Nine Notable Mare Island Vessels
A visual and historical introduction to some of Mare Island’s most remarkable ships and submarines.
USS Saginaw
The first ship Mare Island built was the USS Saginaw, a paddle wheel gunboat launched in 1859. The yard had no problem building the ship herself, but her engines were odd ones where the pistons swung back and forth instead of being fixed in place like a car’s engine today, so the shipyard had to go to San Francisco to find someone who could put the darn things together and make them work. They never built another engine like that. (Not many other people did either.)
Once finished, she served up and down the west coast and off Hawaiian waters until 1870, when she was wrecked off Ocean Island, near Midway Island in the North Pacific. Winter was coming, Ocean Island had no water or shelter, so the ship’s gig was decked over, a cabin was added, and with the executive officer in command, she was sent 1500 miles to Hawaii to get help. It was a bad voyage, and only Vallejo resident William Halford, the Boatswain, survived. Barely alive himself, he made his report and King Kamehameha V sent his personal steamer to the rescue. All of the Saginaw’s crew and passengers were picked up, Halford was awarded the Medal of Honor, and in later years, a US Navy destroyer was named after him. Lieutenant Halford is buried in the Mare Island cemetery.
USS Active
So how did a lowly tugboat come to be on a list of notable MI boats? While the Active was actually built by Union Iron Works in San Francisco, she was purchased by the Navy and eventually assigned to Mare Island as a yard tug. Following the 1906 SF earthquake, Active was sent by the Commander of Mare Island to assist with fighting the catastrophic fires that were burning all throughout the city. While docked at Pier 8, she laid-out over a mile of hose from Fisherman’s Wharf, over Telegraph Hill and down to the area known as the Barbary Coast, where she helped save several blocks of buildings, among which were the US Customs house, and, to the delight of locals, Hotaling’s Whiskey, the largest liquor warehouse on the West Coast. Despite sinking dockside at Mare Island in 1926, Active will always be associated with a verse by local poet Charles Field, who wrote, “If as they say, God spanked the town, For being over frisky, Why did he burn the churches down, And save Hotaling’s Whiskey?”
USS Jupiter
The Jupiter was a gargantuan Collier Class vessel built at Mare Island and launched in 1912. It was designed to provide refueling, in the way of transferring coal to other ships of the fleet, while at sea. Weighing more than 19,000 tons, it was the largest ship of its class ever built, and its 18 booms positioned along both sides of the main deck were a startling contrast to the profile of most other Navy vessels. It was the Navy’s first surface ship propelled by turbo-electric drives (thanks, General Electric!), and was the first ship to complete the west-to-east transit of the Panama Canal. In 1919, the Navy received authorization to convert Jupiter to a vessel “capable of carrying, launching, and recovering aircraft at sea”, those aircraft being referred to as “Aeromarines,” after the company which built them. Re-floated in 1922 as the Langley, she became the first US aircraft carrier, and served until she was crippled by Japanese torpedo bombers. After being evacuated, she was scuttled by US gunfire, and went to the bottom on February 27, 1942.
USS California
The California was Mare Island’s only battleship, and the west coast’s only super-dreadnought. Her keel was laid in 1916, but construction was halted in 1917 when the US entered World War I so Mare Island could concentrate on building destroyers and sub chasers. She was commissioned in 1921, and never saw Mare Island again, since the Island did not have a drydock large enough to handle her. (When it came time for launching, the 47,000 pounds of beef fat used to coat the building way to help California slide into the water did its job a little too well, propelling the ship at high speed into the channel, where it broke five chains and sent spectators running, before crashing into the ferry dock at the foot of Georgia street and becoming stuck in the mud. Somewhat ignoble, but at least entertaining. California was heavily damaged and sunk at Pearl Harbor, but by April she had been re-floated and made it to Bremerton, WA under her own power. In Bremerton, she was heavily modified and updated, and rejoined the fleet in 1944. She saw action in the central and Northern Pacific and was operating off Okinawa when Japan surrendered. After the war she made a show-the-flag tour through the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean before returned home to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where she was decommissioned. She was sold for scrap in 1959, 40 years after launching. The California figures into a famous Sea Story about a Golden Rivet! (Hint: just in case you join the Navy, don’t let someone send you into the bilge to look for it.)
USS Ward
In 1917 the United States entered World War One and began building Sub Chasers and Destroyers to protect merchant ships against submarines. The Ward, a Wickes-Class four-piper (meaning four smokestacks) destroyer, was one of those built. Mare Island laid her keel in May 1918, and she was launched 17½ days later, a very short time for a warship and a record that still stands today. This was possible because the naval constructor in charge of her building had sections of her were built in advance so they could be brought quickly to the building ways when they were needed. What is today called prefabrication, was at the time called cheating by the other shipyards. Sour grapes! World War I ended before the Ward saw any action, and she was kept in reserve into 1941, when she was reactivated for use in Pearl Harbor during World War II. On the morning of 7 December 1941, she fired on a Japanese submarine trying to sneak into Pearl Harbor just hours before the Japanese attack that would “live in infamy.” (The story was met with disbelief, until 2002 when the wreck of the Japanese submarine was found, and the doubters finally had to admit that the Ward and her crew had known there was something to worry about after all.) In 1944 the Ward was attacked by Japanese kamikazes during the battle of Ormac Bay in the Philippines, was fatally damaged, and ordered sunk by a nearby American destroyer.
