (The family home on east Boone Street now serves as Gonzaga University’s music building.) John Robert Monaghan has the honor of being the first person from Washington state to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., in 1895.
First dispatched to the cruiser Olympia, flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Station, he then served on the monitor USS Monadnock and gunboat USS Alert along the west coast of the Americas.
He was assigned in 1899 to the battleship USS Philadelphia, which was sent to the Samoan Islands, where rival chieftains were engaged in combat.
Monaghan was part of a unit of American, British and Samoan forces that came under attack by another Samoan group on shore near Apia.
When the ship’s executive officer, Lt. Philip Van Horne Lansdale, was wounded during the retreat, Monaghan remained behind and tried to protect him. But they were overrun and killed on April 1, 1899.
In autumn 1906, the statue honoring Monaghan was unveiled in downtown Spokane, with a reported crowd of 10,000 on hand.
The plaque reads: “During the retreat of the allied forces from the deadly fire and overwhelming numbers of the savage foe, he alone stood the fearful onslaught and sacrificed his life defending a wounded comrade, Lt. Philip V. Lansdale, U.S. Navy.”
On the east side of the pedestal is a bronze bas-relief depiction of the battle, titled “The Death of Monaghan,” by sculptor A. Asbjornsen and cast by the American Bronze Foundry Co. in Chicago.
Two Navy ships have been named for Monaghan.
The first one, in 1911, the USS Monaghan (DD-32), a modified Paulding-class destroyer, served in World War I. It was assigned later to the Coast Guard, operating out of New London, Conn., and Boston, enforcing prohibition laws against rum-running vessels. It was sold in 1934 and scrapped.
The second USS Monaghan (DD-354) was a Farragut-class destroyer that went to sea in 1935 and survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The vessel fought in several key battles of World War II, including the battle of Midway, then foundered off the Philippines during a typhoon in December 1944. Only six sailors survived.
In addition, one of the eight silver panels on the Spokane Naval Trophy contains an engraved representation of Monaghan. The trophy is awarded annually to the Pacific Fleet surface ship that demonstrates overall excellence in warfare readiness (see the Aug. 23 Landmarks column).
While two ships bore John Robert Monaghan’s name, three naval ships were named for Lansdale, who was a native of that other Washington – Washington, D.C.