"Save the Olympia!": Preserving Dewey's Flagship in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia

The cruiser Olympia, known widely for its associations with Admiral George Dewey and the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay, has moldered along Philadelphia's Delaware River waterfront ever since being decommissioned there by the US Navy in 1922. Veterans' groups advocated for the ship's preservation, but none succeeded until 1958, when the Cruiser Olympia Association secured rights to restore Olympia and open it to the public as a museum ship. This essay shows how the Olympia's preservation saga endowed shipboard interpretation with ideas about gender, race, and nationalism that, today, undermine possibilities for engaging a new generation of preservation advocates.