USS "Olympia": Herald of Empire Book

Until now there has never been a complete ship's biography of the sole survivor of America's new steel navy, USS Olympia. Part of a congressionally-mandated program to build a modern fleet prior to the turn of the twentieth century, the protected cruiser became famous as Admiral George Dewey's flagship at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898 during the Spanish-American War and later returned the body of the Unknown Soldier from France after World War I. Today, the Olympia displays her traditional garb of "buff and white" as a naval shrine at Penn's Landing on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is her story, told by a military historian who served as curator of the Olympia Association while earning his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. B.F. Cooling presents a flesh and steel history of the pivotal warship that transitioned the eras of commerce raiding and battle fleet confrontation in naval warfare. To portray the life and times of this famous ship, he describes the captains who manned her bridge, the admirals who strode her decks, and the "swabbies" who labored behind the guns and in the infernos of fire-room and coal-passing details below decks. From her conceptual beginnings on drawing boards in Washington, through her construction by the Union Iron works of San Francisco, to her maiden voyage to the Far East and her moment in the sun at Manila Bay, Cooling gives readers a vivid picture of this "Queen of the Pacific" and pride of the fleet. But, fame was fleeting, and through the years Olympia has battled against age, scrapping, and the advent of big-gun battleships. Finally in 1954, a veteran's preservation group brought her out of retirement and began to restore her greatness. With this landmark study, the once shamefully neglected cruiser regains her position at the head of the battle line of America's historic ships.Read More