Locals are set to solemnly remember one of San Diego’s oldest and most fiery naval tragedies. The annual commemoration of the USS Bennington explosions 105 years ago will be held at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on Saturday, July 17. “It’s really a very moving service,” said volunteer and historian Karen Scanlon. On July 21, 1905, two boilers exploded aboard the USS Bennington in San Diego Harbor. The explosion killed 65 sailors and one officer aboard the Navy gun boat. “It was one of the deadliest peacetime disasters for the U.S. Navy,” Scanlon said. “It was a critical incident.” Since the centennial commemoration of the USS Bennington in 2005, the local chapter of Sons of the American Revolution has coordinated the ceremony. Philip Hinshaw is the organizer of the event. “Sons of the American Revolution picked this up and decided they would do this because there was no connection between the Revolutionary War and the West Coast,” Scanlon said. Each annual commemoration honors a different party associated with the tragedy. This year’s hour-long ceremony will honor those who came to the assistance of the ship, which was too large at the time to be brought to the shore. “We are honoring the [Army and Navy] doctors, the nurses and the civilian volunteers who all came to the aid of the Bennington’s injured and dying,” Scanlon said. At the commemoration, a Navy doctor and nurse will speak, along with a woman who will read a part on behalf of the civilian volunteers involved with the USS Bennington. In addition, both the Sons of the American Revolution and the Navy will have color guard units at the cemetery. Fort Rosecrans is home to a granite obelisk USS Bennington monument, and 37 of the 66 servicemembers who died in the explosion are buried there. At the ceremony, each grave will have a volunteer standing by it as a symbol of the individual matronly support given to those in their final moments on the gun boat. “Every injured sailor had a nurse or motherly volunteer at his side,” Scanlon said. Although Scanlon said there are usually more volunteers than audience members at the event, she hopes locals will attend this year’s commemoration. If nothing else, they can come to learn about a relatively unknown part of San Diego history. “People that learn about this Bennington explosion are always fascinated with it just because it was such a horrific event,” Scanlon said. “It was a huge event for a small town at the time.”