USS Topeka, a 2755-ton gunboat, was built for Peru at Kiel, Germany, in 1881. However, she did not enter service and, after nearly two decades of inactivity, was purchased by the U.S. Navy in April 1898 as part of its preparations for an increasingly likely war with Spain. Following modification at the New York Navy Yard, Topeka served on blockade duties along the Cuban coast during July and August 1898, as the Spanish-American War approached its conclusion.

Late in 1898 and early in 1899 Topeka made a peacetime cruise in the Caribbean and was then placed in reserve at the Boston Navy Yard. In August 1900 the gunboat recommissioned as a training ship, with a sailing rig to give new seamen experience with traditional as well as modern naval technology. She cruised in the Mediterranean Sea from November 1900 until early January 1901, then visited the Azores and the West Indies. Topeka operated regularly in the Caribbean area during the next five years, performing training duties, protecting American interests in a frequently volatile region and conducting hydrographic surveys. Among her other activities, in mid-1904 she took part in radio trials off New England.

Topeka decommissioned at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine, in September 1905 and served there as station ship and prison ship for more than a decade. She was briefly used as a receiving ship at the New York Navy Yard in mid-1916, then returned to Portsmouth, where she had recruit training duty during World War I. Recommissioned in March 1919, Topeka spent much of that year patrolling along the coast of Mexico. She was laid up at Charleston, South Carolina, in November 1919. In June 1920 she received the hull number PG-35 and a year later was placed in the "unclassified" category. Topeka's final assignment was as a Naval Reserve training ship at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between July 1923 and December 1929. Now nearly fifty years old, she was stricken from the Navy List in January 1930 and sold for scrapping in May of that year.