When cannon boomed from Santiago de Cuba in 1898, Rear Admiral William Thomas Sampson, temporarily down the coast on his crack, three-funneled flag-cruiser New York, turned her and raced back in time to see the last ship of Cervera's squadron sink, in the second and decisive naval battle of the Spanish War. That cruiser, then five years old, has served ever since, is now the oldest active U. S. fighting ship. In 1912, on the launching of the battleship New York, she was rechristened Saratoga and relegated (though as flagship) to the Asiatic fleet....
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