Persistent rain and gray skies made it difficult to see the USS Olympia as she sailed up the Potomac River on Wednesday, November 9, 1921. Formerly the flagship of Commodore George Dewey, and made famous by her action in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War, one of her last acts before being decommissioned was to bring home the body of an unknown American soldier from the Great War. Even if they could not quite make out the ship in the general gloom, onlookers could nevertheless track the Olympia by the sound of the guns that saluted her progress toward Washington that day. The body she carried was brought to lie in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, DC, where it remained with an honor guard for the night. The solemn ceremony accompanying the arrival of the remains had been, as the press reported, brief, involving only the president, Warren Harding, his wife, General Pershing, and a few other military dignitaries. The next day, however, the clouds cleared and, after the formal laying of official wreaths, the crowds arrived to pay their respects. This was, the New York Times reported, a veritable “river of humanity, American men, women and children, Americans by heritage, Americans by election,” that “flowed as the life blood of the nation itself – a slow but overwhelming torrent of humanity, gathered to attest the valor of America's dead in France.”