Norfolk vs. San Diego
By
Bruce Linder
Navy History,
September, 2005
East vs. West; southern hospitality vs. California chic; climate, history, roots. There are many reasons why Norfolk and San Diego should be fundamentally different. Why then are they present-day naval mirror images of each other?
It is common to view the march of naval events across American history in terms of famous battles, illustrious names, breakthroughs in tactics and technologies, or new ship and weapon designs-all themes that flow comfortably from a historian's pen or leap easily recognized from a lecturer's podium. Nearly invisible in such accounts is any mention of the Navy's power centers-its support bases, arsenals, depots, or headquarters. Yet without those strategic underpinnings there would be few famous victories, notable personalities, or technological advances.
Today, two mighty nerve centers of American naval power exist, sitting on opposite sides of the continent, each facing outward toward wide oceans and a chaotic world. They stand like matching towers of an impressive suspension bridge, together holding the great weight of American naval might and providing it the means to project outward from our shores to distant locations east and west. Norfolk and San Diego could not be more different in lifestyle, culture, weather, or historical legacy, but today they stand as nearly identical twin capitals of naval influence.
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Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers pack the piers of Hampton Roads and the quay walls of San Diego Bay; jet aircraft rise from kindred airbases; SEALs train on nearby beaches; supply centers, amphibious ships, submarines, hospitals, repair centers, naval memorials, and recreational beaches dot each matching landscape. The similarities in present- day Norfolk's and San Diego's naval footprint form the painter's bold strokes in this picture; the differences (San Diego is much more the fleet's technology center; Norfolk a thriving melting pot of joint and cross-service planning) add light and subtlety to the masterpiece.
Considering heritage and geography alone, it is not surprising that these two cities have taken different courses to reach their present status as matching pinnacles of naval power. But what is surprising, given the great distance between them and the inclination for competition, has been their consistently positive interaction over the years, and the many common interests and perspectives shared. Odd as it may seem, present-day Norfolk and San Diego share many more similarities due to their collaborative naval ties than they do differences, and a sailor with San Diego or Norfolk roots will feel more comfortable in his sister naval city than he would in Orlando, Philadelphia, or Des Moines.
The Early Years
There was little to bind these two cities during the early years of American naval history with, perhaps, the single exception of the importance of geography. The first "naval" installation in the Virginia tidewater was a modest shipyard established to service the tobacco trade and cruisers of the Royal Navy that protected it. This shipyard, on the Elizabeth River at Portsmouth, offered deep water, protection from the weather, and a sloping beach where ships could be readily careened and repaired. In November 1767, Scottish entrepreneur Andrew Sprowle cleverly named the site Gosport after a well-known dockyard in Portsmouth, England, in order to catch the attention of British skippers.
Although Gosport was burned by the British during the American Revolution, its strategic location near the Chesapeake Bay and at the midpoint of the Atlantic seaboard made it the young American Navy's primary operating base during the Quasi-War with France in 1798-99. Gosport routinely provided the entire spectrum of services required by a sailing navy: new construction (including the 36-gun frigate Chesapeake ), repairs, victualing, recruiting, training, and maintaining ships in reserve. The shipyard fitted out new American ships of the line in the years after the War of 1812, was the location of the first dry dock built in North America, and dispatched numerous naval expeditions and voyages of discovery in the years before the Civil War.
During those same years, San Diego was but a small, dusty Mexican settlement, undistinguished except for its remarkable bay, known by mariners since 1542 as the most prominent and protected point along a thousand miles of California coastline. On 29 July 1846, the threads of destiny that would ultimately help to link San Diego and Norfolk came together for the first time when the Norfolk-based sloop-of-war Cyane landed a detachment of sailors and Marines to raise the first American flag over San Diego at the start of the Mexican War. San Diego Bay quickly assumed status as the primary U.S. naval support base for wartime operations along the Mexican and Baja California coasts, but with the end of hostilities, San Diego descended rapidly into naval obscurity with few warship visits over the next 50 years.
