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Cruisers · from 1892

USS Olympia (C-6)

United States Navy steam-powered cruiser.

History

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.

Text from Wikipedia: USS Olympia (C-6), CC BY-SA 4.0, lightly trimmed.

Wars and campaigns

World War I

From Wikidata (CC0).

Key dates

  1. 1885
    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.
  2. 1887
    Starting in 1887, the new Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Tracy, began to rethink naval policy.
  3. 1893
    Union Iron Works conducted the first round of trials on November 3, 1893; on a 68 nmi (126 km) run, the ship achieved a speed of 21.26 kn (39.37 km/h).
  4. 1898
    In 1898 Olympia also boasted two Gatling guns and an arsenal of revolvers and rifles.
  5. 1898
    When war was declared on April 25, 1898, Dewey moved his ships to Mirs Bay, China.
  6. 1917
    On June 15, 1917, she ran aground in Long Island Sound, and she put in for repairs at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, along with the replacement of her eight-inch and 5"/40-caliber guns with 5"/51-caliber guns, which took eight months, but a July, 1917 article about
  7. 1919
    Olympia briefly returned to Charleston on November 24, 1919.
  8. 1922
    On December 9, 1922, she was decommissioned for the last time in Philadelphia and placed in reserve.
  9. 2011
    On 6 March 2011 the ISM published a Transfer Application (TAPP) similar to a Request for Proposals.

Dates and events quoted from the same Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Records that place someone aboard this ship

A ship history doesn't name everyone who served. These records do:

More history

Did a relative serve aboard USS Olympia (C-6)? Our free search checks 15 public sources and shows which records match, with links to the pages.