Between 1900 and 1905 she laid 3,000 miles of submarine cable which connected many parts of the Philippines and Alaska to the rest of the world for the first time in history.

[2] Her propeller was originally powered by a coal-fired double-expansion steam engine which was built by T. Clark and Company of Newcastle.

[3] Electric lighting and refrigeration were installed on Burnside at the shipyard of Lewis Nixon in Elizabethport, NJ in December 1898 after the ship was taken over by the Army.

[7] The Blue Anchor Line pioneered regularly scheduled cargo and passenger service between London and Australia.

Her cargo included livestock,[9] musical instruments, china, furniture, stationary, cutlery, dolls, toys, purses, vases, and more.

North American port calls include Boston,[13] Galveston,[14] Norfolk,[15] Pensacola,[16] Puerto Rico,[17] and St John.

On 8 May 1898 Rita was sailing from Liverpool to Puerto Rico with a cargo of coal when she encountered USS Yale off Culebra Island.

She was filled to capacity with the 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 6th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, less Companies D and M.[25] She sailed from Tampa to Ponce, Puerto Rico on 27 July 1898.

Over the next two years the ship made numerous trips between the American mainland, Cuba, and Puerto Rico laden with personnel, food, medical supplies, and other equipment for the Army.

Spain's ceding of Cuba to the United States did not address the fate of the 30,000 revolutionary soldiers still in the field and owed substantial back pay.

Burnside found herself with $3 million in cash aboard, including 2,500,000 dimes and 200,000 nickels,[31] anchored in Havana harbor on 18 March 1899.

One provided telegraph communication from the Philippines to the rest of the world via Hong Kong, and the other connected the city to major islands of the archipelago.

The day after his victory, Dewey approached the British Consul in Manila to arrange for American use of the telegraph service.

[36] To build its own inter-island telegraph system, the Army sent the cable ship USAT Hooker to Manila.

Much of Hooker's cable laying machinery and testing equipment was salvaged, and was installed on Burnside when she arrived in Manila.

[37] On 30 June 1900, the Army contracted with the Morse Iron Works shipyard in Brooklyn, New York to convert Burnside into a cable ship.

[40][41][37] She had on board a crew of 104 men to run the ship, and a 25-man Signal Corps detachment led by Captain George O. Squier who were in charge of laying the cable.

[54] In the wake of the discovery of gold in the Klondike and at Nome,[55] in May 1900 Congress appropriated $455,550 to build a telegraph cable from St. Michael to the rest of the military network in Alaska.

She had aboard the Chief Signal Officer of the United States Army, Brigadier General Adolphus Greely, who supervised the laying of the cable.

[70] The trip began on a sour note when Burnside hit an iceberg off Admiralty Island and sustained damage to her hull.

[72] After making quick repairs to the ship, the cable from Juneau to Sitka, 291 miles long, was completed on 2 October 1903.

Burnside laid cable from Sitka about 130 miles south before the need for repairs, and bad weather sent her back to Seattle.

[75] During the winter of 1903-04, Burnside was sent back to the Philippines where a number of outages had occurred in the telegraph cables laid by the ship in 1901.

[77] After 48 days of cable maintenance in the Philippines,[78] on 6 April 1904 Burnside sailed from Manila for Seattle, where she arrived on 18 May 1904.

[55] The second part of the Alaska cable, 780 miles, arrived at Seattle from New York on the American-Hawaiian Line steamship American in November 1903, too late to be used that year.

The buoy that marked the end of the cable in October 1903 had been washed away in winter storms, forcing the crew to grapple for the wire in 9,000 feet (2,700 m) of water.

[83] Burnside began laying the Valdez to Sitka link on 29 September and completed her work on 5 October 1904.

[91] Even though most of her efforts were for maintenance, Burnside did lay additional cable to extend the system, and to replace outdated lines.

While passing through Seymour Narrows at one-quarter speed, she lost steerage way in the current and was thrown sideways onto Ripple Rock.

[95][96] In October 1911, the Alaska Steamship Company's Edith went aground on Level Island in Sumner Strait, heavily laden with 60,000 cases of canned salmon.