The Mare Island Naval Shipyard (MINSY or MINS) was the first United States Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean and was in service 142 years from 1854 to 1996. It is located on the peninsula of Mare Island, which is part of the city of Vallejo, on San Pablo Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, northeast of San Francisco. MINSY made a name for itself as the premier U.S. West Coast submarine port as well as serving as the controlling force in San Francisco Bay Area shipbuilding efforts during World War II.Mare Island Naval Shipyard: A brief history of a west coast icon (2002)
The naval base was closed on 31 March 1996, with more than 7,500 civilians on its payroll, and has gone through several redevelopment phases. It was registered as a California Historical Landmark in 1960, and parts of it were declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1975.
Beginnings In September 1849, Lieutenant Commander William Pope McArthur was placed in command of the US survey schooner Ewing, which had been brought around Cape Horn to the West Coast by Lieutenant Washington Allon Bartlett. Upon reaching San Francisco, Ewing and the other ship assigned to the survey, , were hampered from progress due to desertions of their crews to the gold fields, including a mutiny when crew members rowing into the city from Ewing threw an officer overboard in an attempt to desert. Originally published in The JOURNAL, Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1951-12-01, Number 4 They managed to survey the Mare Island Strait before steaming to Hawaii to obtain crewmen from Hawaiian monarch King Kamehameha III.McArthur, Lewis Pacific Coast Survey of 1849 and 1850 Private history 1915 NOAA.gov retrieved 26 December 2007 They returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1850 with the coastal survey of northern California beginning on 4 April 1850 and continued up to the mouth of the Columbia River. On 1 August 1850, while still in Oregon, McArthur purchased a interest in Mare Island for $468.50 then returned to San Francisco later that month to prepare charts and write reports.
On 15 January 1852, Secretary of the Navy William A. Graham ordered a Naval Commission to select a site for a naval yard on the Pacific Coast. Commodore D. Sloat along with Commodore C. Ringgold, Simon F. Blunt and William P.S. Sanger (former overseer of construction of Drydock Number One, Norfolk Naval Shipyard) were appointed to the commission. On 13 July 1852, Sloat recommended Mare Island, across Mare Island Strait from the settlement of Vallejo. The next month, a sectional floating dry dock, authorized by Secretary Graham for use in California, arrived in San Francisco. It was built in New York and shipped in sections around Cape Horn. In 1853, the Navy purchased Mare Island, the original 956 acres (387 ha) of land for MINSY, for a grand sum of $83,491; subsequently the floating dry dock was moved into place in Mare Island Strait. McArthur's family share (he had died a few months after purchasing his share of Mare Island) was $5,218. Based on observations at the site, Sanger conceived the original plan for the naval yard at Mare Island, later formalized by planners at the Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks in Washington, D.C. Although the 1854 Sanger plan was basically sound and mostly implemented, it did not overcome its natural shortcoming: the naval yard was built on an island on shallow San Pablo Bay.
On 16 September 1854, the Navy commenced shipbuilding and ship repair operations at Mare Island under the command of then-Commander David Farragut, who later gained fame during the U.S. Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay, when he gave the order, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" Farragut and his newly appointed Civil Engineer, Daniel Turner, began to implement Sanger's original plan with only a few minor modifications. Of the early buildings constructed under Turner, five are still standing in historic Shipyard North: Building 46, a smithery built in 1856; Building 71, a storage built in 1858; Building 85, a foundry built in 1858; Building 87, a machine shop built in 1858; and Building 89/91, a boiler shop built in 1858. The other MINSY area constructed was the Ammunition Depot at the south end of the Island, used to store ordnance from warships under repair. Still standing from the Turner years in Ammunition Depot is Building A1, a magazine built in 1857.
MINSY served as a major Pacific Ocean repair station during the late 19th century, handling American as well as Japanese and Russian vessels in the course of duty.
In 1861, the longest lived of the clipper ships, , was brought to Mare Island Navy Yard for $15,000 of repairs. Syren had struck Mile Rock twice while trying to sail out of the Golden Gate.
Marines first arrived for duty in 1862 under the command of Maj Addison Garland, who was the first officer to command the Marine barracks on the island.
Built in 1901 under the guidance of Chaplain Adam A. McAlister and U.S. Senator George C. Perkins, St. Peter's Chapel was the second chapel built on a U.S. Navy property, the first in the Pacific, and the first interdenominational chapel in the armed services. According to historian McDonald, "The chapel, more than any other building, bears witness to the closeness of the community that developed at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard."
Mare Island Naval Shipyard also took a commanding role in civil defense and emergency response on the West Coast, dispatching warships to the Pacific Northwest to subdue Native American unrest. MINSY sent ships such as south to Central America and the Panama Canal to protect US political and commercial interests. Some of the support, logistics and munition requirements for the Spanish–American War were filled by Mare Island. MINSY sent men, materiel and ships to San Francisco in response to the fires following the 1906 earthquake. Arctic rescue missions were mounted as necessary. Ordnance manufacturing and storage were two further key missions at MINSY for nearly all of its active service, including ordnance used prior to the American Civil War.Lott, A Long Line of Ships, pages 3–134.
