When the founders of the United States Naval
Academy were looking for a suitable location, it was reported that
then Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft decided to move the naval
school to "the healthy and secluded" location of Annapolis
in order to rescue midshipmen from "the temptations and distractions
that necessarily connect with a large and populous city." The
Philadelphia Naval Asylum School was its predecessor. Four of the
original seven faculty members came from Philadelphia. Other small
naval schools in New York City, Norfolk, Va., and Boston, Mass.
also existed in the early days of the United States.
The United States Navy was born during the
American Revolution when the need for a naval force to match the
Royal Navy became clear. But during the period immediately following
the Revolution, the Continental Navy was demobilized in 1785 by
an economy-minded Congress.
The dormancy of American seapower lasted barely
a decade when, in 1794, President George Washington persuaded the
Congress to authorize a new naval force to combat the growing menace
of piracy on the high seas.
The first vessels of the new U.S. Navy were
launched in 1797; among them were the United States, the
Constellation, and the Constitution. In 1825,
President John Quincy Adams urged Congress to establish a Naval
Academy "for the formation of scientific and accomplished officers."
His proposal, however, was not acted upon until 20 years later.
On September 13, 1842, the American Brig
Somers set sail from the Brooklyn Navy Yard on one of the most
significant cruises in American naval history. It was a school ship
for the training of teenage naval apprentice volunteers who would
hopefully be inspired to make the Navy a career.
However, discipline deteriorated on the Somers
and it was determined by a court of inquiry aboard ship that Midshipman
Philip Spencer and his two chief confederates, Boatswains Mate Samuel
Cromwell and Seaman Elisha Small, were guilty of a "determined
attempt to commit a mutiny."
The three were hanged at the yardarm and the
incident cast doubt over the wisdom of sending midshipmen directly
aboard ship to learn by doing. News of the Somers mutiny
shocked the country.
Through the efforts of the Secretary of the
Navy George Bancroft, the Naval School was established without Congressional
funding, at a 10-acre Army post named Fort Severn in Annapolis,
Maryland, on October 10, 1845, with a class of 50 midshipmen and
seven professors. The curriculum included mathematics and navigation,
gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French.
In 1850 the Naval School became the United
States Naval Academy. A new curriculum went into effect requiring
midshipmen to study at the Academy for four years and to train aboard
ships each summer. That format is the basis of a far more advanced
and sophisticated curriculum at the Naval Academy today. As the
U.S. Navy grew over the years, the Academy expanded. The campus
of 10 acres increased to 338. The original student body of 50 midshipmen
grew to a brigade size of 4,000. Modern granite buildings replaced
the old wooden structures of Fort Severn.
Congress authorized the Naval Academy to begin
awarding bachelor of science degrees in 1933. The Academy later
replaced a fixed curriculum taken by all midshipmen with the present
core curriculum plus 18 major fields of study, a wide variety of
elective courses and advanced study and research opportunities.
Since then, the development of the United States
Naval Academy has reflected the history of the country. As America
has changed culturally and technologically so has the Naval Academy.
In just a few decades, the Navy moved from a fleet of sail and steam-powered
ships to a high-tech fleet with nuclear-powered submarines and surface
ships and supersonic aircraft. The academy has changed, too, giving
midshipmen state-of- the-art academic and professional training
they need to be effective naval officers in their future careers.
The Naval Academy first accepted women as midshipmen
in 1976, when Congress authorized the admission of women to all
of the service academies. Women comprise about 13 to 14 percent
of entering plebes--or freshmen--and they pursue the same academic
and professional training as do their male classmates.
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