USS Olympia - From Cali to Philly via Manila 

Pinned post for Q&A :) As noted in the video, some weird EM interference was going on above decks (and also happened aboard NJ on the other side of the river) but vanished once we were behind enough steel within the ship. Anyone familiar with the area got any ideas?

"And as we walked around to find how you access the ship, I was gratified to notice the Bolivian Navy had sent a representative!" - I burst out laughing at that, HARD

Awesome! Olympia is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting museum ships in the world because most museum ships are from WWII and she provides a completely different perspective.

My great grandfather served on that ship. I saw it a few years ago. It’s definitely showing it’s age and needs a lot of work, but it is still a beautiful ship. Ships of that age are more a work of art than warship. Very classy.

I'm a big ocean liner fan and when I was over in the States I went to Philadelphia to see whats left of the SS United States. On the way to the harbour I happened to see the USS New Jersey on an ad in the taxi, looked out the window and the battleship was right there across the river. Went onboard that and then spotted the Olympia moored nearby and checked that out as well as the Becuna and the Moshulu restaurant ship. Ended up visiting five ships in one day without knowing the last four were even in the city when I got there.

the 466 lbs was for just the breech mechanism. as you opened it you said about it being heavy chunk of metal, and i was thinking "yeah, like 466lbs of it."

Hope you enjoyed your visit the Philadelphia area and thank you for highlighting this unappreciated piece of American Naval history. As the saying goes "You may fire when ready Gridley". Looking forward to your presentation on BB-62!

The Engine Order Telegraphs aren’t disconnected, the lever and the arrow are two different things. The lever of one is connected to the arrow of the other and vice versa. The reason for this is so that the bridge can use their lever to give an order, which appears as the arrow and the bell in the engine room, and then the engine room can acknowledge that they have received the order and are able to comply by using their lever to match the arrow, which appears as the arrow on the bridge. That way, the bridge knows that the engine room has noticed the new engine order and is responding appropriately.

Olympia is amazing. One of the 6pdr mountings near the bridge is from 1893. Really puts a perspective on the other museum ship just across the river.

My favorite US ship, I am so grateful she has been preserved.

The White Fleet color scheme is stately and magnificent. That was part of what made it "great". Solid content

The Olympia was the flagship of the US Navy Asiatic fleet under the command of Admiral George Dewey in the Spanish /American war. He had her equipped with a Ice Cream maker machine which was a first for a US Navy warship.

As a former Naval Officer, 1975-82, I was amazed how ornate and luxurious the Olympia’s Officer wardroom was, compared to the modern Cruiser I was serving on. The mahogany wood paneling was indeed impressive.

I was fortunate enough to be stationed in Philadelphia in 1998 when I re-enlisted and was able to do so onboard the USS Olympia! Great ship with lots of cool history. Thanks again.

You look SO HAPPY in the engine room! Awesome job. Keep up the good work.

As a child, I would see “Olympia” quite by surprise, usually on the way to the Philadelphia Art Museum, an usually stuck in traffic. Olympia would take me by surprise,looking quite incredible. I am so glad she has been saved, and is on display.

Lord it's been ages since I visited the Olympia as a kid when my family lived in NJ. Still it was exciting for a young fellow who's parents were both former Navy.

I have loved this ship since I built the Revell model kit in the early 1960's. I hung onto this model and in the 1980's I broke it down and rebuilt it but didn't finish it . During the COVID lockdown I finally finished it employing better materials and far better skills. So it has been 60 years in the making . An excellent kit for it's time.

Beautiful woodwork inside. The difference between the Officer and enlisted quarters is eye opening.

Went for a visit of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, a Liberty Ship in San Francisco but stayed for the day because it was a steaming day. Watched the volunteer crew of yes "old guys" fire up her boiler, ended up having lunch in the galley and latter watching her steam plant turned over a few revolution ahead and astern. Service in the engine room, nothing between the hull plates and the ocean, anything happy and you are going down. Hats off to snipes everywhere.

Thank you Drach for visiting my favorite historical warship. I've visited her many times and regularly donate to her upkeep. You got to see her engine room and boilers which I've never been able to do. Still, having you give detailed descriptions while visiting those spaces is probably more informative than my own presence on scene without a Drach voice-over.