USS San Francisco
The San Francisco (CA-38) was a New Orleans class cruiser built by Mare Island and launched in 1933. She was what was called a ‘Treaty Cruiser’, built to meet the restrictions placed all the world’s major naval vessels by the Naval Arms Limitation Treaty of 1921. That meant, among other things, she was limited to 8" guns and ten thousand tons; the end result were cruisers with heavy guns, long range, high speed, and inadequate armor. San Francisco was at Pearl Harbor on 7 December and was attacked but suffered no damage. She operated in the Pacific throughout all of World War II, and was awarded 17 battle stars, a Presidential Unit Citation, and is the second most decorated ship of World War Two, trailing only the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. During the war San Francisco steamed over 500,000 miles, burned 433,466,198 gallons of fuel, crossed the equator 24 times, the International Date Line 33 times, fired 179,360 rounds of ammunition, and fed her crew 8,780,101 pounds of food including 5,760,000 slices of bread. (And the Great Grandfather of the ships Communications Officer, Lt. Cdr. McCandless, was shot dead by Wild Bill Hickok for bank robbery, but that’s another story.) She was sold for scrap in 1959. The only things remaining of her now are a portion of her bridge wings...still showing battle damage...at the USS San Francisco Memorial on Land’s End in San Francisco, and her ship’s bell, now in the Marines’ Memorial Club in The City.
USS Mariano Vallejo
The pride of the City of Vallejo, the Mariano Vallejo (SSBN658) was named after the benefactor and founder of the city of Vallejo (not to mention another city, which he named after his wife, Benicia). She was a Benjamin Franklin-Class nuclear-powered, ballistic missile-equipped submarine, 425’ long, and in service between 1966 and 1995. Because of the unique relationship with the city, private donations from citizens, merchants, and even city government poured in to ensure that she was outfitted to a higher standard than any previous submarine. Sterling Silver table service was donated for the officer’s mess, and Formica, which was the latest and greatest thing back in that day was plastered liberally all throughout the boat. (FYI...surface vessels are called ships, under surface vessels are boats). She served primarily out of her home port of Pearl Harbor and conducted strategic deterrent patrols off the east and west coasts of the US, as well as the Caribbean and other locations around the world as part of Submarine Squadron 15. She was decommissioned and scrapped in 1995, with her sail becoming a permanent memorial to the boat and crew in Mare Island’s Building Ways 2, the exact location in which she was built. A replica of her control room remains inside the former Mare Island Museum while a search is ongoing to find a new location.
USS Guitarro
If ever there was a case study on how not to build a submarine, the Guitarro would be the subject. Guitarro was a 292’ long, nuclear-powered Sturgeon-class submarine, launched July 27, 1968, at Mare Island Shipyard. On May 15, 1969, with construction still underway, a civilian nuclear construction team had finished calibrating the ballast in the rear of the ship and were removing water from the tanks, while at the same time, a non-nuclear civilian crew was adjusting the trim in the forward tanks by adding water. Never ones to miss a meal, both crews went to lunch with all hatches and watertight doors open, and pumps running. When they came back, the nose was already submerged, and when the hatches and doors could not be secured, she fully sank, with only her sail visible. Damage was estimated at between $15M and $22M dollars and took several years to remediate. The boat’s unofficial nickname became the Mare Island Mud Puppy, and a further accolade was added when the weekly TV series Laugh In awarded Mare Island its Fickle Finger of Fate Award. Guitarro was scrapped in 1994.
USS Drum
Some things are notable for being first, others for being last, as is the case with the USS Drum, a 292’ Sturgeon-class submarine. Being launched in 1970, she was the last submarine built at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. After her trials, she was sent to her home port of San Diego, from where she made many deployments, mostly to the Western Pacific, where her longest deployment was eight months. Submariners are the best fed sailors in the Navy, and there are documented stories from the Drum’s crew relating just how sick they got of having to eat steak and lobster so frequently. It was not uncommon for them to trade said steaks and lobsters to other ships for good old-fashioned hamburgers and hot dogs, which many other crews found infuriating. The Drum was very highly decorated, being awarded many Meritorious Unit Commendations, Battle Efficiency Awards, and Navy Expeditionary Medals. The Drum was decommissioned and scrapped in October 1995, with her Sail being on display at the U.S. Navy Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois.