On May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey, aboard Flagship Olympia, led a squadron of state-of-the-art steel warships into Manila Bay in the Philippines. There, Olympia fired the first shots of the Spanish-American War, bursting America's isolationist bubble to intervene on the foreign policies of another country. The power of Olympia, along with the rest of the new steel fleet, allowed the United States to decimate the old Spanish squadron in the harbor and disrupt the Spanish Empire. An era of world recognition for the United States was born and Olympia became a forever significant symbol of America's ascendant hegemony.