Hell yeah! I love the Olympia. What a beautiful vessel. Visited it last year!

Been to Olympia, amazing ship. So strange to see the mating of warships passing into history and a view of the future.

I love visiting those ships, been all over them many times! Awesome staff there. Those windows around the casemates in the Captain's and Admiral's quarters are original, they would be replaced with metal versions before going into combat. So grateful the decision to toss all that beautiful wood before going into combat at Manila wasn't given so we still have it now.

The condition and presentation of the ship is impressive.

Toured the ship several times. Awesome to see that transition period in history.

Philly is a unique port. While it's not tops on the list of any particulate type of maritime activity, it is one of busiest in terms of overall confluence of traffic types. It has several major transatlantic ports, along with being the center point of a couple of inland and coastal barging networks, along with still having a fairly busy naval facility. Add in Philly airspace being not only for it's own airport, but is fairly close of an approach area for several major coastal airports. A lot of radio traffic going on there. To add, Philly is also fairly dry and has a lot of natrual static electricity, in no part also because of the confluence of sea water and fresh water. I used to haul containers out of Chicago. We had a fairly regular run from the ADM plant in Bushnell to Packer Marine in Philly hauling frozen natrual ingredients for shipment to Puerto Rico for pharmaceuticals. Spent a fair amount of time at the Walt Whitman in those days. Philly was always a very noisy place on the radio, needing a high squelch to get above the static noise due to the natrual static air of the place. So while I'm surprised at the *amount* of interference you got, I'm not surprised at all you getting some. The naturally dry and static environment coupled with a massive amount of radio traffic from several transport and telecom's makes Philly a very noisy place, signal wise.

Olympia is in serious need of dry docking for repairs to her hull, hope she gets there soon. She is too important to lose her. Only a decade ago there was serious talk about taking her out to sea and sinking her as an artificial reef. Glad that she was saved.

I don't think i've gotten to a Drac video this early before

I grew up not far from there, Drach, wish I'd known you were coming by. I've been aboard Olympia a few times, but I've never been to the engine or boiler rooms. Those steam engines are absolutely beautiful things, what I'd give to see them in action again someday. If I had Musk/Bezos/Gates money I'd make good and sure that Olympia was taken care of. She's the only one of her type and era left in the world, and she's a much-overlooked important link in the history of the US Navy.

Served on New Jersey in the eighties. Just went to visit her for the first time since then. Saw the Olympia and knew I had to visit her. Wonderful people running her. The tour guides for the Becuna were great, especially when they found out my son who was with me serves on submarines. The engine room on the Olympia was fascinating to me.

The engine room was fascinating with all the steam-punk looking machinery and the oversized tools.

An excellent video depicting a warship and technology of a bygone era; this period is particularly interesting.

Thanks for coming to Philly to see our ship, have a nice day and thumbs up.

Philly Drachism 25:14 "the expoldy stuff goes in there"

That 466 lbs number looks to be specifically for the 5"/51's breech block which, yeah, weighs as much as multiple people and still moves smooth as butter a century or so on

The engine room reminds me of the engine room of the Hudson River Day Line sidewheeler - I believe it was the Alexander Hamilton -- we took from NYC to Bear Mountain when I was a child. The sight and sound of the massive pistons have been ingrained in my brain ever since.

That is the ‘Pennsylvania’ / New Jersey border. As for the electromagnetic interference, everyone knows it is because of the Philadelphia Experiment. 😊

Having lived about ten miles away across the river, I have visited Olympia a few times in the last six years and looked forward to your tour. Sorry you had the frustrating experience but enjoyed it none the less. Now awaiting the USS Bacuna and of course the USS New Jersey!

I was just on the Liberty Ship Jeremiah O'Brien for Fleet week. To see the triple expansion engine at work is something you never forget. Fuel for the Liberty Ship was fuel oil vs. coal. Thank you for posting such a comprehensive tour of this iconic Navy ship.

