USS Olympia (C-6/CA-15/CL-15/IX-40) is a protected cruiser that saw service with the United States Navy from her commissioning in 1895 until 1922. She is currently a museum ship in Philadelphia.
Olympia became famous as the flagship of Commodore George Dewey during the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish–American War in 1898. The ship was decommissioned after returning to the U.S. in 1899, but was returned to active service in 1902. She served until World War I as a training ship for naval cadets and as a barracks ship in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1917, she was mobilized again for war service, patrolling the American coast and escorting transport ships.
After World War I, Olympia participated in the 1919 Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and conducted cruises in the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas to promote peace in the unstable Balkan countries. In 1921, the ship carried the remains of World War I's Unknown Soldier from France to Washington, D.C., where his body was interred in Arlington National Cemetery. Olympia was decommissioned for the last time in December 1922 and placed in reserve.
In 1957, the U.S. Navy ceded title to the Cruiser Olympia Association, which restored the ship to her 1898 configuration. Since then, Olympia has been a museum ship in Philadelphia, where it is now part of the Independence Seaport Museum. Olympia was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
Olympia is the oldest steel American warship still afloat. Repairs, estimated at $10 to 20 million, were desperately needed to keep Olympia afloat, and in 2010 the Independence Seaport Museum considered finding a new steward for the ship. By 2014, the museum reversed its plan to find a new steward and soon obtained funding from private donors as well as federal and state agencies to begin work on repairing the ship.
The museum invested in extensive stabilization measures including reinforcing the most deteriorated areas of the hull, expanding the alarm system, installing a network of bilge pumping stand pipes (which will provide greater damage control capability in the unlikely event of a hull breach), extensive deck patching and extensive repair and recoating of the ship's rigging. This work was made possible by donations from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the U.S. Cruiser Sailors Association and many individual donors. By 2017, the museum completed the first phase of repairs to the ship and has embarked on an ambitious national campaign to raise the $20 million needed to dry-dock Olympia and address waterline deterioration of the hull.
Background When Grover Cleveland first took office in 1885, United States Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney continued the naval modernization program started during the preceding Arthur Administration. U.S. naval policy at the time was focused on commerce raiding, which implied a defensive posture on the part of the United States.
In 1887, Whitney authorized the construction of two coastal defense battleships, that were to become and . The emphasis was still on large and fast commerce-raiding cruisers, capable of destroying an attacking fleet's supply line. President Grover Cleveland was defeated in the election of 1888, but before he left office, Whitney managed to have Congress authorize two additional cruisers, one of which was the large, protected cruiser that was to become Olympia.
Starting in 1887, the new Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Tracy, began to rethink naval policy. Although Tracy allowed the design and construction of Olympia to continue, he was a follower of Alfred Thayer Mahan. As such, Tracy advocated a battle fleet capable of engaging enemy fleets in their home waters. This meant a shift away from large, fast, commerce-raiding cruisers. As a result, Olympia, which would probably have been the first in a class of ships, was the only one of her type built.
Design and construction The newly formed Board on the Design of Ships began the design process for Cruiser Number 6 in 1889. For main armament, the board chose guns, though the number and arrangement of these weapons, as well as the armor scheme, was heavily debated. On 8 April 1890, the navy solicited bids but found only one bidder, the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, California. The contract specified a cost of $1,796,000, completion by April 1, 1893, and offered a bonus for early completion.<
During the contract negotiations, Union Iron Works was granted permission to lengthen the vessel by , at no extra cost, to accommodate the propulsion system. The contract was signed on July 10, 1890, the keel laid on June 17, 1891, and the ship was launched on November 5, 1892.Gardiner, Chesneau, & Kolesnik, p. 152 However, delays in the delivery of components, including the new Harvey steel armor, slowed completion. The last one-pounder gun was not delivered until December 1894.
Union Iron Works conducted the first round of trials on November 3, 1893; on a run, the ship achieved a speed of . Upon return to harbor, however, it was discovered that the keel had been fouled by sea grass, which required dry-docking to fix.
By December 11, the work had been completed and she was dispatched from San Francisco to Santa Barbara for an official speed trial. Once in the harbor, heavy fog delayed the ship for four days. On the 15th, Olympia sailed into the Santa Barbara Channel, the "chosen race-track for California-built cruisers," and began a four-hour time trial. According to the navy, she had sustained an average speed of , though she reached up to —both well above the contract requirement of .
While returning to San Francisco, Olympia participated in eight experiments that tested various combinations of steering a ship by rudder and propellers. The new cruiser was ultimately commissioned on February 5, 1895. For several months afterwards, she was the largest ship ever built on the western coast of the US, until surpassed by the battleship .
