USS Yale ( 1888 ) The USS " Yale was originally built as the SS " City of Paris " , between 1888 and 1889 by J . & G . Thompson at Glasgow , Scotland . The U . S . Navy chartered her on 27 April 1898 from the International Navigation Co . ; the Navy renamed her USS " Yale , and commissioned her on 2 May 1898 under the command of Captain W . C . Wise . In 1918 she was recommissioned as USS " Harrisburg " , under the command of Commander Wallace Bertholf . After the war she returned to commercial service and was scrapped in 1923 . Navy Service . The same day she was acquired , she put to sea from New York , bound for Puerto Rico to patrol and help locate Admiral Cervera ' s Spanish fleet during the Spanish - American War . On 8 May , two days after her arrival off Puerto Rico , " Yale " encountered and captured the Spanish cargo ship " Rita " , installed a prize crew in her , and sent her into Charleston , South Carolina . The following day , she had another brief encounter with the enemy off San Juan when a Spanish armed transport came out and fired a few shots . " Yale " was far more weakly armed than her opponent and retired from the scene . She returned to San Juan the following day , where a shore battery at Fort San Cristobal , under the orders of Capt . Angel Rivero Mendez , fired two poorly aimed shots at her with their Ordóñez guns , with both shots falling far short . Pursuant to her orders , " Yale " patrolled off Puerto Rico until 13 May , at which time she cleared the area for St . Thomas in the Danish West Indies ( Virgin Islands ) to telegraph her report to Washington . She returned briefly to Puerto Rico on 16 and 17 May , then headed for Cap - Haïtien , Haiti , in company with " St . Paul " . She remained at Cap - Haïtien until 21 May , then headed for waters off Santiago de Cuba where the Spanish fleet had been discovered . " Yale " remained there while the United States fleet assembled off Santiago to blockade Cervera ' s ships in that port . On the 28th , she quit the area ; stopped briefly at Port Antonio , Jamaica ; and then set a course for Newport News , Virginia . The ship spent 20 days at Newport News , heading back to Cuba on 23 June . She arrived off Santiago on 27 June but remained there only two days . On the 29th , she got underway for Key West , Florida , stopping there overnight on 3 and 4 July before continuing on to Charleston . " Yale " returned to Santiago on 11 July and remained in Cuban waters until the 17th . After participating in the invasion of Puerto Rico at Guánica , Puerto Rico , she set a course for New York on 26 July . She spent most of the first two weeks of August in New York and returned to Cuba on the 15th . Remaining only briefly , she embarked troops for the return voyage to New York . Return to commercial service . " Yale " arrived back in New York on 23 August and remained there until decommissioned on 2 September 1898 . Though returned to her owners after decommissioning , " Yale " was not struck from the Navy List until 3 July 1899 . She returned to merchant service — first under the name SS " City of Paris " . World War I . During World War I , the liner , which had been renamed SS " Philadelphia " in 1901 , operated out of New York as a troop transport for the U . S . Army . The Navy took her over in 1918 , placing her in commission as " Harrisburg " ( ID # 1663 ) in late May . For the remainder of the conflict she continued to take troops to Europe , making four voyages to England and France before the November 1918 Armistice brought an end to the fighting . She then reversed the flow , making six more trips to transport servicemen home from the former war zone . Post - war service and fate . USS " Harrisburg " was decommissioned in September 1919 and returned to commercial service as " Philadelphia " . She was scrapped at Genoa , Italy , in 1923 .