The Bolivian Navy ship is _Santa Cruz de la Sierra_ of 0.02 tons displacement, and it offers tours as well -- four cents for a two minute narration. Sadly it's a capital ship so no student discount. The gift shop is on the lower deck, accessible through a balsa wood "hatch" just in front of the single 16" gun turret.

I served in the Bolivian navy for 4 years. We used to stay up all night telling each other stories.

Ryan Szymanski was using the ECM on USS New Jersey to jam you.

Was here in May, loved getting to check it out and relax on one of the hammocks

Cruiser or Battleship? US Navy: *Yes*

Glad you had a great time where i have called home the last 40 years

This was amazing. I love older ships like this, there are few left and fewer good tour videos of them.

So cool though. I grew up seeing these. Went aboard when I was a kid. Drive by the two almost everyday fighting traffic on Columbus. Lol Been watching you for a good while now. Super cool having you come by my hometown.

Drach, when looking at the 5in/40 you talked about "firing options." You'll find instead that those panels fold out of the way to allow the gun to traverse freely to fire at a range of angles instead of a few fixed positions.

I love how many bits of the ship Drach got to touch and play with on this tour.

Best ship historical channel on the web

8:15 the tug boat behind you is Jupiter which launched 1902. They’re currently trying to fix it up enough to help tow or follow the New Jersey to dry dock 3/21. Jupiter was there in 1942 for the launchingof the New Jersey and was there to catch the lines. But the New Jersey crossed the river and beached itself in new jersey.

As an audio engineer. Different cities have different bands that are useable. My first time out of state for work was in Miami this year. We were by the airport and most of our wireless channels were jammed up from that. Also TV and cellphone tower clusters are terrible and frequencies will jump up at random if you are in the UHF bands.

I have a framed illustration of US Naval uniforms of 1900, and the Olympia is in the background, identified by the cap band on an enlisted man's uniform. Yes, the Olympia is shown with a gray hull.

The Ben Franklin bridge in the background used to be painted blue( not sure when they painted it because I was a kid but it might have been for the bicentennial) The Olympia was docked a little closer and they got blue splatter all over her. It was kind of a big story back then.

I love touring this ship. With the somewhat small crew and limited budget it sometimes seems like a group of guys with an awesome garage restoring a classic.... naval vessel. Oh, and as to the electromagnetic interference. Well, you've heard of the "Philadelphia Experiment". :D

She was commanded by Admiral Dewey from Montpelier Vt at Manila, there is a large painting in the capitol (Montpelier Vt) of Dewey on the bridge of Olympia. I take Scouts there from Vt. every time we go by

Thank you very much for the guided tour. I'm glad she was still afloat for your visit. I just subscribed.

Never a disappointment. Thank you for another great video.

14:25 - only to be blown into tiny shards by a very irritated Black Dragon. What a fantastic example of Triple Expansion engines! Impressive to see Titanic-era propulsion.

I love the old ships. I went to see the Mikasa in 1997 when I read on deployment on HMAS Hobart.. 👍 good times

Haha...Hi I was thinking about asking if you had discussed the Olympia yesterday and yes, now you have. Thank you very much from an Olympia resident.

I took a tour of the Olympia in 2014 and it was a great history lesson.

I live about 30 mins out of Philly sand I used to go down and see it as much as my parents would be willing to take me when I was a kid lol, beautiful ship.

She should be in the San Francisco Bay area. Her hull was built in SF at Union Iron Works and fitted out at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Plus when her main gun turrets were modernized by removing the bronze and babbitt bearings and replaced with roller-bearings, this was performed at MINS....Have a story about the tooling that was built to machine the bearing races......

All the years I lived in that city and looked at that ship always hypnotized by its unique beauty and not once have I been on her.... how sad for me because wow she is something. I love the office room.

Thank you thank you! I have had an obsession with the Great White fleet since I heard about it as a lad.

A lovely throwback to a few years ago where I got given 30 minutes on a school trip to the USA to run down to the quayside and see it.

I wish they'd bring her back over here to Puget Sound. The city of Olympia, the capital of Washington state, has come up with the money to rebuild the old waterfront in a way that's (theoretically) going to be similar to how the harbor was when the ship was built.

Olympia was the first US warship wired for electric lighting and had a small generator to supple the power..

