Background
On April 18, 1898 the U.S. Navy acquired a tugboat that had been constructed in San Francisco a decade earlier by the Union Iron Works. This tugboat, along with another that had been built in Philadelphia, became part of the Navy’s fleet when the United States was preparing for war against Spain. The Oakland Tribune ran an article about them; its headline was “TUGBOATS IN UNCLE SAM’S SERVICE.”
About three months after being acquired by the Navy, the San Francisco-based tugboat was...