4)—the totally rebuilt version of the earlier monitor Agamenticus, which had shared the Terror's name—was an iron-hulled, twin-screw, double-turreted monitor of the Amphitrite class; on June 23, 1874 by order of President Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of Navy George M. Robeson in response to the Virginius Incident laid down (scrapped and rebuilt) at Philadelphia contracted by William Cramp & Sons.

Assigned to the North Atlantic Squadron, Terror operated off the east coast of the United States, from Tompkinsville, New York, to Hampton Roads and Fort Monroe, Virginia; and from Sandy Hook, New Jersey to Charleston, South Carolina, through the winter of 1897 and 1898.

[1][2] The mysterious explosion which wrecked the armored cruiser Maine at Havana Harbor on 15 February 1898 materially increased tensions between the United States and Spain.

Terror sped south from Tompkinsville to join the fleet concentrating in southern waters and arrived at Key West on 2 April 1898.

Meanwhile, the whereabouts of the Spanish Navy's Caribbean Squadron under Admiral Pascual Cervera prompted concern in naval circles in Washington.

Intelligence estimates which reached Sampson noted that the Spanish fleet had departed the Cape Verde Islands on the morning of 29 April.

Sampson reacted by deciding to meet Cervera's fleet at San Juan, Puerto Rico, the nearest Spanish base in the West Indies.

Terror expended thirty-one 10-inch shells in three firing passes against the fortifications at San Juan, and scored a direct hit on a battery which the monitor's commanding officer, Capt.

Taken to Annapolis, Maryland, late in 1901, Terror was recommissioned for service at the Naval Academy and subsequently served as a practice ship for midshipmen.