…USS Reina Mercedes.
"On April 29, 1898, Almirante (Admiral) Pascual Cervera y Topete of the Spanish Navy steamed out of Cape Verde islands with a fleet of four armored cruisers and three destroyers. His destination: the West Indies, to defend Spain's empire against the American fleet. Hampered by a number of deficiencies, the fleet struggled into the harbor at Santiago de Cuba. Meeting and later joining the squadron there was the Reina Mercedes, an unarmored cruiser capabale of propulsion under both sail and steam. Built in Cartagena, Spain, in 1887, she had become the station ship at Santiago in 1892. By 1898, she was in such a poor state of repair that her armament was largely removed for use as shore batteries.
Her part in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba on July 3rd, 1898 (a resounding victory for the U.S. Navy) was little more than to absorb shellfire and to act as an obstruction to navigation. The Spanish had hoped to tow her into the channel and sink her, denying access to the harbor. Even in that, she was not entirely successful; she sank in the shallows, and the channel was left open. "Yet it was not entirely useless," Spanish Lieutenant Jose Muller y Tejeiro, second-in-command of the naval forces in Santiago would remark, "since the enemy could not take possession of her, as she is all riddled by bullets which she received that night, and I do not believe she can ever again be used."
But the lieutenant was wrong. Over the course of her seventy-year life, the Reina Mercedes would serve not one but two navies, and become a fixture (in more than one sense) at the Naval Academy…"
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