Ships
- USS San Francisco (CA-38) Captain, 12 June 1935 – 29 May 1937
William Lewis Beck was born in Sedalia, Missouri, on 17 May 1887. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1907 and spent his career in the Navy. He was promoted to captain on 1 February 1932.
In the First World War he was executive officer of the minelayer Roanoke while she helped lay the great mine barrage across the North Sea. He then commanded a minesweeping division based in Scotland, clearing that same field under difficult conditions. The Navy awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal for the two duties.
On 12 June 1935 he took command of the heavy cruiser San Francisco (CA-38), relieving Royal E. Ingersoll. Ingersoll had commissioned the New Orleans-class ship at the Mare Island Navy Yard in February 1934. After a long shakedown and a conversion that fitted her as a flagship, she had joined Cruiser Division 6 at San Diego early in 1935. Beck came aboard a cruiser that was new, heavily gunned, and already working with the fleet.
His cruise stayed in the eastern Pacific. In the weeks after he assumed command the ship exercised off the Northwest coast, and in July 1935 she went on to Alaska before returning to California. For the rest of his tour she ranged the waters between the West Coast, Hawaii, and the Pacific coast of South America, carrying out the gunnery practices, division drills, and long cruises expected of a peacetime heavy cruiser. Early in November 1936 she was back at Mare Island in company with other cruisers of the fleet.
Beck left San Francisco on 29 May 1937 and turned her over to Ralph Chandler Parker. The ship he had handled for nearly two years later fought through the Solomon Islands under wartime captains, among them Daniel Judson Callaghan and Cassin Young. She came out of the war with a Presidential Unit Citation and seventeen battle stars. All of that service still lay ahead when Beck went ashore.
In the Second World War he served on the staff of the commandant of the Fourth Naval District, first as chief of staff and later as assistant commandant for logistics. He helped ready the district for war and kept its operational and supply work coordinated once the country was fighting. For that service he received the Legion of Merit. He retired from the Navy as a captain.
He spent his last months on Pine Needle Lane, Siesta Key, near Sarasota, Florida, where he had lived since the previous November. He died at Sarasota Memorial Hospital on 27 February 1955, at the age of sixty-seven, and was survived by his wife, two daughters, and a sister in Sedalia.