Ships
- USS Craven (DD-382) Captain, 1 July 1940 – 19 December 1941
Charles F. Quimby was born Charles Fenton Mercer Spotswood Quimby in Norfolk, Virginia, on 6 October 1899. His father, John Gardner Quimby, had attended the Naval Academy and become a captain, and the son followed him to Annapolis. There he earned a varsity letter in swimming. In 1920 he represented the United States at the Olympic Games in Antwerp in the 400-meter breaststroke, and his heat left him short of the next round. He graduated with the class of 1921 and was commissioned in the Navy.
His first sea duty was in the battleship Oklahoma, from 1921 to 1923. In 1924 he served in the light cruiser Cincinnati as third division officer. Other ships followed, and then a tour as an instructor with the naval reserve officer training unit at the University of Washington. He later served in Washington as assistant officer in charge of officer training, instructional and administrative work of the kind that filled much of his career between commands afloat.
On 1 July 1940, as a lieutenant commander, he took command of the destroyer Craven, relieving Mead Saltonstall Pearson. Craven was a Gridley-class ship built at Quincy, Massachusetts, commissioned in September 1937 under Watson Osgood Bailey. By the time Quimby came aboard she had been based at Pearl Harbor since April. Through the rest of 1940 and into 1941 he kept her in fleet exercises and in the antisubmarine screen for the carriers.
Early in December 1941 Craven was at sea with Enterprise on the way back from a reinforcement run toward Wake Island. The force was still offshore when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began on 7 December, and the destroyer entered the harbor the next day. In the middle of the month, while fueling underway, she collided with the cruiser Northampton and was damaged. On 19 December she sailed again with Enterprise, took a beating from heavy weather, and returned to Pearl Harbor for repairs. Quimby was relieved that day by Allen Philip Calvert.
He went from the ship to the Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire as acting captain of the yard, a post he held from December 1941 until July 1943. That summer he moved to Britain as commanding officer of the United States naval amphibious bases in southwest England. From December 1943 to June 1944 he commanded the naval advance base at Plymouth, on the English Channel, through the months when that coast was crowded with shipping for the invasion of Normandy.
In January 1945 he became commanding officer of the attack transport Sitka. He remained with her until June 1946, when he became assistant chief of staff in the First Naval District. He retired in 1952 as a captain. Quimby died in Englewood, Florida, on 4 January 1988.