High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! USS Reina Mercedes (IX-25) was an unprotected cruiser of the Spanish Navy which was captured in Cuba in 1898 by the U.S. Navy during the Spanish-American War. She was refurbished and used by the U.S. Navy as a non-self-propelled receiving ship at Newport, Rhode Island, and subsequently as a detention vessel and barracks ship for the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, until 1957.