USS ''Iowa'' was a
pre-dreadnought battleship
Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late- 1880s and 1905, before the launch of in 1906. The pre-dreadnought ships replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, prot ...
built for the
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
in the mid-1890s. The ship was a marked improvement over the previous s, correcting many of the defects in the design of those vessels. Among the most important improvements were significantly better
seaworthiness
Seakeeping ability or seaworthiness is a measure of how well-suited a watercraft is to conditions when underway. A ship or boat which has good seakeeping ability is said to be very seaworthy and is able to operate effectively even in high sea stat ...
owing to her greater
freeboard
In sailing and boating, a vessel's freeboard
is the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level, measured at the lowest point of sheer where water can enter the boat or ship. In commercial vessels, the latter criterion measured relativ ...
and a more efficient arrangement of the armament. ''Iowa'' was designed to operate on the
high seas
The terms international waters or transboundary waters apply where any of the following types of bodies of water (or their drainage basins) transcend international boundaries: oceans, large marine ecosystems, enclosed or semi-enclosed region ...
, which had been the impetus to increase the freeboard. She was armed with a battery of four
guns in two twin-
gun turret
A gun turret (or simply turret) is a mounting platform from which weapons can be fired that affords protection, visibility and ability to turn and aim. A modern gun turret is generally a rotatable weapon mount that houses the crew or mechani ...
s, supported by a secondary battery of eight
guns.
Upon entering service in June 1897, ''Iowa'' conducted training operations in the Atlantic Ocean before moving to the Caribbean in early 1898 as tensions between the United States and Spain over Cuba grew, leading to the
Spanish–American War
, partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence
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