Ships
- USS Nevada (BB-36) Captain from 14 February 1918 · Relieved on 14 October 1918
Andrew Theodore Long was born on 6 April 1866 in Iredell County, North Carolina, one of ten children of the planter Thomas Simpson Long and Rosanna Camilla Neill Long. In 1881 he entered a military school at Kings Mountain conducted by Captain W. T. R. Bell. Two years later he went to the United States Naval Academy, where he was president of his class for four years, and he graduated in 1887. He was commissioned an ensign on 1 July 1889.
During the Spanish-American War he was navigator of the cruiser Minneapolis and received the West Indies Campaign Medal. He served in the gunboat Vicksburg in the Boxer campaign in China in 1900. In 1901 and 1902 he was her navigator when she carried United States troops under General Frederick Funston to the Philippines for the campaign against the forces of Emilio Aguinaldo.
In 1906 and 1907 Long commanded the presidential yacht Mayflower and became a friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and his family. He sailed around the world in 1907 and 1908 as executive officer of the battleship Illinois with the Great White Fleet. As a commander he served as naval attaché in Rome and in Vienna. He took command of the cruiser Des Moines in October 1912 and cruised in West Indian and Central and South American waters into 1914, the year he was promoted to captain. At Santo Domingo the American minister commended him for holding an armistice and keeping the peace.
In the First World War he commanded the battleship Connecticut and then Nevada. He relieved Joseph Strauss on 14 February 1918 and remained captain until 14 October 1918, when William Carey Cole relieved him. Nevada, whose first commanding officer had been William Sowden Sims, burned oil, and Britain's short supply of fuel oil had held her in American waters after the United States entered the war. Coal-burning battleships had already joined the British Grand Fleet. On 13 August 1918 Long took Nevada across the Atlantic, the last American ship sent to join the forces already overseas, and she reached Berehaven, Ireland, on 23 August. With Utah and Oklahoma she formed the Bantry Bay Squadron, officially Battleship Division Six, under Rear Admiral Thomas S. Rodgers, who flew his flag in Utah. From the bay the three ships guarded the large troop and supply convoys bound for the British Isles.
On 15 September 1918, while he was still captain of Nevada, Long was promoted to rear admiral. In October he went to Paris as liaison officer with the Supreme War Council and stayed in that post through the Armistice. For his wartime service in command of Connecticut and of Nevada, including the battleship division's duty in Bantry Bay alongside the British fleet in the war zone, he received the Distinguished Service Medal. After the fighting ended he was naval attaché in Paris, commanded the naval headquarters there, and served on two committees connected with the peace conference at Versailles.
From January to September 1920 he commanded Battleship Division Four of the Atlantic Fleet. He then served about nine months as director of naval intelligence in Washington, and afterward a year as chief of staff of the Atlantic Fleet. In 1922 he commanded United States naval forces in European waters with the temporary rank of vice admiral. He was chief of the Bureau of Navigation from 24 July 1923 until 7 June 1924 and also sat on the General Board. In 1924 he was aide to the king and queen of Belgium on their visit to the United States, and in 1928 he was aide to Queen Marie of Romania. He later directed the International Hydrographic Bureau. His naval career covered forty-seven years. Long died on 21 May 1946 in St. Augustine, Florida.