Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard sits near the Maine/New Hampshire border and is one of the oldest shipyards in US history. In fact, the shipyard is older than the country it now serves; the facilities were used to construct British naval vessels starting in 1690. The site's proximity to much of New England's old-growth forests made it much easier to transport unfinished logs and convert them into planks for shipbuilding.

During the revolution, workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard constructed some of the first vessels for the new American navy. Raleigh was the first ship to carry the American flag into a naval battle in 1776. Ranger, captained by legendary naval hero John Paul Jones, was the first American naval vessel to receive a salute from a foreign ship.

After the war, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard became the first recognized US Navy shipyard in 1800. The site was under civilian control until 1812, when Navy Commodore Isaac Hull became base's the first commandant. Just three years later, crews laid the keel for the gunship USS Washington. With more than seventy guns, Washington had some of the most devastating firepower of any vessel at that time.

As America expanded in both territory and global influence, so did the facilities at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, the base added commandant's quarters, a hospital, and barracks for both Navy and Marine Corps personnel. The most notable new structure was the Franklin Shiphouse, which housed construction for the USS Franklin from 1854 to 1864. The site also hosted the overhaul of the original USS Constitution, a ship that survived heavy fire during the War of 1812 and earned the nickname "Old Ironsides".

At the start of the twentieth century, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was home to many innovations in the growing field of submarine warfare. Workers started construction on the L-8, the first submarine ever built in a US naval shipyard, in 1917. During the 1930s and early 1940s, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was the site for some of the first steel-sided submarine tests, including underwater explosion tests on both surface vessels and operational submarines. In 1944, the facility set a record by constructing thirty-one submarines in a year - more than two a month. Workers were also able to cut the build time for a submarine from more than sixteen months to less than six.

Crews at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard continued to push the envelope of submarine construction when they built Swordfish, the first US nuclear submarine assembled in a Navy shipyard, in 1958, and Abraham Lincoln, the first Polaris missile submarine, in 1961. New submarine construction ended at the yard after the completion of Sandlance in 1971.

Due to the heavy work on submarine nuclear reactors, the area suffered from severe radiation contamination. The EPA placed the site on its National Priorities List for Superfund cleanup monies. A congressional committee placed Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on a list of bases to be closed by 2008, but local workers organized and influenced political leaders to remove the base from the list.

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