50 Dollars USS Olympia

USS Olympia is the oldest steel-hulled warship still afloat in the United States, and the only surviving vessel from the Spanish-American War. She served as Commodore George Dewey's flagship at the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898 — exactly one century before this coin's issue date. Dewey's signal to his captain, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley," opened an engagement that destroyed the entire Spanish Pacific Squadron in under seven hours without a single American combat fatality.

The Marshall Islands issued commemoratives prolifically through the 1990s, largely as a revenue mechanism rather than for domestic circulation.