The ship was built in 1881 as the Socrates-class steamer (and prospectively, the Lima-Class cruiser Callao) Diogenes by the Howaldtswerke at Kiel, Germany.

The following day, she moved to the New York Navy Yard to begin a two-month overhaul during which she received her armament and generally prepared for duty on the Cuban blockade.

The gunboat departed New York on 30 June 1898 and, after a five-day stop at Key West, Florida, joined the blockading forces off Havana on 11 July 1898.

The four warships encountered no real resistance from the Spanish and, therefore, easily captured the port and sank the Jorge Juan, abandoned by her crew, in the Battle of Nipe Bay.

After stops at Key West and Hampton Roads, she visited Provincetown and Boston, Massachusetts, and then arrived at the New York Navy Yard on 13 September.

During that cruise, she visited Cuba, Haiti, San Domingo, and Puerto Rico before returning — via Norfolk, Virginia, and Newport, Rhode Island — to Boston, early in February 1899.

Topeka, transited the Strait of Gibraltar on 5 January 1901 and, after visits to the Azores and to St. Vincent and Barbados in the West Indies, returned to the United States at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 4 March 1901.

On 16 May 1902, the gunboat cleared Port Royal and headed — via Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and San Juan, Puerto Rico to the Caribbean for a summer training cruise in the waters off Venezuela.

Over the next three months, when not conducting gunnery drills, she was a frequent caller at the Venezuelan ports of Puerto Cabello and La Guaira as well as at nearby Curaçao in the Dutch West Indies.

During the latter part of February, Topeka visited Kingston, Jamaica; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and San Juan, Puerto Rico, before joining other units of the fleet off the coast of Dominican Republic late in the month.

She plied the waters around Hispaniola through the end of March protecting American lives and interests while civil strife tore the island asunder.

On 15 May, the warship reported for duty at Newport, Rhode Island, and, for the next four months, participated in wireless telegraphy experiments conducted off the New England coast.

In accordance with the terms of the London Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armaments, on 13 May 1930 she was sold for scrapping to the Union Shipbuilding Co., of Baltimore, Maryland.

The bell currently sits on the parade deck of the Marine Corps Security Force Company Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and one of her 4-inch guns is mounted in Dahlgren Park in the Washington Navy Yard.