Here's What You Need to Remember: On January 3, 1898, Commodore George Dewey raised his flag on Olympia and assumed command of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Squadron. Dewey, along with the newly assigned Captain Charles Vernon Gridley, was about to sail into history.

The oldest steel warship afloat has survived wars, economic downturns and even the harsh passage of time, but there was one battle that the USS Olympia (C-6), flagship of the American Asiatic Fleet during the Spanish-American War (1898), almost was unable to win. The future of the ship remained very much in jeopardy for several years due to the rising costs of maintaining the protected cruiser.

Today the Olympia is at home at the Independence Seaport Museum on the Delaware River near downtown Philadelphia, where it has been since 1957. Interim repairs were made on the ship over the years but following some mismanagement at the museum, there hasn’t been the money for a much needed full restoration. As a result, for a while, it looked like the once majestic vessel would meet a fate that no great warship deserves. She would be sunk and converted to an artificial reef!

The Modernization of the U.S. Navy 

The USS Olympia was launched in 1892 as part of American efforts to modernize its navy and to have a military presence in the Pacific Ocean. The Olympia, under Commodore George Dewey steamed into Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, to engage the Spanish Navy at the start of the Spanish-American War. It was from Olympia’s bridge that Dewey made his famous command to the ship’s captain, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridely.”

Those words might have never have been said and the (now) apparent one-sidedness of the battle not been so had it not been for a sudden American interest in overseas trade—and to a lesser extent an overseas “empire.” William Henry Seward, who had been secretary of state during the American Civil War and early reconstruction, had made the proclamation that “the empire of the seas alone is real empire.”

This was not to be another “Seward’s folly” but rather a prophecy that would very soon come to pass, as America joined the European powers in looking to a newly opened Asia with trade opportunities in mind, while backing it with the very nineteenth-century notion of “gunboat diplomacy.” To pull that off, however, required real gunboats and American’s obsolescent Civil War-era fleet of the 1860s was certainly no match for the modern British or French naval squadrons.  

When President James A. Garfield took office in 1881, the new Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt found that of the 140 vessels on the active list only fifty-two were actually in an operational state, and only seventeen of those were even iron-hulled ships. In fact, fourteen of those seventeen ships were aging Civil War-style ironclads. Most military historians agree that at the time the United States would have been incapable of fighting a naval war with a European power and probably would have faced difficulties with many of the Latin American powers such as Peru or Chile! If the United States was to be a player in world trade, it needed a world-class navy.

In March 1883, the United States Congress appropriated $1.3 million for the construction of four new vessels known as the “ABCDs”—Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and Dolphin. Unlike the ironclad warships of the Civil War, these were to be fabricated not from wood and iron but steel. It would truly be a first-rate, modern navy.

The ABCD experiment was followed by the next step in naval modernization, which included the construction of the battleships Texas and Maine; as well as six-light, or so-called “protected,” cruisers. These cruisers would feature an armored deck but still be able to maintain an impressive speed faster than most warships of the day. Protected cruisers actually formed a new category that fell between the unprotected versions of the warships with no armor and those later stylized as “armored cruisers” that were almost as heavily armored as true battleships of the era.

These efforts to modernize the navy paid off. By 1889 the United States Navy ranked second only to Great Britain in terms of warships that could exceed 19-knot speeds while displacing 3,000 tons or more. The British had a total of ten ships and a total of 56,000 tons, while America’s eight ships displaced 32,010 tons. That exceeded the French Navy’s five ships and 24,630 tons and notably Spain’s three ships and 14,400 tons.

More importantly, this was a paradigm shift from the “commerce destroyer” type of ships that were used during the American Civil War to a fleet that had a true offensive spirit.

The Olympia actually began life as Cruiser Number 6, a 20-knot warship that was designed to cost no more than $1,800,000. The newly formed Board on the Design of Ships (originally the “Board on Construction”) first began the design process in 1889, and less than a year later the navy solicited bids for the construction of the ship. Yet it actually found only a single bidder, the Union Iron Works in San Francisco—where it remained the largest ship ever built on the western coast of the United States until it was surpassed by the construction of the battleship Oregon a few years later.