Ah yes, the ship that got an equally historic ship (BB-3) scrapped. FDR had a choice between Oregon and Olympia, and for some reason he chose Olympia. The rest is history.

Knock my socks off tour! Having served and lived aboard the LPH-7, and the CV-62 as a LT. (jg) and a LT., I would have loved to see how my fellow officers lived at sea 100 years ago. Maybe next time ?

Always look forward to Wednesday’s Rum Ration! For the audio; -make sure your mike pack is away from your cell phone. Cells are constantly blasting bursts and any nearby mike pack can pick it up -ADR is your friend! Your editor should be able to point you in the right direction, if not happy to help

If I am remembering correctly, there is both an air traffic control transmitter on VHF/UHF and a Marine band radio station just down river from the Olympia. Either of those could cause considerable interference with any type of wireless device.

One of the highrises over your shoulder on the Jersey side is copper hospital in camden where my son was just born and the large highrise on the Philly side thats purposely made to look like a cruise ship is where we smokes on the roof once when my buddy was the realtor manager of the building lol thats where all of the big name sports players of the city live

Thanks for sharing your tour of a very interesting and historic cruiser, Drach.

I was just there last year in October. Mostly to see the SS United States. But got some good shots of the Olympia via my iPhone. Thanks for posting!

Living in Philadelphia I love our naval history and what we have in the city. The EM issues, I had a few people offer things, but not sure of what is right

Belle visite pour ce navire d·anthologie !! Merci ...

Eu and us wireless microphones use different frequencies bands to prevent outside interference. you may have been using a frequency band on your wireless mic that a nearby tv station was also using.

Also on that 5" 50 caliber i imagine that weight is the weight of the actual breach plug by itself, that would make the most sense.

I have been there a couple times. I was very impressed by the Olympia. The Becuna SS-319 next to Olympia was the first submarine I was assigned to.

I think the 446 lbs was the breech mechanism only, since that's where the inscription was, and what it seemed to bedescribing. There's probably a different one describing the rest of the gun, but if it's in the same place as with the smaller 5 inch gun, on top of the barrel, it would be too high to see without climbing on top of it.

The 8" guns were kept by the Navy until the 1960's. The head of a veterans group which met on the Olympia, located the original guns. From what i heard, the Olympia Association acted indesicively to the point that the Navy scrapped them before they made up their minds about accepting them for the ship. This is what i was told almost 50 years ago. There is a lot more to this story.

I live outside of Philly and visited the Olympia a few years ago. I took some video with my phone and noticed the same EM interference. I asked one of the tour guides about it, and the response was one of the most Philadelphian things I've ever heard - "That's your problem! Welcome to Philly!"

I am so fascinated with late 19th century war ships that I hope you can redo this video with subtitles please 🙏 great Chanel !

Having a spare wired Microphone always on hand has been helpful.

Is it possible that the interference came from USS New Jersey, just across the river? I watch Ryan almost every day, and in one episode, he explained that they still use WWII radios all the time, which did not have modern "suppressors" like modern electronics do. A possibility, but I'm only guessing.

I was aboard this ship in Camden, NJ. She is truly a gem of history. Less seriously, I kept thinking the ship looked like a cartoon, like I would imagine a tattoo on Popeye's arm would look :)

Aliens didnt want you disclosing the important bits. Olympia is the ship I always thought of when I pictured "Thunderchild"

Olympia's a beautiful lady, truly one of a kind and that's before over a century of changes in sea power!

The electromagnetic Interference is residual energy from the Philadelphia Experiment. Probably should have mentioned that beforehand.

That's a beautiful paint job.

There are 2 Engine Order Telegraphs, one for each of the 2 engines.

I have a copper tin with a mirror mounted in the middle with the flag ship Olympia above and a sailor on one side and a Spanish war soldier on the other side that I found in an old farm house

Ooooo I was hoping you would have stopped at Olympia! Glad you did!

That 446lb marking may have been just for the breech block. - edit: It gave me a chuckle that the picture at the end was one of Olympia's guns aimed at the New Jersey.

Yay, Wednesday!

Thank you great tour.

That's a gorgeous ship