4/PG-43) was a member of the Yorktown class of steel-hulled, twin-screw gunboats in the United States Navy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Her hull was subcontracted to the Delaware River Iron Shipbuilding & Engine Works which laid down Bennington's keel in June 1888.

She sailed the Pacific coasts of North and Central America and spent time in the Hawaiian Islands to protect American interests there.

On 21 July 1905 at San Diego, California, Bennington suffered a boiler explosion, that killed 66 men and injured nearly everyone else on board.

The Yorktown class gunboats – unofficially considered third-class cruisers – were the product of a United States Navy design attempt to produce compact ships with good seakeeping abilities and, yet, able to carry a heavy battery.

The hull for Bennington was subcontracted to the Delaware River Iron Shipbuilding & Engine Works and built to the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair design.

The mechanical design was patterned after the layout for her older sister ship Yorktown developed by William Cramp & Sons.

Her steel hull had an average draft of 14 feet (4 m),[3] which was expected to give her the ability to escape from larger ships into shallow water.

It was outfitted with a steam-powered Ship's wheel, an engine order telegraph, and speaking tubes; it was protected by 2 inches (51 mm) of steel armor plate.

[4] According to a 1902 Bureau of Ordnance publication, an armor-piercing round fired from a 6-pounder gun could penetrate 2 inches (51 mm) of armor at a distance of 1,000 yards (910 m).

In addition to operating as the first tactical fleet of the U.S. Navy, the squadron performed the secondary mission of cruising to foreign ports to demonstrate to the world the types of modern ships the United States was capable of building.

Setting out from Bahia, Brazil, the gunboat visited Spanish and Italian ports during the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus' voyage to the western hemisphere.

She concluded the European portion of those festivities on 18 February 1893 when she departed Cadiz, with a replica of Columbus's caravel Pinta in tow for Cuba.

After stops in the Canary Islands, the Netherlands West Indies, and Havana, the gunboat arrived back in the United States at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 26 March.

[8] Following participation in the 1893 International Naval Review at Hampton Roads, Bennington moved north for operations along the coast of New England before beginning preparations for foreign service.

After steaming around Cape Horn and stopping at several Latin American ports, the warship finally arrived at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 30 April.

After spending the first two months of the war in the Hawaiian Islands, she departed Honolulu on 16 June and steamed to the west coast of the United States.

Taussig briefly served as the first naval governor of Guam and established a native ruling council, before continuing on to Manila where Bennington arrived on 22 February.

[8] For a little more than two years after her February 1899 arrival, Bennington served in the Philippine Islands in support of the Army's campaigns during the Philippine–American War.

Between 7 and 9 November, the warship supported an Army landing at San Fabian on the shores of Lingayen Gulf in northwestern Luzon.

After a visit to Shanghai, the warship headed back to the United States in July and arrived at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 19 August.

[16] On the morning of 21 July 1905, Bennington's crew was preparing her to sail to the aid of the monitor Wyoming which had broken down and was in need of a tow.

[17] After her crew had finished the difficult task of coaling the ship that morning, most of them were belowdecks cleaning themselves from the dirty job.

[16] Quick actions by the tug Santa Fe – taking Bennington under tow and beaching her – almost certainly saved the gunboat from sinking.

[16] Nearly all of the forty-six who survived had an injury of some sort;[8] eleven of the survivors were awarded the Medal of Honor for "extraordinary heroism displayed at the time of the explosion".

[17][21] In spite of rumors of misconduct by Bennington's engineering crewmen, an official investigation concluded that the explosion was not due to negligence on the part of the crew.

[16] The eleven men who were awarded the Medal of Honor for "extraordinary heroism displayed at the time of the explosion" were:[16][22] Also aboard was John Henry Turpin, an African-American sailor who was aboard the USS Maine when she exploded in Havana harbor in 1898 and would go on to become one of the first African-American Chief Petty Officers in the U.S. Navy.

After five years of inactivity, Bennington was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 10 September 1910 and sold for scrap on 14 November.