The keel of Cruiser Number 6 was laid in June 1891 and the ship was launched in November 1892. While the primary construction occurred in San Francisco, the heavy armor plate was constructed back east. The Bethlehem Steel Company of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was tasked to provide the steel but ran into difficulties, so Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel Company was called in to help provide the material for the ship’s armor.

In December 1891 sea trials were conducted in the Santa Barbara Channel, and in February 1895 the ship was commissioned the USS Olympia and departed the Union Iron Works yard in San Francisco for the last time. It steamed to the U.S. Navy’s Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo for outfitting.

It was in April 1895 that the ship conducted its first gunnery practice, and sadly it was during this shakedown that a crew member was killed. Coxswain John Jonson lost his life in an accident while firing one of the 5-inch guns. Fortunately, it was not a portent of things to come.

In July 1895 the Olympia was assigned to replace the USS Baltimore as the flagship of the Asiatic Squadron, and it departed in August of that year for Chinese waters. However, due to an outbreak of cholera amongst the crew, the ship was forced to remain in Hawaii until October, and didn’t arrive in Shanghai until November.

She spent three mostly peaceful years in the Far Eastern waters, where Olympia made visits to British Hong Kong, Kobe and Nagasaki in Japan; performed humanitarian service at Woosung in China when two steamers collided and needed assistance; and even headed to Vladivostok in Russia for the coronation celebrations of Czar Nicholas II. During this time the crew’s baseball team even played against a Japanese team, with the Americans coming out on top in this unofficial “world series.”

On January 3, 1898, Commodore George Dewey raised his flag on Olympia and assumed command of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Squadron. Dewey, along with the newly assigned Captain Charles Vernon Gridley, was about to sail into history.

From Manila Bay to Philadelphia 

Tensions had been simmering between the United States and Spain for nearly a decade over the latter’s rule of Cuba, which sought independence from the mother country. The USS Maine, which had been sent to Havana, Cuba by President William McKinley to ensure the safety of American citizens and interests, suffered a sudden and massive explosion on February 15, 1898. While McKinley tried to preach patience—especially as the cause of the explosion was not known and there was no evidence of an attack—the news of the event stirred popular opinion, and by the end of April the United States was at war with Spain.

The Olympia had been in Hong Kong preparing for action, and following the declaration of war, the Asiatic Squadron was ordered to Manila. Dewey was given the order to sink or capture the Spanish fleet and open the way for a subsequent invasion by American forces.

Dewey, in command aboard the Olympia, steamed into Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, to face the Spanish flotilla commanded by Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón. Montojo had anchored his ships close to the shore and under the protection of coastal artillery. However, the shore batteries along with the fleet were to prove no match for Dewey’s squadron.

Dewey must have felt confident, for while desks and cabinets were ordered to be removed from the ship—as these could create splinters and endanger the crew should it take a direct hit—the Commodore opted not to have the fine wooden paneling inside the ship removed. The ornate panels were part of the ship’s opulence and thus were spared.

While largely considered a one-sided affair, especially as the Spanish gunners were unprepared for action, the shooting from both sides could best be considered rather poor. At one point Dewey withdrew when it was erroneously reported that the ship was running low on 5-pound shells. When it was discovered that the ship’s ordnance supplies were high the attack continued, and by early afternoon Dewey had virtually destroyed Montojo’s squadron along with the shore batteries, while the American ships took little damage. In total some 160 Spanish sailors died, while just a single American sailor lost his life during the battle—and that was reportedly due to sunstroke.

With Montojo’s fleet sunk or burning, Dewey anchored his squadron in the bay and accepted Manila’s surrender. The news of the successful attack soon spread around the world. Dewey and the Olympia would forever be linked to the attack, which was the first major victory for the American forces in the war and the first victory for the U.S. Navy against a foreign power in decades.

Olympia supported the U.S. Army’s subsequent invasion of the Philippines before it returned to China in May of 1899. Despite its success in battle, the ship was recalled to the United States soon after and headed home via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea. The ship reached Boston in October 1899 and a month later the ship was decommissioned and placed in reserve. Her career had been colorful yet short-lived.

