USS Galveston, a 3200-ton Denver class protected cruiser built at Richmond, Virginia, was commissioned in February 1905. During the next eight months she visited Galveston, Texas, crossed the Atlantic to France to participate in the return of the remains of John Paul Jones to the United States, helped host the Russo-Japanese peace conference, and carried State Department representatives to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. In late December 1905 the cruiser left the U.S. for service in the Mediterranean and the Far East, where she remained until February 1910. After operating off the U.S. West Coast and in Alaskan waters during 1912-1913, Galveston was back on the Asiatic Station from November 1913 to late 1917.

Galveston next performed World War I convoy escort and training duties in the Atlantic, taking part in an engagement with the German Submarine U-152 while en route to the Azores on 30 September 1918. In March 1919 she began service in European waters, initially carrying troops to northern Russia. From July 1919 until July 1920 she was station ship at Constantinople. Among her functions there was the transportation of refugees, Red Cross officials and senior officers in the troubled Black Sea region.

Reclassified as a gunboat in July 1920, with the hull number PG-31, Galveston became a light cruiser (CL-19) in August 1921. She operated with the Special Service Squadron in the Caribbean and off Central America for nearly all of the 1920s, landing forces in Nicaragua during that Nation's revolution in 1926. USS Galveston concluded her two and a half decades of service in early September 1930, when she was decommissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Stricken from the Navy list a few months later, she was sold for scrapping in September 1933.