It would be another 27 years before a vessel named USS New York fired a gun in anger.
The second New York was a considerably more impressive vessel than the first, a 36-gun frigate built in her namesake city and launched on April 24, 1800. Lofty, fast, and well-armed with 9- and 18-pounder guns, USS New York was part of the second wave of naval shipbuilding that had begun in 1794 with the construction of USS Constitution and the other five frigates that comprised the early Navy. Those first ships had been built to counter the menace that Algerian pirates presented to American shipping in the Mediterranean, but by the time New York was commissioned, the Navy had bigger fish to fry.

By the mid-1790s, France was in the early days of its bloody revolution, and the new French government viewed the United States’ new treaty with England, the Jay Treaty, to be in violation of Revolutionary War agreements signed between the two governments. French privateers began to scoop up American merchantmen that were trading with the British, and the Quasi-War with France was under way.

New York sailed for the Caribbean in October of 1800, where she convoyed American merchantmen and patrolled the waters for French warships and privateers. But by the time New York was on station, the Quasi-War was winding down. By May of the following year, the United States had managed an uneasy peace with both Britain and France, and the frigate was laid up in ordinary at the Washington Navy Yard.

Even though England and France were no longer causing problems for the United States, the nations of North Africa, the Barbary States, could always be counted on to stir up trouble. Around the time that the frigate New York was laid up, the rulers of Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers were upping their demands for tribute, which the United States had been paying for nearly a decade. With the U.S. Navy now free from having to protect American shipping from the French, it was decided that the Barbary States had received enough payment in specie, and payment of another kind would be in order. New York was recommissioned in 1802, and under the command of James Barron sailed for the Mediterranean, where she became the flagship of Commodore Richard Morris.

Morris made the best of his little squadron, escorting American shipping and showing the flag off the Barbary coast. New York twice engaged Tripolitan gunboats that swarmed out of harbors of North Africa, hoping to overwhelm the superior American ships with sheer numbers of boats and men. The pirates were, however, driven off by the devastating fire from the frigate’s broadsides.

New York was sent to Malta to replenish her stores. There she received a 17-gun salute from the British fleet under the command of Vice Adm. Horatio Nelson. Soon after, Morris was relieved of command of the squadron by Edward Preble, whom the Jefferson administration hoped would be more aggressive in his dealings with the Barbary pirates. New York returned to the Washington Navy Yard, where she was again laid up in ordinary. The lovely, graceful frigate had the bad luck to still be there 11 years later when the British captured the Navy yard during the War of 1812 and burned her to the waterline.

The next USS New York met a similar fate, though before she was able to accomplish much, in fact, before she was even launched or commissioned. Originally intended as a 74-gun ship-of-the-line, she was laid down in 1820 at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia. By 1825 she was ready to launch, but nonetheless remained on the stocks for an incredible 36 years as the world of men-of-war shifted from sail to steam. Finally, on the night of April 21, 1861, she was burned where she sat by the panicked Union defenders of the shipyard, who were certain that they were about to be overrun by secessionist forces. Also going up in that conflagration was the Union sail and steam ship USS Merrimack, which would be reborn as the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia.

Seventy years separated the laying of the 74 gun New York’s keel and the building of the next ship to bear that name, but in that time the science of naval warfare had undergone a transformation unmatched in the entire history of seafaring. The fourth New York (including a screw sloop that had been renamed New York in 1869), was designated ACR 2. It was a 384-foot armored cruiser, a thoroughly modern ship of war that incorporated the latest thinking in armor plating, heavy guns, and long cruising range.

During the years of peace from her launching in 1891 to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, USS New York sailed with the South Atlantic, the North Atlantic, and the European Squadrons. At the outbreak of the war she steamed out of Hampton Roads, Va., bound for Cuba, where she participated in the bombardment of Matanzas and San Juan while the fleet searched for the Spanish naval forces under the command of Adm. Pascual Cervera y Topete. New York was made the flagship of Adm. William Sampson’s fleet, which soon had the Spanish fleet bottled up in Santiago.

New York had actually left the blockading fleet, carrying Sampson to a meeting with army commander Maj. Gen. William Shafter, when the Spanish fleet finally emerged. Sampson raced back to the fight, arriving in time to command the last stages of the battle, which resulted in the destruction of the Spanish squadron. “The fleet under my command,” Sampson wrote to the Navy department, “offers the nation as a Fourth of July present the whole of Cervera’s fleet.”

Over the decade following the Spanish-American War, the armored cruiser New York served as flagship to the Asiatic Fleet, calling at Japan, China, Russia, and the Philippines. She transferred to the Pacific Squadron where she again served as flagship before she was decommissioned in 1905 for modernization.