The oldest steel-hulled American warship afloat, Olympia served
as Commodore George Dewey's flagship during the Battle of Manila Bay on
May 1, 1898. In that engagement, Spanish naval forces in the Philippines
were handed a smashing defeat, securing the Philippines for the United
States and embarking the nation on an expanded role as a major force in
not only the Pacific, but also world affairs. The cruiser was born out
of a program of ships for the "New Navy" of the 1880s and 1890s designed
to correct the deficiencies of a weakened and neglected naval force. This
program was directly responsible for the rise of the steel shipbuilding
industry of the United States.
Olympia is the last remaining ship
built during that program and the sole surviving naval combatant of the
Spanish-American War.
Olympia returned home in triumph from the Spanish-American War
in 1899. The cruiser then showed the flag from the Caribbean to Aegean
Sea and served as the training vessel for the U.S. Naval Academy until
1909. Reactivated for World War I,
Olympia patrolled off New York
and participated in the allied landings in Murmansk in 1918.
Olympia's
last major mission was the return of the Unknown Soldier from World War
I for reburial in Arlington National Cemetery.
Olympia was decommissioned
in 1922, and saved in 1954 from scrapping. In 1996, the Independence Seaport
Museum assumed responsibility for maintaining the vessel. USS
Olympia
is a National Historic Landmark and the triple expansion engines are
Historic Engineering Landmarks.
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