Save the Olympia!!!
CDR Salamander writes:
Do you want to help save the USS Olympia?
Well, there is something you can do.
There is a group in Philadelphia that just formed several months ago and received a non profit status. Their only concern is preserving and keeping Olympia safe from becoming an artificial reef.
They are The Friends of The cruiser Olympia. Pay them a visit and if you wish, join them in serving a historic and one of a kind ship.
Just a few facts from their site;
World’s oldest floating steel warship.
Sole surviving naval ship of Spanish-American War and revived American Steel Navy.
Dewey’s flagship at Battle of Manila Bay, marking U.S. emergence as world power.
National Historic Landmark and one-of-a-kind, as no sister ships were built.
Carried body of the Unknown Soldier from France to U.S. in 1921.
Awarded “Official Project” status of Save America’s Treasures program.
National Historic Engineering Landmark, due to her triple-expansion steam engines, the first installed in a U.S. Navy ship.
wake up people
redo the Olympia and have her engine’s redone to oil burning. and use her for the same thing as the constitution is used for moving under her own power out in the bay to salute holiday’s and historic event’s.
I know this can be done with the right planning,
and a group of people to be a preservation commitee.
As on the SS United State’s.
A wonderful, historical asset!
As the ship’s biographer (USS OLYMPIA – HERALD OF EMPIRE (Naval Institute Press) I am appalled at (a) Independence Saport Museum who has done wonders interpreting and maintaining the historic ship could not anticipate the giantic costs of preservation when they took it over to beging with and (b) the truly bvious model of HMS Victory and Cutty Sark – put her out of the water in drydock somewhere (Philadelphia Navy Yard) and thus preserve her in that fashion. Let’s get innovative folks – her history and our heritage demands more!
Really hate to see her go! A national treasure.
Years ago, when I was a student in elementary school, my mother obtained permission from the principal for me to leave school early. She drove me down to the Wilmington, DE port to visit a warship. Sometimes ships, like a destroyer from the active fleet, showed up in port for civilian boarding visits. This ship was different.
What struck me most about the USS Olympia (C-6) was the odd color scheme, a kind of muddy gold and white, as I recall. The ship was quiet–I think we were the only visitors at the time. There might have been a naval officer or historian to lead us around the deck and inside the main Monitor-style turrets. And there there was a plaque somewhere commemorating one of the most famous, and calmest, commands in U.S. Naval history, issued by Commodore Dewey: “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” Whereupon, the naval squadron, of which the Olympia was the flagship, rapidly destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay.
Today, the Olympia is permanently berthed in Philadelphia, at the Independence Seaport Museum, at Penn’s Landing. She is maintained by NROTC Midshipmen from Villanova University and the University of Pennsylvania. Her guns are silent these days, unlike those of the USS Constitution, the oldest ship on active duty in the Navy, which fires a lusty salute each morning in Boston Harbor.
Thanks for highlighting this unique warship.