armored ship thursday

while not strictly speaking an armored ship having been converted to a gunboat from a merchantman, USS Topeka did serve with many armored ships in the USN. built in 1881 in Germany as SS Diogenes and sold to British interests from whence she was purchased by the USN for use in the Spanish-American War she was renamed USS Topeka. after arming the ship with six-4"naval rifles, six-3pdr. rifles and two-1pdr. plus a Colt machine gun Topeka was sent with other units of the fleet to Cuba. in Cuban waters USS Topeka was engaged in several gun battles with Spanish forces and even helped sink a Spanish gunboat. after the war Topeka was relegated to patrol duties in the Caribbean. she later was used as a training ship and was rigged with sails to give the trainees a feel for such a method of propulsion. in fact the Coast Guard still does this with officer candidates aboard the Eagle. the old vessel soldiered on for many more years in the USN until scrapped in 1930. USS Topeka was 259ft. long and displaced 2,755tons, she made a top speed of 16kts. these pictures all have captions so i'll only say the top two are of Topeka as armed and used in the Spanish-American War. the bottom two are after rigging with sails for training purposes. she was quite a handsome vessel in both guises.