Ships
- USS Nevada (BB-36) Captain from 11 October 1921 · Relieved on 30 December 1922
Douglas Eugene Dismukes was born in Macon, Mississippi, on 1 October 1869. His state appointed him to the United States Naval Academy in 1886, and he graduated with the class of 1890. In 1897 he married Maude Amelia Hench. For a long stretch of his life the couple lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
In 1911 he commanded the gunboat Petrel in Central American waters. Secretary of the Navy George von L. Meyer wrote to commend the speed with which Dismukes protected the property of American citizens there. On 22 July 1915 he took command of the battleship Kentucky. The next year, as senior officer afloat in Mexican waters, he received high praise from the Chief of Naval Operations for judgment and tact. Hilary Herbert Royall afterward succeeded him in Kentucky.
During the severe winter of 1917–18, ice twelve to eighteen inches thick closed Baltimore harbor and its approaches. Still in Kentucky, Dismukes opened a channel for shipping. The Navy Department and his flag officer sent repeated messages of congratulation. In February 1918 he left the battleship for Mount Vernon, a large former German liner then in service as a United States troop transport.
Early in September 1918 a German submarine torpedoed Mount Vernon in the eastern Atlantic. Dismukes kept control of the damaged ship, and the discipline of her officers and crew brought her into port. He received the Navy Distinguished Service Medal for that work. Admiral William S. Benson, Chief of Naval Operations during the war, and Admiral Henry T. Mayo, the commander in chief afloat, later told Congress that Dismukes’s wartime service stood out among captains who commanded ships in the conflict. A relief bill before Congress proposed that, when he retired under existing law, he go on the retired list as a rear admiral.
On 11 October 1921 he assumed command of Nevada. Luke McNamee had been the previous captain. The battleship had entered service in 1916 under William Sowden Sims, lead ship of a class built to burn oil and to carry its armor in one thick belt rather than spread thin over the hull. In September 1922, with Maryland, Nevada escorted the steamer Pan America, which had Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes aboard, to Rio de Janeiro. From 5 to 11 September the ships attended the centennial of Brazilian independence. Sailors from Nevada played baseball during the visit, and the games helped settle both the sport and its American terms in Brazil.
John McClane Luby relieved him on 30 December 1922. Dismukes served as commandant of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and retired as a rear admiral. He died in Philadelphia on 2 December 1949. Maude Dismukes died on 4 November 1958.