Medford mail tribune., June 30, 1957, Image 48

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Olynpia, from wigcli QkVtaty gav immortal command, seems destined for &
Mortal grav. CrmWr k srlflwh ii tarly photo shortly after it was commissioned.
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ttip Seeks a Home
Constitution whicj wc fme)'(n)
Wr of If 1 2, is among few
ships to find peaceful frjet.
hy Jerry Klein
. Olympia now lies rotting in Philadelphia Navy Yard, too
old for active service ona too enpensiye to mainiau
You may fire when ready, Gridley!"
haf) become a motto of American history. Every
fchoolboy knows these were the words of Ad
miral George Dewey as he touched off the Battle
of Iganila Bay on May 1, 1898.
The admiral has long been gone. So has
Ccjptain Gridley. And while the ship fromQhich
they did battle that fateful morning is still
aflogt, she too may soon vanish. Decommissioned
in 1922, the one-time flagship of America's Asi
atic Squadron the cruiser U.S.S. Olympia has
kBid rotting at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Occasionally, visitors would come to see the
historic vessel, but maintenance costs ran high,
and the Navy warned that the OlympQ would
have to be scrapped unless someone else took
re5Jonsibility for her.
The Cruiser Olympia Association, a Phila
delphia civic group, has been trying desperately
to Sv8 the cruiser from the last long voyage
into tli limbo of lighting ships.
Rjt maintaining an outmoded vessel merely
1 rlic costs money, and only a handful of
th famous ships that helped make America a
jrat power have retired to a peaceful old age
in a place of honor on quiet water.
Th oklst among them is the U.S.S. Con
sitlhukm, launched at Baltimore in 1797 just in
limw for the naval war with France and Tripoli.
TW Constellation also fought Britain in the
fu of 112.
Dm iS ways in Boston, just six weeks after
the Compilation, came a little larger sister
frigate named the U.S.S. Constitution, which
lost no time getting into the struggles with
France and Tripoli. But it was in the War of
1812 that the Const i(i(Don won the sobriquet
"Old Ironsides."
Nevertheless, in 1830 she was slated for the
scrap heap, only to be saved by Oliver Wendell
Holmes, who pleaded for her life with his poem,
"Old Ironsides." In the 1920s, school children
helped raise money to restore the Constitution,
and she still is maintained as a memorial in the
Boston Navy Yard.
So proud is the Lone Star State of the battle
ship U.S.S. Texas that her citizens maintain her
as a shrine in San Jacinto. The ship saw action
briefly in World War I, but really hit her stride
during World War II, in the attacks on North
fflfrica, Normandy, Southern France, Iwo Jima,
and Okinawa.
Of strictly World War II vintage is the carrier
U.S.S. Enterprise which wreaked havoc all or
the Pacific, destroying almost 1,000 Japanese
planes, sinking more than 100 ships, and earning
20 battle stars. After V-J Day, Congress was
urged to preserve the Enterprise as the "one
vessel that most nearly symbolizes the history
of the Navy in this war." But the gallant irrier
was put in mothballs at Hayonne, N J. Soon she
too will be on her way to the scrap heap.
One vessel of World War II fame that is being
preserved as a relic is the battleship U.S.S.
Arizona, sunk on the "day that will live in
infamy." She took more than 1,000 men to their
graves as, with colors raised, she went to the
bottom of Pearl Harbor. Today the resurrected
Arizona still Hies her Hag a memorial of Amer
ica's past and a challenge for her future.
Family Weekly. June 30. 19.77