Years ago I posted some pics of my first engine tour of the Cruiser Olympia. For those not familiar with her, she's the ship Commodore Dewey sailed into Manilla Bay in 1989 and uttered the famous phrase "You may fire when you are ready Gridley" (Captain Gridley). The Olympia carried the body of the Unknown Soldier home from europe after World War 1. She was launched in 1892 and is the oldest steal ship in the world still in water. The Olympia was designed as the US flagship, meant to show the world our development, so she was designed very ornately with lots of beautiful woodwork and fancy cast brass fittings. Its a real work of art and extremely complete to this day.

Saturday morning I had the honor of taking an extremely rare hardhat tour of the ship. Beyond visiting the engine room we started at the bow, saw the brig and forward torpedo room, crawled down into the ammunition storage room, saw the rudder controls aft, crawled into upper and lower coal bunkers, and original generators.

Thought some of you might like seeing some pics