USS Wasp (1893)

USS Wasp at the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia, on 19 November 1898.
History
United States
Name:	USS Wasp
Namesake:	The wasp, a stinging insect
Builder:	William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Laid down:	1893
Launched:	1893
Completed:	February 1894
Acquired:	1898
Commissioned:	11 April 1898
Decommissioned:	1 December 1919
Struck:	13 November 1919
Fate:	Sold 20 September 1921
Notes:	Originally civilian yacht Columbia
General characteristics
Type:	Armed yacht
Displacement:	630 tons
Length:	180 ft 0 in (54.86 m)
Beam:	23 ft 0 in (7.01 m)
Draft:	12 ft 0 in (3.66 m)
Speed:	16.5 knots
Complement:	55 officers and enlisted men
Armament:	4 × 6-pounder guns 2 × Colt machine guns

The seventh USS Wasp was an armed yacht that served in the U.S. Navy from 1898 to 1919 and saw service in the Spanish–American War.

It was built as the Columbia in 1893 by William Cramp & Sons for Joseph Harvey Ladew, Sr.. It was launched from Philadelphia on 23 August 1893.

It was used by the United States Navy, renamed USS Wasp, and commissioned at New York City on 11 April 1898, Lieutenant Aaron Ward in command.

The converted yacht departed New York on 26 April 1898 and headed south for Spanish–American War duty blockading Cuba. She stopped at Key West, Florida, from 1 to 7 May 1898 and arrived off Havana later on 7 May. From there, she moved west along the northern coast to Bahia Honda, also arriving there on 7 May. On 12 May 1898, while cruising on blockade station off the Cuban coast between Havana and Bahia Honda, Wasp joined a small convoy escorted by the revenue cutter USRC Manning and made up of merchantman SS Gussie and tugs Triton and Dewey. Gussie carried two companies of United States Army troops scheduled to land at Bahia Honda, while Triton and Dewey carried representatives of the press.

Just before 1500 that afternoon, some of the soldiers from Gussie went ashore near Cabañas, purportedly the first American troops to land on Cuban soil. They formed a skirmish line and started their advance through dense underbrush. At about 1515, Spanish Army forces counterattacked the American troops and opened fire on the ships in the bay. Wasp returned fire with her portside six-pounders, carefully avoiding the area occupied by friendly forces. At that point, she received word that the 100 or so soldiers fighting ashore were heavily outnumbered and outflanked to the west. The only course of action open to them was to disengage the enemy and reembark in Gussie. During that operation, Wasp joined Manning and recently arrived unarmored cruiser Dolphin in providing covering gunfire for the evacuation. When another landing, scheduled for the following day, did not occur, Wasp lobbed a few shells at an adobe watch-tower from which Spanish riflemen had taken the ships under fire, and then she resumed her patrol station off the coast.