USS
OLYMPIA
A Survivor of the New Steel Navy Poses a Big Question for Today's Americans SS Olympia, launched in 1892, was a brilliant addition to the new navyrhe US had finally got around to building in the mid- l 880s after the long years of neglect following the Civil War of a quarter century earlier. She was built to extend American reach in the Pacific world, where the nation had growing interests, ranging from the "Open Door" policy in China, to how the Pacific islands should be governed. Appropriately, Olympia was built in the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, with armor plate, guns and armament imported from the East Coast where the heavy industry needed to produce such things was located. Strong as she was, she would nor have stood up against a European barrleship, which ran to over twice her size with guns firing projectiles weighing four rimes as much as the shells thrown by Olympia's guns. Bur in Far Eastern waters, where Japan and China had no modern warships and where British and European powers posted their old cruisers, she was indeed, as Franklin Cooling says in his biography of this remarkable survivor, a queen.
U
America on the World Stage Ir is fashionable to decry United Stares "imperialism" in this era when America's Manifest Destiny ro expand and become a major actor on the world stage was widely routed. Bur after the century just ended, when liberal democracy (including its basic conservative values) was again and again on trial for its life throughout rhe world, we may be grateful rhar America did resolve to become a power on rhe world stage. Britain,
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Edward Moran captured the exuberance ofthe day in his painting ofUSS Olympia'sfirst visit to New York harbor in 1899 in a navalparade celebratingAmerican victory over the Spanish. (US Naval Academy Museum) the European nations, and Russia would nor be free rodaywirhour rhe heroic efforts of the American intervention in two World Wars and in the more recent perilous Cold War confrontation. China and India would be under foreign domination as would other Asian nations. These are hard facts we might deplore bur would be powerless to change-if America had nor played its interventionist role. How long American freedoms would have lasted in such a world is an open question. The confrontation with Spain was our first major step into world politics. Thar step was nor based simply on American aggrandizement, bur on American principles shared by free peoples everywhere. C uba was seething with revolt, which the Spanish Empire suppressed ruthlessly, and rhiswas rhe proximate cause of the war set off by the accidental explosion of the US barrleship Maine in Havana in 1898. The situation in the Philippines was similar. Both nascent nations became free, rhe Philippines under a US prorecrorarewhich Filipinos supported then and later, despite the Moro revolt.
Like any great movement in history, the US awakening to great power status was a mixed bag, with accompanying errors and, yes, some crimes which most Americans rue today. Bur rhe American Republic can confuse rhe world and itself by decrying the enormous, critically important achievements of its free people intervening on behalf of freedom throughout the world. If that confusion ever becomes serious enough, freedom will be the loser, and may soon find itself again at risk through our the world. Where rhe balance should be struck, short of mindless triumphalism on one hand and abnegation of rhe responsibilities of power on the other, is a question for each citizen ro decide. Olympia's story poses rhar question as ir was mer by Americans just over a century ago . -PETER STANFORD NOTE: Paul Quinn s story ofanother notable
survivor, Chiles Huascar of1865, traces the technological change which ushered in the New Navy. In our next, the story ofthe New Navy will be continued into the age of the submarine and aircraft carrier. SEA HISTORY 94, AUTUMN 2000