Efforts in Philadelphia to Save Showpiece Ships

(NYTimes) They made an impressive display of America’s seafaring might, the aging maritime stars moored along both sides of the Delaware River.
There is the 1892 cruiser Olympia, the oldest steel warship afloat, whose guns and those of the ships it led blasted away a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, announcing America’s arrival as a naval power. The ocean liner United States still holds the record for fastest westbound trans-Atlantic crossing. And the nation’s most decorated battleship, the World War II-era New Jersey, repelled swarms of enemy aircraft. Continued

Image: USS Olympia (Library of Congress).