The second USS "Amphitrite"—the lead ship in her class of iron-hulled, twin-screw monitors—was laid down ("dismantled and reconstructed"), on June 23, 1874 by order of President Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of Navy George M. Robeson at Wilmington, Delaware, by the Harlan and Hollingsworth yard; launched on 7 June 1883; sponsored by Miss Nellie Benson, the daughter of a Harlan and Hollingsworth official; and commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, on 23 April 1895, Captain William C. Wise in command.