Olympia’s first “retirement” was also short-lived and the ship returned to duty in January 1902 where it was assigned to the North Atlantic Squadron and served as the flagship of the Caribbean Division. It took part in the intervention of Honduras in the spring of 1903, and in 1906 became a training ship for naval cadets from the United States Naval Academy, and later served as a barracks ship.

During the First World War, the USS Olympia served as the flagship of the U.S. Patrol Force, and later carried an expeditionary force bound for Russia during the Russian Civil War. The ship arrived in Murmansk, Russia and helped deploy the peace-keeping force and then assisted in the occupation of Archangel.

Despite her primary role as a warship, the USS Olympia carried out other duties. At the end of the First World War, the ship traveled to the Black Sea to aid in the return of refugees from the Balkans, and in 1921 brought home the remains of the Unknown Soldier for interment in Arlington National Cemetery.

The ship was decommissioned for the last time in Philadelphia in 1922 and placed on reserve. This time she would never be called back to duty.

Preserving the Olympia

Despite the fact that the Olympia was never to sail again as a warship, she survived the passage of time, and was released to the Cruiser Olympia Association in 1957, which saw her returned to her original 1898 configuration, complete with beautiful wood paneling that had not been removed prior to the Battle of Manila Bay despite the standing orders of the time that the wood splinters could have posed a hazard to the crew inside the ship.

Since 1957 the ship has been part of the Independence Seaport Museum at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia, and with this transfer, Olympia became the sole survivor of the U.S. naval shipbuilding program from the 1880s and 1890s and the only surviving pre-Dreadnought protected cruiser in the world.  

While the move to Independence Seaport Museum was in part because of the close proximity to the Philadelphia Naval Yard, it should be noted that Olympia also had a connection to Pennsylvania as that is where its armor plating was produced.  

Over the years members of the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps from Villanova University and the University of Pennsylvania acted as a maintenance crew, but the passage of time has not been kind to the once proud warship. It needed more than the Midshipmen could provide. The last of the U.S. Navy’s Spanish-American War fleet, the ship had been in serious need of much more major repairs in recent years. She is a steel-hulled ship and yet has been in the water continuously since 1945. During the time there have been leaks in the hull, many of which have put the future of the ship in jeopardy.

In February 2010, museum officials announced that the cruiser Olympia needed $10 to $20 million for repairs to the hull to prevent her from sinking. When it was determined that the museum might not be able to support the efforts to save her, plans were even considered to scuttle the ship and make her into an artificial reef. However, public outcry helped save the Olympia.

The Seaport Museum held a preservation summit in March 2011 and announced that qualified interested organizations could apply for stewardship of Olympia through a transfer application process vetted by a review panel of historic ship and preservation experts. By 2014, however, the museum did an about-face and decided it would retain the ship and look to efforts to have her restored.

Various groups have stepped up to help raise the money, and interim efforts have been made to keep the ship open to the public while long-term plans are discussed.

Thanks to an outpouring of support the ship was saved. 

In 2014, the museum began a series of interim steps to preserve the ship while efforts for a major refit could be determined. Of course, Mother Nature hasn’t helped matters in recent years including the 2012 “Super Storm Sandy” and the brutal winter of 2013-2014.  

Yet, the interim efforts have the Olympia looking better than she has in years, while new monitors and sensors can alert the museum’s staff to potential dangers including breaches in the hull. A cofferdam was also instituted to help pump the water out from some particularly weak sections of the hull, and allow it to be dried and repaired.

In 2017, the Museum announced that it will embark on a major national fundraising campaign to raise $20 million to drydock the vessel so that the hull can finally be fully repaired.  

USS Olympia Facts: 

Length: 344 Feet  

Beam: 53 feet  

Displacement: 5,870 tons  

Crew: 33 Officers, 396 enlisted men  

Top Speed: 22 knots (25mph)  

Coal Consumption at Top Speed: 633 lbs./minute 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.

Image: Flickr