In 1911, the Marine Corps established two West Coast recruit training depots first at Mare Island, the second at Puget Sound, Washington. Mare Island eventually became the West Coast's only recruit training facility when the Puget Sound operation consolidated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1912. Instructors trained recruits there until 10 August 1923, when they relocated to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego.Mare Island was first California boot camp
World War I
In 1917, when the Marine Expeditionary Force in the Pacific was assigned to Mare Island, the MINSY Marine Corps compound, which was always under Marine Corps command, was relocated to the large hilltop isolated from and west of Shipyard South. The newly built Building M37, a handsome three-story reinforced-concrete building of Beaux Arts design, occupied the entire eastern end of a huge parade ground. It served as the focal point, headquarters, and barracks of the Marine Corps detachment at MINSY. During World War I, the MINSY Marine Corps compound was the major training station on the West Coast.
In July 1917, MINSY was the site of a major explosion that killed six people. On 9 July, a gunpowder magazine containing 127,600 pounds of black powder blew up, damaging a number of surrounding buildings, and leaving a mystery as to what had caused it. Suspicion settled on an identified German agent and possible saboteur, Lothar Witzke, but the investigation proved inconclusive and the official verdict was that the cause was unknown. Stephen C. Ruder has suggested in a 2022 article that it may not have been an act of German sabotage but suicide by a civilian, Neil Damstedt, who was the principal victim and only individual inside the magazine at the moment of explosion.Stephen C. Ruder, "Who Really Blew Up Mare Island?" Naval History (June 2022): 40-45.Spencer Tucker and Priscilla Mary Roberts, ed. World War One: A Student Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2005): 1606
MINSY saw major shipbuilding efforts during World War I. MINSY holds a shipbuilding speed record for a destroyer that still stands, launching in just days in May–June 1918.Mare Island History. Vallejo Convention & Visitors Bureau website. Accessed 22 August 2007 Mare Island was selected by the Navy for construction of the only US West Coast-built dreadnought battleship, , launched in 1919. Several pre-dreadnought battleships had previously been launched at San Francisco and Seattle. Noting the power of underwater warfare shown by German U-boats in World War I, the Navy doubled their Pacific-based submarine construction program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard by founding a submarine program at MINSY in the early 1920s.Lott, A Long Line of Ships, pp. 161–180.
Mare Island Marines Football Team During this period, the Marines stationed at MINSY fielded a college football team which competed against teams in the Pacific Coast Conference and other military service football teams. After the United States entered WWI during April 1917, many college athletes joined or were drafted into the military. Enrolments diminished at universities around the country, with many schools cutting back their sports programs as a result. Consequently, military academies and training bases established football teams composed mostly of college players who had been recruited for service. This was further encouraged by officials who considered football to be excellent war training, with its themes of leadership, teamwork, and discipline. The 1917 Mare Island Marines football team strung together an impressive first season, going 8–0, shutting out six opponents, winning the 1918 Rose Bowl against the Camp Lewis 91st Division football team, and outscoring all of their opponents by a combined total of 200 to 10. This was despite only 500 Marines being stationed at the base when the team was formed. The 1918 Mare Island Marines football team fielded an entirely new roster, which achieved a similar level of success as the previous year. They finished the season with a 10–1 record, losing only in the 1919 Rose Bowl to the Great Lakes Navy Bluejackets.
Interwar years
The Marine Corps training continued after World War I until 1921, when the Marine Corps recruitment center opened in San Diego. The MINSY Marine Corps detachment continued to occupy Building M37 until 1996, but never regained its pre-1921 importance. From around 1922 to 1937, an airfield was established west of the Marine Barracks (Building M37) as a support base for the Navy's first aircraft carrier, , which had her origin at Mare Island. When Langley was at MINSY for repairs, her planes had to be removed to the MINSY airfield, which was also used for training. At her overhaul at MINSY in 1925, her deck was extended 23 feet, increasing her complement of planes to two full squadrons (36 planes). From October 1936 to February 1937, she was converted to a seaplane tender at MINSY.
In 1919, MINSY was finally, after 65 years, linked to mainland Vallejo by a causeway with a drawbridge, which provided direct land-based movement of supplies and personnel across Mare Island Strait. Owing to the shallowness of the shipping channels in Mare Island Strait and San Pablo Bay, the larger battleships and carriers of the Pacific fleet were sent not to MINSY but to leased dry docks then-privately owned at Hunters Point. However, submarine work was especially suited for Mare Island. MINSY became the major West Coast submarine repair facility in WWI and in 1925 was awarded a contract to build its first submarine, . In the 1930s, land reclamation nearly doubled the usable acreage on Mare Island. For example, the low-lying North End marshland were raised above high tide, making it available for future MINSY expansion.