The Amphitrite was a derivative of the CW Monitor design. It later was retrofitted as a floating Hotel/Casino off the shore of South Carolina, Georgia, & Florida.
Amphitrite as a Floating Hotel, Formerly USS Monitor, America's Most Unique Dining Room, Air Conditioned
Amphitrite, a Floating Hotel docked at the Frederica River original Sea Island Yacht Club, St. Simon's Island GA - Circa 1928
Some rumors were that it was used as a Rum Runner during Prohibition.
USS Amphitrite M2
After the Civil War America had not maintained her navy well, and with the Spanish/American War a near certainty we were left with nothing but old wooden hulls in poor repair and no ironclad monitors in a serviceable condition.
Congress, in a panic to upgrade the obsolete Navy quickly commissioned five Civil War monitors to be refurbished in 1873. Then Secretary of Navy George Robeson worked very hard to fulfill this directive, but the monitors in question were just too far gone and obsolete.
His solution was to scrap the monitors and use the funds and steel to build new ships to replace them, all bearing identical names to the old; Puritan, Amphitrite, Miantonomoh, Monadnock and Terror. That was a great idea, but the Navy didn't have the yard capability to do it, so the work was contracted to private yards. That was a practical decision, but building ships; especially steel hulled warships; is an expensive proposition. When the steamship Virginius was captured by Spain and her crew executed, Congress ordered an immediate increase in Navy personnel, which dried up the money needed to complete the new monitors. More obsolete monitors had to be scrapped to foot the bill, which delayed construction. In 1876 Robeson signed contracts to have machinery built for the new hulls and asked Congress for the money.
Then in 1877 the Hayes Administration took the reigns of government, and Robeson was replaced by Richard Thompson, who took over a Navy that was vastly in debt and over budget. He cancelled the new contracts to furnish the new hulls with machinery and cancelled the orders for the new monitors. The yards were forced to maintain the incomplete hulls for no pay.
In 1881 the Garfield Administration took over, and by this time America's Navy was in much worse shape with very old obsolete ships. Only 52 of the 140 ships on the Navel Register were operational, and only 17 of those were iron hulled, and the majority of those were very obsolescent Civil War monitors. New hulls were needed desperately, and the contracts were again re-instated.
The problem was that the new monitors were now already obsolete. Further delays for redesigning were needed. The first to be completed and commissioned was the Miantonomoh M5 in 1891. The others were not completed until 1895-1896, meaning it took more than two decades to build them. Puritan M1 was fitted with extra armor and designated as a separate class, the Puritan class.
By the time these new ships were completed and commissioned the concept of the Coastal Monitor was well and truly obsolete. The main problem is that they are very poor at blue water (intercontinental) sailing, as they are so low that they cannot handle rough weather, though Monadnock did manage to do just that; one of only two US monitors to do so, she sailed to the Philippines. She never returned, and served her career on the China station and in the Philippines. Also, they lacked sufficient bunker space for fuel, making them very short ranged, and they were very slow, capable of only seven knots.
Her main armament was effective consisting of four 10" breech-loading cannon; the product of one of the redesigns; but the heat inside the hull was nearly unbearable. During a 2 1/2 hour shore bombardment against Costa Rica an Amphitrite crewman died of heat exhaustion.
USS Amphritite M2 was the last of the class to be decommissioned in 1919.
Now, this is where things get interesting.
Unlike her sisters, Amphitrite wasn't scrapped. Instead she was sold to the private sector and rebuilt. Her guns and superstructure were stripped and she was converted to a very successful floating casino and hotel in Beaufort, SC. Al Capone actually once tried to buy her. At different periods periods she was at Ft Lauderdale and Maryland in this capacity.
Then she was re-commissioned by the Navy in 1943 for use as a floating barracks off the shore of North Carolina.
She then returned to the private sector and resumed her role as a hotel/casino, but times had changed and she was no longer the commercial success she had been in the past. Late in her career there were plans to refit her as a support ship for commercial oil exploration, but this never came to pass.