From Kevin Smith at the Cruiser Olympia at Independence Seaport Museum:
“Today the crew performed the task of a gunners gang, taking down the traversing gear for our #4 5″/51 broadside gun, which we use for demonstration. The gearing was assessed to be too dirty, slowing the travel of the gun left and right. The gearing was taken apart, cleaned thoroughly, and greased anew”
USS Olympia (C-6) was of course Dewey’s flag at Manila Bay, commissioned 5 February 1895 after her completion in San Francisco.
Laid up in 1906, she was brought back out of mothballs in 1916 with the Great War on the horizon and her 5″/40 cals that she carried against the Spanish were replaced with the newer 5″/51s that were standard on battleships (as secondary armament) and cruisers of that time.
She carried and used those weapons in training new bluejacket gunners during the war, then in support of the U.S. Expeditionary Forces to Russia during the civil war in that country, and in carrying the Unknown Soldier of WWI back from France.
It’s nice to see, that although she was decommissioned as a warship 9 December 1922 (now some 93-years ago) and has been used as a relic and museum ship since, at least one of these old 5-inch casemate guns is still fit for service.
