The U.S. Navy has a long history of purchasing foreign designs after it has fallen behind in various areas of warship technology. During the rapid renaissance of the then thoroughly obsolescent Navy in the mid-1880s, Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney dispatched Commander W. E. Chadwick to England to purchase the latest in protected cruiser plans from Armstrong, Mitchell &. Co., Elswick. Armstrong and its head designer, Sir William White, were for many years famous for cruisers, which were exported to countries around the world. To defend against both horizontal and plunging shellfire, a protected cruiser had a curved protective armor layer rather than side armor alone.
White’s design for the USS Charleston (Cruiser No. 2) had originally been prepared in hopes of a sale to Spain and was based on a pair of sisters built at Armstrong’s Low Walker yard for Japan, the Naniwa and the Takachino. That design, in turn, had been based on the Esmeralda, built by Armstrong’s for Chile but sold by that country to Japan in 1894 as the Izumi. Using funds from the Act of 3 August 1886, the U.S. Navy ordered the Charleston from Union Iron Works at San Francisco, California. The ship’s keel was laid on 20 January 1887, and she was launched on 19 July 1888. When the Charleston was commissioned on 26 December 1889 under Captain (later Rear Admiral) George C. Remey, she was the first U.S. Navy cruiser not equipped with any form of sail propulsion and was, if only briefly, the fastest ship in the fleet.
In one important respect, the Charleston departed from White’s design. The cruiser employed two old- fashioned horizontal compound steam engines rather than the latest vertical reciprocating engines. The Charleston’s engines, also built by Union Iron Works, each had two cylinders, one of 44-inch and the other of 85-inch diameter, with both having a stroke of 36 inches. The Charleston’s six cylindrical boilers all exhausted through her single funnel, and she was equipped with three 16-kilowatt steam-driven electrical generator sets.
The engines performed poorly on the ship’s original sea trials, largely because of the use of incompatible steel crossheads and slippers cast from iron, while her air pumps provided too little vacuum in the engine room, and the engines suffered from overheated bearings. Matters were soon rectified, however, and on her acceptance trials the ship made 18.2 knots at 6,666 indicated horsepower for four hours. Although she had not made her contract speed of 18.9 knots, the Navy was happy to take delivery of its first state-of-the-art cruiser.
The ship displaced 3,730-tons normal and 4,390-tons full load and was 320 feet overall (312 feet at the waterline) with a 46-foot beam. Charleston’s draft was 18.5 feet at normal displacement and 20 feet 11 inches at full load. The intended main armament was to have included single 8-inch/30-caliber guns fore and aft, but the new Mk 3 mountings were not ready in time, and she was completed with four 6-inch guns mounted side-by-side behind the low bulwarks intended for the 8-inch guns, which were soon substituted. Also carried were six of the same 6-inch guns mounted along the sides on the main deck amidships. The secondary armament included four 6-pounder, two 3-pounder, two 1-pounder, and four 37-mm quick- firing guns and two gatling guns. All were disposed to fire from casemates on the first platform, open locations on the low superstructure, and the fighting tops on the two masts. Four fixed tubes could launch 14-inch torpedoes. The armor was typical of contemporary protected cruisers, with a 2-inch horizontal deck and sloping sides 3 inches thick. The shields for the main guns and the conning tower were fabricated from 2-inch armor plate. She was designed for a crew of 34 officers and 296 enlisted personnel and could also carry 30 Marines.
Charleston’s boilers burned coal, of which the ship normally carried 323 tons, intended to give the cruiser a range of 2,890 nautical miles at 10 knots and, at 16 knots, a range of 1,184 nautical miles. With 682 tons of coal on board in overload condition, she had a nominal range of 2,460 nautical miles at 16 knots. In practice, however, on her first Pacific deployment she suffered from leaking boiler tubes and could attain only 14 knots at the outset; by the end of the voyage, the ship could barely make 12 knots.
Her first operational deployment began on 10 April 1890 as flagship of the Pacific Squadron, which patrolled eastern Pacific waters. From 19 August to 31 December 1891, she served as flagship of the Asiatic Fleet and then, after another stint in the Pacific Squadron, she departed for the U.S. East Coast from San Francisco, arriving at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 23 October 1892 after a leisurely cruise around South America. The cruiser participated in the Colombian Exposition International Naval Review at New York City on 26 April 1893. Sent south to defend U.S. interests during the Brazilian revolution in the summer of 1893, the Charleston continued on to the Pacific, arriving on 8 July 1894 at San Francisco, where she was decommissioned to reserve status on 27 July 1896.
The Charleston was recommissioned on 5 May 1898 for Spanish-American War service and sailed to Guam as escort for three transports carrying troops to capture the island. On arrival, the U.S. forces found a Spanish garrison only 59 strong and fortifications that lacked gunpowder. The Spaniards—who had not yet learned of the war—wisely surrendered on 21 June. The cruiser and her charges then sailed to the Philippines to support Admiral George Dewey’s squadron, which had already decimated the weak Spanish fleet defending Manila Bay. The Charleston participated in the final bombardment of Manila on 13 August 1898 and assisted in the capture of Subic Bay from Philippine native insurrectionists in the summer of 1899. On 2 November of that year, she struck an uncharted reef some ten nautical miles east of Camiguin Island and was wrecked beyond repair. There were no casualties, however, and the entire crew made their way in the ship’s boats to Camiguin, where the USS Helena (Gunboat No. 9) picked them up ten days later.