High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! USS Brutus, formerly the steamer Peter Jebsen, was built in 1894 at South Shields-on-Tyne, England, by John Readhead Sons and was acquired by the United States Navy early in 1898 from L. F. Chapman Company. She was renamed Brutus and commissioned at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 27 May 1898, with Lieutenant Vincendon L. Cottman, in command.