At the time of commissioning, Scientific American compared Olympia to the similar British s and the Chilean and found that the American ship held a "great superiority" over the British ships. While the Eclipses had of coal, compared to Olympias , the latter had nearly double the horsepower (making the ship faster), more armor, and a heavier armament on a displacement that was only greater than the other.
Characteristics The ship is in overall length, has a beam of and a draft of . Her design displacement was , with a full combat load of up to displacement. The ship is powered by a pair of vertical triple expansion engines, each supplied with steam from three coal-fired cylindrical boilers. Her engines were rated at with a top speed of , though on trials she achieved and a top speed of .
Olympias crew numbered between 411 and 447 officers and enlisted.
Armament Olympia is armed with a variety of weapons. The primary armament was four /35 caliber guns in two twin Mark 6 gun turrets, one forward and one aft of the superstructure. These guns could fire projectiles, either armor-piercing or high explosive, at a muzzle velocity of per second. The Mark 6 turret was designed for depression of the guns to −4° and elevation to 13°. By 1916, the turrets and guns were considered woefully obsolete, and were subsequently removed and replaced with open gun platforms, each with a single 4"/40. These guns were then later replaced with 5"/51-caliber guns in 1917.
The secondary battery was ten /40 caliber guns mounted in casemates, five on each side of the ship. Each is placed to avoid the flash from the main battery. These guns fired armor-piercing shells at a muzzle velocity of per second. These also were replaced with 5"/51s during the 1917 refit. Fourteen 6-pounder () antitorpedoboat guns are mounted in sponsons. Six one-pounder guns are mounted on deck, along with six above-water torpedo tubes. In 1898 Olympia also boasted two Gatling guns and an arsenal of revolvers and rifles.
Armor Olympias conning tower is armored with thick steel plates. The ship has a thick armored deck that slopes on the sides; the slopes increase in thickness to amidships and at the ends. A thick glacis protects the engine rooms. Her main battery turrets are protected by of Harvey armor, while the barbettes upon which they rest have nickel-steel armor. The 5-inch guns are protected by gun shields.
Service history Upon commissioning in February 1895 Olympia departed the Union Iron Works yard in San Francisco and steamed inland to the U.S. Navy's Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo, where outfitting was completed and Captain John J. Read was placed in command. In April, the ship steamed south to Santa Barbara to participate in a festival. The ship's crew also conducted landing drills in Sausalito and Santa Cruz that month. On April 20, the ship conducted its first gunnery practice, during which one of the ship's gunners, Coxswain John Johnson, was killed in an accident with one of the five-inch guns. The ship's last shakedown cruise took place on July 27. After returning to Mare Island, the ship was assigned to replace as the flagship of the Asiatic Squadron.
On August 25, the ship departed the United States for Chinese waters. A week later, the ship arrived in Hawaii, where she remained until October 23 due to an outbreak of cholera. The ship then sailed for Yokohama, Japan, where she arrived on November 9. On November 15, Baltimore arrived in Yokohama from Shanghai, China, to transfer command of the Asiatic Squadron to Olympia. Baltimore departed on December 3; Rear Admiral F.V. McNair arrived fifteen days later to take command of the squadron. The following two years were filled with training exercises with the other members of the Asiatic Squadron, and goodwill visits to various ports in Asia. On January 3, 1898, Commodore George Dewey raised his flag on Olympia and assumed command of the squadron.
Spanish–American War
As tensions increased and war with Spain became more probable, Olympia remained at Hong Kong and was prepared for action. When war was declared on April 25, 1898, Dewey moved his ships to Mirs Bay, China. Two days later, the Navy Department ordered the squadron to Manila in the Philippines, where a significant Spanish naval force protected the harbor. Dewey was ordered to sink or capture the Spanish warships, opening the way for a subsequent conquest by U.S. forces.
Battle of Manila Bay
On the morning of May 1, Commodore Dewey—with his flag aboard Olympia—steamed his ships into Manila Bay to confront the Spanish flotilla commanded by Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón. The Spanish ships were anchored close to shore, under the protection of coastal artillery, but both the ships and shore batteries were outdated. At approximately 5:40 a.m., Dewey instructed Olympias captain, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley". Gridley ordered the forward eight-inch gun turret, commanded by Lt. Stokely Morgan, to open fire, and the starboard eight-inch gun fired the first shell of the battle at the Spanish flagship Reina Christina, prompting the other American warships to begin firing. The United States Army and Navy Journal and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces, Volume 38, Nov. 17, 1900, p. 273