USS Leonidas (AD-7)

Leonidas (AD-7) underway on 22 April 1914, while serving as a survey ship.
History
Name:	USS Leonidas
Builder:	S P Austin & Son Ltd.
Laid down:	1897
Launched:	1898
Acquired:	16 April 1898
Commissioned:	21 May 1898
Decommissioned:	28 November 1921
Fate:	Sold, 5 June 1922
General characteristics
Type:	Destroyer tender
Displacement:	4,264 long tons (4,332 t)
Length:	264 ft 3 in (80.54 m)
Beam:	39 ft 3 in (11.96 m)
Draft:	21 ft (6.4 m)
Speed:	9.5 knots (17.6 km/h; 10.9 mph)
Complement:	52 officers and enlisted (collier)
Armament:	2 × 3-pounder guns

USS Leonidas (AD-7) was a destroyer tender, the lone ship in her class, named for Leonidas I (a king of Sparta), and the second United States naval vessel to bear the name.

Originally built as Elizabeth Holland by S. P. Austin & Son, Ltd., Sunderland, England in 1897–98, she was acquired by the Navy from Samuel P. Holland, London, 16 April 1898, and commissioned at New York on 21 May 1898 with Commander William Irwin Moore in command.

Converted into a collier for duty with the newly established Navy Fleet Train, Leonidas departed New York on 30 May 1898 on a coaling voyage to Key West, Florida, and following her return to Norfolk in mid-June, sailed again on the 23rd for Cuba and Jamaica, supplying occupation troops and naval units. Putting into League Island Navy Yard, Philadelphia on 15 December, she decommissioned on the 27th and remained there in reserve for nearly two years.

Reactivated on 8 November 1900 she served with the Collier Service, carrying coal to naval ships and stations along the Atlantic coast and in the West Indies through 1908. Decommissioning at Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine, from 15 February to 11 June 1909, the ship resumed her service as an Atlantic Fleet Auxiliary. In 1912, the Leonidas carried several tons of relics retrieved from the USS Maine, including the battleship's main mast, to the United States. She was placed out of service on 3 May 1912 at Portsmouth to fit out for duty as a survey ship.