The Washington Navy Yard (WNY) is a ceremonial and administrative center for the United States Navy, located in the federal national capital city of Washington, D.C. (federal District of Columbia). It is the oldest shore establishment / base of the U.S. Navy, established 1799, situated along the north shore of the Anacostia River (Eastern Branch of the Potomac River) in the adjacent Navy Yard neighborhood of Southeast, Washington, D.C.
Formerly operating as a shipyard since the end of the 18th century / beginning of the 19th century, and ordnance plant, the yard currently serves as home to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), commanding the U.S. Navy, and is headquarters for the several military agencies and commands of Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Reactors, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, Naval History and Heritage Command, Navy Installations Command, the National Museum of the United States Navy, the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, Marine Corps Institute, the United States Navy Band, and other more classified facilities.
In 1998, the yard was also listed as a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency due to the extreme environmental contamination over its two and a quarter centuries existence.
History The history of the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. can be divided into its military history and parallel cultural and scientific history.
Military
The land along the north shore of the Eastern Branch (now called the Anacostia River) of the Potomac River in the newly laid-out federal capital city in the District of Columbia, later called Washington city, was purchased under an Act of Congress on July 23, 1799. The Washington Navy Yard was then established two and half months later on October 2, 1799, the date the property was transferred to the also newly established United States Department of the Navy. It is the oldest shore establishment of the United States Navy. The Yard was built under the direction of Benjamin Stoddert as the first secretary of the Navy, and heading the also new U.S. Department of the Navy in the presidential administration of the second president, John Adams (1735–1826, served 1797–1801), under the supervision of the Yard's first commandant, Commodore Thomas Tingey, who served in that capacity for the following 29 years to 1828.
The original boundaries that were established in 1800, along 9th and M Street SE, are still marked by a white painted brick wall that surrounds the Yard on the north and east landward sides. The following year, two additional lots were purchased. The north wall of the Yard was built in 1809 along with a guardhouse structure, now known as the Latrobe Gate (named for Yard and U.S. Capitol architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820). After the occupation and burning of Washington in August 1814 by British forces as part of the War of 1812, Tingey recommended that the height of the eastern wall be increased to . He made these recommendations in light of not just the burning but also acts of looting American civilians committed during the occupation.
The southern boundary of the Yard was formed by the Anacostia River (then called the "Eastern Branch" of the Potomac River). The west side was undeveloped shoreline marsh. The land located along the Anacostia was gradually added to by landfill over the years as it became necessary to increase the size of the Yard. From its first years, the Washington Navy Yard became the Navy's largest shipbuilding and shipfitting facility, with 22 vessels and warships constructed there, ranging from small gunboats to the steam frigate USS Minnesota. The USF Constitution came to the Yard in 1812 to refit and prepare for possible overseas combat action after the declaration of war by Congress in June 1812.
During the War of 1812, the Navy Yard was important not only as a support facility but also as a vital strategic link in defense of the federal capital city. Sailors of the Navy Yard were part of the hastily assembled American army, which was defeated at the Battle of Bladensburg in Bladensburg, Maryland, northeast outside the District of Columbia capital by British invasion forces marching overland on Washington, after landing further east at Benedict, Maryland, having sailed portions of their fleet up the nearby Patuxent River from the Chesapeake Bay.
An independent volunteer militia rifle company of civilian workers in the Washington Navy Yard was organized by the United States naval architect William Doughty (1773–1859), earlier in 1813, and they regularly drilled after working hours. In 1814, Captain Doughty's volunteers were designated as the Navy Yard Rifles and assigned to serve under the overall command of Major Robert Brent (1764–1819, served 1802–1812), commanding the 2nd Regiment of the District of Columbia Militia (who was also the first mayor of Washington City 1802–1812, in the federal capital city in the District of Columbia under its first municipal government in the 19th century). In late August, they were ordered to March to the northeast and assemble at Bladensburg, Maryland, to form the first line of defense in protecting the United States' capital city along with the majority of the American forces was ordered to retreat.Doughty, William Captain, 2nd Regiment (Brent's) District of Columbia Militia War of 1812, NARA RG 94 The seamen of the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla of Commodore Joshua Barney (1759–1818), also joined the combined forces of Navy Yard sailors, and the U.S. Marines from the nearby Marine Barracks of Washington, D.C., and were positioned to be the third and final line of the American defenses along the stream bank of the upper Anacostia River and across the bridge there. Together, they targeted British forces with artillery and finally fought in hand-to-hand combat with cutlasses and pikes before being defeated. Benjamin King (1764–1840), a Navy Yard civilian master blacksmith, fought at Bladensburg. King accompanied Captain Miller's Marines into battle. King took charge of a disabled gun and was instrumental in bringing that gun into action. Captain Miller remembered King's gun "cut down sixteen of the enemy."
