USS OLYMPIA
USS Olympia is perhaps the most evocative American naval memorial as she retains most of her late 19th century features and fittings and is the oldest steel US warship afloat. Built at Union Iron Works in San Francisco she commissioned in February 1895 as a protected cruiser, but her design and construction were anything but plain sailing.
In 1887, William Collins Whitney, the Secretary of the Navy, authorised the construction of a pair of coastal defence battleships which would become and but the following year Whitney managed to convince Congress to
