Design and Construction
The Yorktown class gunboats—unofficially considered third-class cruisers—were the product of a United States Navy design attempt to produce compact ships with good seakeeping abilities and, yet, able to carry a heavy battery. Yorktown was authorized in the 1886 fiscal year, and the contract for her construction was awarded to the William Cramp and Sons shipyard of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The hull for Yorktown was designed by the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair while the mechanical design was left to the Cramp yard. Yorktown's keel was laid on 14 May 1887.
The ship was launched on 28 April 1888 and sponsored by Mary Cameron, the daughter of U.S. Senator Don Cameron of Pennsylvania. The dynamite-gun cruiser Vesuvius was launched a few minutes after Yorktown in the same ceremony. According to a news account, 25 United States Senators, 180 Congressmen, the Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney, and the governors of six states attended the dual ceremony, many arriving from Washington, D.C., via the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's passenger steamer SS Columbia. By 19 March 1889, Cramp had completed Yorktown and was prepared to turn her over to the Navy.
Read more about this topic: USS Yorktown (PG-1)
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