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Mare Island Naval Shipyard

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Mare Island Naval Shipyard - Where over 500 Ships were built, including the Polaris Submarine USS Theodore Roosevelt SSBN-600

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A GREAT NAVY YARD IS BORN

        Gold was discovered in California in 1849 and the great stampede from the eastern reaches of the broad American continent was underway.  This sudden migration westward made it immediately imperative for the United States Navy to establish a base on the West Coast from which ships of the Pacific Squadron could operate and at which they could be repaired.

               In 1850, Commodore John Drake Sloat was ordered to lead a surveying party in quest of a logical site for the nation’s first Pacific naval installation.  Sloat, who had claimed California for the United States four years earlier at Monterey, recommended the island  across the Napa River from the little settlement of Vallejo.

               This long, low segment of land had been called Isla  Plana by the first settlers of the region.  Legend, well founded in fact, now has it that the name was changed when an old white mare owned by General Mariano Gadalupe Vallejo, Mexican Commandante for Northern California, fell off the raft while being ferried across Carquinez Straits and swam ashore on the island.  Vallejo renamed it “Isla de la Yegua,” or Mare Island.

    It was in 1850, too, that the first California Legislature accepted General Vallejo’s offer to locate the state capital at the new city of Vallejo.  The General was then serving as State Senator from the region.

    Charts prepared by Navy cartographers in Sloat’s surveying party bear the inscription “Site of Vallejo, Seat of Government of California” opposite Mare Island. California’s government stopped there only briefly, moving on to Benicia in 1853, and to Sacramento a short time later.  But the U.S. Navy stayed for the next 142 years.

            Navy Department officials acted favorably on Commodore Sloat’s recommendation and purchased Mare Island in 1852 for $83,410.  Commander David Glasgow Farragut arrived September 16, 1854, aboard the USS WARREN.  He immediately took command of Mare Island and commenced the creation of a naval base that eventually became the largest of its kind in the nation.

Admiral David Farragut

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America's 1st Admiral - Founder of Mare Island Naval Shipyard 1854

Farragut departed in 1858 to gain immortal fame at Mobile Bay.    His cry of “Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead” shall always remain among the most cherished of American naval traditions.  But possibly the greatest monument to his devotion to the naval service is at Mare Island where he commenced an arsenal of strength that would influence the success of the United States through five wars.

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Officers Row - Admiral's Mansion

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Copyright © 2006 Last modified: 2-7-2007 (Sponsored by a Grant from the Bookworm Educational Supplies Store & Castles Information System)