 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 . 
