The second USS Amphitrite—the lead ship in her class of iron-hulled, twin-screw monitors—was laid down, on June 23, 1874, by order of President Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of Navy George M. Robeson at Wilmington, Delaware, by the Harlan and Hollingsworth yard; launched on 7 June 1883; sponsored by Miss Nellie Benson, the daughter of a Harlan and Hollingsworth official; and commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, on 23 April 1895, Captain William C. Wise in command.
The USS Amphitrite moored at the Boston Navy Yard.
Color postcard from 1897
The Amphitrite-class monitors were a class of four U.S. Navy monitors ordered in the aftermath of the Virginius affair with Spain in 1873. The four ships of the class included Amphitrite, Monadnock, Terror, and Miantonomoh. A fifth ship originally of the same design, Puritan, was later fitted with extra armor and designated as a unique class.
USS Monadnock, a monitor of the Amphitrite class, crossing the Pacific Ocean during the Spanish–American War.
USS Monadnock prior to her launch at the Burgess shipyard, Vallejo, California, 19 September 1883. Monadnock is the only known ship to have been built by Burgess.
Fitting the main guns to a turret of USS Miantonomoh at the New York Navy Yard, circa 1890
USS Amphitrite, lead ship of the Amphitrite class, at the Boston Navy Yard, 1890s
