USS BENNINGTON

USS Bennington was the last of three Yorktown gunboats that were built at Chester, Pennsylvania. The ship was commissioned in June of 1891 and deployed to the Caribbean and South America with the Squadron of Evolution until mid 1892. Then, she went on brief assignment with the South Atlantic Squadron and was thereafter transferred into European waters until 1893.

The gunboat was deployed a second time to the Mediterranean between 1893 and 1904, when USS Bennington went to the Pacific and worked along the Pacific coastlines of South and North America for over four years. This included several trips to Hawaii.

USS Bennington went to the Far East in 1898, taking possession of Wake, which is a U.S. territory that was an atoll at the time. She also took parts in Philippines suppression and visited China and Japan. Decommissioned shortly after that trip in 1901, the ship was overhauled and re-commissioned in 1903 to work with the Pacific Squadron. In 1905, a boiler explosion that killed more than 60 people and left the ship half sunk and beached. The vessel was towed to San Francisco Bay, and was not repaired. In 1910 the USS Bennington was sold, converted to a barge, moved to Hawaii and employed her use until the mid-1920s when she was scuttled at sea.