Mare Island Naval Shipyard - 150 years

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http://www.dailyrepublic.com/article...news/news2.txt

Navy yard to commemorate 150 years of building ships

By Ian Thompson

MARE ISLAND -- Former Mare Island Naval Shipyard workers and Navy sailors will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Navy's first shipyard and base on the Pacific Coast with a dinner, monument and plaque.

The event will kick off on Sept. 16, the anniversary of the shipyard's founding, with the dedication of a granite monument in Alden Park commemorating the sesquicentennial of the shipyard's founding.

Capt. John Cavender, Mare Island's last commander, will dedicate the monument at 10:30 a.m. Vallejo Mayor Tony Intintoli will preside over the ceremony.

A reunion of the Navy Yard Association will follow at noon at Quarters A on Walnut Avenue. Arrangements to attend the reunion should be made with the Association at P.O. Box 2034, Mare Island Station, Vallejo, Calif., 94592-0034.

The monument will honor all of the thousands of military and civilian people who worked or served at the shipyard during its 142-year life, according to celebration general chairman Lou Bergelin.

On Sept. 17, a hand-carved plaque designed by Tom Anderson honoring the memory of the Navy's Medal of Honor awardees associated with the shipyard will be held at 10:30 a.m. at St. Peter's Chapel.

The gala celebration dinner will be held starting at 6 p.m. with no-host cocktails and dinner at 7 p.m. at Building 46. Gala seating is limited, so reservations are a must.

Several of the shipyard's past commanders and senior officers will attend and talk about their experiences during their watch at Mare Island.

Tickets are $50 per person and are available from John Hoffman at 642-4925 or at P.O. Box 3370, Vallejo, Calif., 94590. Checks should be made payable to M.I. 150/Mare Island Historic Park Foundation.

For more information about the event, call Burgelin at 552-3510.

Reach Ian Thompson at 427-6976 or at ithompson@dailyrepublic.net.



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http://www.dailyrepublic.com/article...news/news1.txt

From shipyard to museum

By Ian Thompson

MARE ISLAND -- The sounds of hammers are again echoing from the ancient brick walls and glass ceilings of Building 46, Mare Island Naval Shipyard's oldest building.

What was a place where parts where forged for steam ships in the 1860s is now becoming the steward and home of the shipyard's 150-year naval heritage.

Ken Zadwick, the foundation's president and co-founder, calls the large brick building "a work in progress" as volunteers sweep, nail, clean and set-up their way to completing the museum.

Zadwick, who has pushed for a museum since the shipyard's closure, is determined to have everything in place by the time the shipyard celebrates its 150th anniversary in mid-September.

"We will be ready, guaranteed," an optimistic Zadwick said.

The museum, housed in Building 26, the shipyard's oldest still-existing building, is tentatively called the Mare Island Artifacts Museum.

It is only one of the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation's holdings that include the oldest of the drydocks, Alden Park, St. Peter's Chapel and some of the shipyard officers' residences.

The foundation was established in 1995 with the goal of preserving the heritage of the West Coast's first Naval base and shipyard which Capt. David Glasgow Farragut established in 1854.

Mare Island built 513 ships and repaired or overhauled thousands more in the years that spanned a half-dozen wars before it closed in 1996.

The museum's nearly completed home was built in 1855 to house a smithy to forge parts for the Navy's steam- and sail-powered ships before it was remade as a pipe shop, according to Zadwick.

It later became a sheet-metal and general-repair shop to serve the World War II-era warships and then the nuclear submarines during the Cold War.

Now, tables for the sesquicentennial reception - which Zadwick got for a pittance from the Fairfield Community Library when that building was renovated - stand in one corner of the large main room.

Display cabinets, crates, tools and scaffolding take up other space as a small legion of volunteers work to prepare the building.

Later this month, a local group of Boy Scouts will take on chores in Alden Park that includes painting a large ship's anchor that was found buried in the ammo depot area along with metals refuse that included civil war cannonballs.

A couple of artifacts, such as a World War II-era Navy diving suit, are already in Building 46. So are some of several thousand photos of Mare Island's history on loan from the Navy.

Not far away in another building are hundreds more shipyard artifacts awaiting the final cleanup before being brought in for display.

They include a man-sized shipyard bell cast in 1877, a brass cannon, sextants, the periscope from the submarine USS Vallejo, flags, ship models and ship's plaques.

More pieces of Mare Island's history are turning up every day, according to Zadwick.

For example, a 3-foot-long model of the World War II submarine USS Seahorse which was sent in recently by the widow of the Navy veteran who served on the sub. And photo books from the 1920s.

The foundation already has a Vietnam-era Navy riverine patrol boat and is in the process of acquiring a 154-foot Landing Craft, Support, from the Thai Navy.

