USS Badger, a 4784-ton auxiliary cruiser, was built as the merchant ship Yumuri at Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1889. She was purchased by the Navy in April 1898 and converted for Spanish-American War use. During that brief conflict she was active off Cuba as both a cruiser and as a transport. Badger sailed for the Pacific in late 1898, and served there until transferred to the War Department in April 1900. Renamed Lawton, she was employed thereafter as a U.S. Army transport.