coast via Cape Horn. Yorktown eventually arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, on 24 February 1893. After repairs at the New York Navy Yard from 25 April to 26 July, Yorktown retraced her route south and sailed again around Cape Horn back into the Pacific. She then moved north to resume patrolling the Bering Sea. She protected seal rookeries into 1894 before returning to Mare Island for repairs which lasted into mid-September. On 24 September 1894, Yorktown sailed for the western Pacific and duty on the Asiatic Station. Sailing via Honolulu, she reached Yokohama, Japan, on 8 December 1894 and spent the next three years, under the command of Commander Charles Stockton touching at the principal ports-of-call along the coasts of China and Japan. She departed Yokohama early in the autumn of 1897 and made port at Mare Island on 18 November 1897. Subsequently, laid up at Mare Island and decommissioned on 8 December, the gunboat remained inactive there through the Spanish–American War in 1898. 1898–1903 Recommissioned on 17 November 1898, with Commander Charles S. Sperry in command, Yorktown sailed again for the Far East on 7 January 1899. Rumors of German machinations in Samoa lengthened Yorktowns stay at Hawaii from a few days to a few weeks; but, when the anticipated trouble failed to materialize, Yorktown resumed her voyage to the Philippine Islands. On 23 February, she arrived at Cavite Navy Yard, near Manila where patrolled to prevent gun-runners thought to be supplying guns and ammunition to the Insurrectos, Filipinos fighting for independence. At one point, rumors flew concerning possible German gun-running activities; and Yorktown patrolled off the entrance to Subic Bay and from thence to Lingayen to keep a lookout for the filibusters. She continued coastal patrol work over the next three years, cooperating with the Army, transporting and convoying troops, and patrolling wide areas of often badly charted waters. Upon occasion, Yorktown served as "mother ship" to smaller gunboats, providing officers and men to staff the smaller patrol craft. Ensigns William Harrison Standley and Harry E. Yarnell (both future admirals) and future naval historian and archivist Dudley Wright Knox were among the junior officers who served in Yorktown during this time. During the Philippine–American War, Yorktown stood in to Baler Bay, on the west coast of Luzon, on 11 April 1899, on a mission to relieve a Spanish garrison that had been under siege by Filipino troops for nine