"We are still trying to get the USS Knox (a guided missile frigate) and the USS Drum (a nuclear submarine built at Mare Island) from where they are in Washington," Zadwick said.

Foundation members had tried unsuccessfully to get the USS Vallejo tied up at the shipyard as a permanent exhibit before it was broken up. They did manage to get enough equipment to recreate the sub's control room as an exhibit.

The foundation's holding's are presently open by appointment for $14 for a private tour. Zadwick plans to have open hours once the museum is completed. He is still looking for volunteers to both help the museum get open and to keep it running.

"We need more tour guides because we are getting more tours. We need more gardeners to care for five acres in what amounts to four rose gardens. We need painters. We need people to work on displays. We need people to staff the museum," Zadwick said.

The foundation also needs monetary donations "because the amount of money we have is enough to get us open," Zadwick said.

As for why Zadwick puts in all these long hours, "I want to honor our country's history," Zadwick said. "It is as simple as that."


For more information about the foundation and the museum, call 557-1538 or e-mail kenzad01@yahoo.com. For tours, call 644-4746. The Foundation also has a website at mareislandhpf.org.

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http://www.fas.org/man/company/shipyard/mare_island.htm

Mare Island Naval Shipyard (MINS)
Mare Island is located on the western edge of the City of Vallejo in southwestern Solano County in Northern California. It is approximately 30 miles northeast of San Francisco in the North Bay subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area, and approximately 60 miles from Sacramento, California's state capital. Mare Island is approximately 3.5 miles long and one mile wide.
The shipyard was established by the Navy in 1854 and was known as Naval Magazine, NSY Mare Island. The shipyard?s primary missions were to maintain, overhaul, and refuel ships, including nuclear-powered ships; provide logistical support for ships and service craft; and provide services and materials for other Navy functions.


During its tenure as the Navy's oldest base on the west coast, Mare Island built 512 ships and repaired hundreds more. Those ships, both great and obscure, fought in every conflict since. Mare Island's first ship, the paddle-wheeled gunboat Saginaw, was launched before the Civil War, in 1859, and its last ship, the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Drum, was launched in 1970 when our country was divided over the Vietnam war. These vessels also included the small ferryboat Pinafore, which chugged between Mare Island and Vallejo for 30 years starting in the 1890's, and the battleship U.S.S. California, the only battleship built on the west coast.

During World War II the shipyard quickly set a record that was never broken, building the destroyer USS Ward, in 17 1/2 days. In addition to the Ward, Mare Island built 17 submarines, 4 subtenders, 31 destroyer escorts, 33 small craft, and more than 300 landing craft. In the 1960's the decision was made to build nuclear submarines at Mare Island. The USS Sargo was the first, with 16 more following, ending with the launch of the USS Drum in 1970.

The 4,351 acre facility included shipyard and hospital areas which in the mid 1950s employed 13,000 civilian workers, down from Mare Island's high point in World War II, when the shipyard population reached 46,000. Drydocks, cranes, waste-handling facilities, and offices were located at the shipyard. Activities supporting nuclear power propulsion systems were performed in accordance with the requirements and authority of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, a joint DOE and U.S. Department of Navy program responsible for all activities relating to naval nuclear propulsion.

There are 996 buildings with 10.5 million square feet of space, 4 dry docks, 20 ship berths, 2 shipbuilding ways, 3 finger piers, 21 large industrial sites, a school, 2 day care centers, medical clinic, 3 fire stations, a golf course, 2 athletic fields, 3 swimming pools, 9 tennis courts, riding stables, and 416 housing units.

In 1993, the Department of Defense (DoD) Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission recommended the closure of Mare Island NSY in the "third round" (BRAC 3) of military closures. The operational closure of Mare Island NSY was completed in April 1996.
Over 140 years of operations, various activities at Mare Island NSY generated hazardous wastes including: metal plating; lead acid battery repair; oil handling and reclamation; abrasive blasting; discharge of contaminated waste water to Mare Island Strait; landfill disposal of solvents, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contaminated fluids, asbestos, and other hazardous wastes; disposal of contraband and miscellaneous ordnance, and murcuric substances; the detonation of projectiles, war-heads, and high explosives; and overhauling nuclear powered submarines.


In 1854 Commodore David G. Farragut was sent to California to establish and to take charge as first commandant of Mare Island. During World War I, Mare Island grew into a major ship construction and repair facility employing 41,000 persons at its peak. Mare Island held the record for speed in construction of naval vessels, having earned the distinction in 1917, when the destroyer USS Ward was only seventeen days from keel-laying to launching. At the outbreak of the Second World War pproximately 6,000 men were employed at Mare Island in the construction and repair of ships. By December 1995, employment was down to 1,500 and by closure in April 1996 all employment ceased.

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