Farewell, Olympia?

Philadelphia

‘Our Admiral’s Return’ (1899)

Ensconced within the catacomb-like coal room deep in the bowels of the USS Olympia, wherein soot-swaddled men endured 120-degree heat and singeing hair to keep the steamship prowling during the Battle of Manila Bay, our guide Harry Burkhardt encourages picture-snapping tourists to closely examine the images later.

“There are ghosts,” the volunteer docent and merchant marine captain intones. 

Unfortunately, the clock may be ticking on whatever phantasmic revelations the spectral crew has planned for its landlubber visitors. If the Independence Seaport Museum cannot raise $20 million for essential repairs, or convince another group or museum to adopt her, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection will likely be commissioned to accomplish what the Spanish fleet in 1898 could not: Sink the Olympia as coral reef primer, abandoning her spirits to swim with the fishes off Cape May rather than haunt Philadelphia tourists. 

The waterfront atmosphere has taken on the air of a living funeral for what historic ships manager Jesse Lebovics
astutely dubs “a unique Victorian Age symbol of the shift in the American mindset from that of a large colony to world power.” One recent sun-drenched Saturday, for example, the Filipino Executive Council of Greater Philadelphia held its 34th annual (and perhaps final) celebration of Philippine independence from Spanish colonial domination, complete with a wreath-laying ceremony on Olympia’s deck, a jazzy Filipino youth brass band, picnic lunch, and polite elision of the Philippine-American War (1899-1902). 

“If this boat is sunk, it will be a little bit like they’re sinking our Liberty Bell,” council president Rommel Rivera lamented, and a city councilwoman’s promise that a City Hall conference room might be available for next year’s celebration was not regarded as much of a consolation prize.