As British forces marched into Washington, holding the Yard became impossible. Seeing the smoke from the burning fire at the under-construction, unfinished United States Capitol on Capitol Hill, Tingey then ordered the Yard facilities also be burned to prevent its capture and use by the enemy. Both structures are now individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places (lists maintained by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior). On August 30, 1814, Mary Stockton Hunter, an eyewitness to the vast fiery conflagration, wrote a letter to her sister, saying: "No pen can describe the appalling sound that our ears heard and the sight our eyes saw. We could see everything from the upper part of our house as plainly as if we had been in the Yard. All the vessels of war on fire-the immense quantity of dry timber, together with the houses and stores in flames produced an almost meridian brightness. You never saw a drawing room so brilliantly lighted as the whole city was that night."Mary Stockton Hunter, The Burning of Washington, D.C. New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin 1924, pp 80–83.
Among the vessels that were burned at the Yard were two warships under construction and nearing completion: the original Columbia, a 44-gun frigate, and the Argus, an 18-gun brig being built to replace an earlier Argus, which had been captured by the British a year earlier following an engagement off the coast of Wales.
Civilian employment
From its beginning, the Navy Yard had one of the biggest payrolls in town, with the number of civilian mechanics and laborers and contractors expanding with the seasons and the naval Congressional appropriation.Sharp, John G. History of the Washington Navy Yard Civilian Workforce 1799 -1962 (Naval History and Heritage Command: Washington DC 2005)4., accessed 28 July 2018 https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/browse-by-topic/heritage/washington-navy-yard/pdfs/WNY_History.pdf By 1812 the Washington Navy Yard, was the most advanced in terms of capability and numbers of workmen and it soon became one of the largest industrial activities in Washington D.CDudley, William S. Inside the US Navy of 1812 -1815 (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD, 2021), p. 7.
Before the passage of the Pendleton Act on 16 January 1883, applications for employment at the Washington Navy Yard were informal, mainly based on connections, patronage, and personal influence. An example from 1806 is the employment of Winthrop and Samuel Shriggins, two ship carpenters who were hired at $2.06 per diem, 12 March 1806 based on the approval of later second U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Robert Smith (1757–1842, served 1801–1809) under the two terms of presidential administration of third President, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826, served 1801–1809). While a former seaman, Adam Keizer, was hired because he "was with Captain / Commodore William Bainbridge (1774–1833), at Tripoli."Thomas Tingey to Robert Smith, 12 March 1806, Letters Received by the Secretary of the Navy, "Captains Letters" volume 4, letter 47, Roll 0004, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. On occasion, a dearth of applicants required a public announcement; the first such documented advertisement was by Commodore Thomas Tingey on 15 May 1815 "To Blacksmiths, Eight or Ten good strikers capable of working on large anchors, and other heavy ship work, will find constant employ and liberal wages, by application at the Navy Yard, Washington"City of Washington Gazette 15 May 1815, p. 3 Following the War of 1812, the Washington Navy Yard never regained its prominence as a shipbuilding facility. The waters of the Anacostia River were too shallow to accommodate larger battle vessels, and the Yard was deemed too inaccessible to the open sea with a long trip downstream on the Potomac River and South down the Chesapeake Bay to its mouth with the Atlantic Ocean at the Hampton Roads harbor of Virginia. Thus came a shift to what was to be the mission, reason and character of the yard for more than a hundred more years during the 19th century, of: ordnance and technology. During the next decade, the Navy Yard grew to become by 1819 the largest employer in the federal national capital city of Washington, D.C. among all the many departments, bureaus and boards in the District, with a total number of approximately 345 employee / workers.
In 1826, noted writer Anne Royall (1769–1854) toured the Navy Yard. She wrote,Royall, Anne Newport, Sketches of the History, Life and Manner in the United States by a Traveler, (New Haven, by the author, 1826), p. 140
"The navy yard is a complete work-shop, where every naval article is manufactured: it contains twenty-two forges, five furnaces, and a steam-engine. The shops are large and convenient; they are built of brick and covered with copper to secure them from fire. Steel is prepared here with great facility. The numbers of hands employed vary; at present there are about 200. A ship-wright has $2,50 per day, out of which he maintains his wife and family if he have any. Generally wages are very low for all manner of work; a common laborer gets but 75 cents per day, and finds himself. The whole interior of the yard exhibits one continual thundering of hammers, axes, saws, and bellows, sending forth such a variety of sounds and smells, from the profusion of coal burnt in the furnaces, that it requires the strongest nerves to sustain the annoyance."