Officially a “peace cruiser,” the USS Chattanooga was once the flagship of the U.S. fleet,…

Officially a "peace cruiser," the USS Chattanooga was once the flagship of the U.S. fleet, according to Navy records. In 1906, two years after it was commissioned, the ship escorted the USS Olympia to France to recover the body of John Paul Jones, a Revolutionary War figure sometimes called "the father of the United States Navy," who had died more than a century earlier.

Although the ship was sold for scrap before World War II, the USS Chattanooga's 200-pound deck bell survived and somehow found its way in 1929 to a Lions Club hall in Shelbyville, Tenn., where it remained in relative obscurity for more than 85 years.

200-pound deck bell of WWI-era flagship to become part of Chattanooga memorial