By 1850, when San Diego's population numbered but 248 white residents, 483 converted Indians, 1,550 wild Indians, 3 Negroes, 3 Sandwich Islanders, and not a single naval officer, Norfolk was reaching an early peak of naval activity. 1 Gosport's building ways were busy with construction, and the shipyard stood as the Navy's center for the introduction of steam power, screw propulsion, and whole new families of cannons and explosive shells. At the time, Gosport ranked as the Navy's largest shipyard and largest naval armory, with the naval hospital at Portsmouth also the Navy's biggest, and Navy tars crowded waterfront public houses. The maritime tempo was upbeat and positive, and Norfolk's population of naval officers and their families (many of whom settled near Norfolk to be on call at their homes "awaiting orders") added a distinctive cosmopolitan air to local social gatherings.
Norfolk's rapid ascent to the pinnacle of naval operations plunged to earth with the commencement of the Civil War. Gosport was blockaded and twice burned, first by Federal and then by Confederate forces. Although Norfolk was the scene of the first battle of ironclad warships and was a nearby spectator to naval battles along the James River, by war's end its ability to stage naval forces had been almost totally destroyed. It would not be until the 1880s that Hampton Roads again captured the central position in American naval thinking.
Across the final two decades of the 1800s, the American Navy vaulted from sailing ships to those of armor, steel, steam, coal, rifled bores, and turreted guns. The leap stimulated a revolution in naval architecture, steel manufacture, electricity, and high-explosive ordnance with advances so rapid that some battleships were rendered obsolete in the time it took to design and build the next. A rising tide of industrialization swept across Hampton Roads fueled by easy access to maritime commerce and links to inexpensive coal and steel. The youthful Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company captured a string of eye-catching battleship orders, and the Norfolk Navy Yard (Gosport) became, again, a nationally recognized name in ship production and repair.
Of all these factors, the most important for Norfolk was its ready access to huge supplies of coal, the energy king of the time. Hampton Roads was the railway terminus for the coal regions of Pennsylvania and West Virginia; cheap coal piled up on its shores, and coal-hungry naval vessels came in droves. By 1907, when President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched the Great White Fleet from Hampton Roads on its record-setting, round-the-world cruise, Norfolk was unmistakably the Navy's industrial capital.
San Diego's Rise
Although naval vessels were then occasional visitors to San Diego, only a modest coaling station and a small experimental wireless radio station stood ashore. But an unlikely transformation was about to take place in San Diego's tenuous relationship with a distant U.S. Navy. After Norfolk's Great White Fleet had rounded South America, its next goal was a tour of U.S. West Coast cities beginning with San Pedro (Los Angeles). When a group of San Diego civic boosters discovered that the fleet was to sail within sight of their port without stopping, they rented a tug to intercept the ships off Baja California to plead San Diego's case. The audacious scheme worked, and the Navy reluctantly agreed to a brief three-day stay anchored off San Diego.
Arrayed in powerful battle divisions, the Great White Fleet approached southern California in dramatic fashion on a glorious April morning in 1908, instantly mesmerizing thousands who crowded the beaches of Coronado, opposite the port. It was said that nearly everyone in San Diego attended the celebrations, during which the governor formally welcomed the fleet, ships entertained visitors, bluejackets paraded down Broadway, and the fleet dazzled all with nightly searchlight displays. Thinly planned but emotionally executed, the visit proved a singularly important event in San Diego's history and propelled its relatively unknown event chairman, William Kettner, into national politics as San Diego's congressman and, ultimately, as the primary force behind San Diego's first brave foray into naval base building. 2
By the time the Great White Fleet returned to its Norfolk homeport in 1909, the seed of naval presence had been sowed in fertile California soil and would be slowly nurtured by a growing cadre of civic and business interests. Buoyant with their success in strong-arming the Navy to bring the Great White Fleet to town and encouraged by the immense public outpouring of support, San Diego boosters set their sights on further capturing the Navy's attention.
Two dominant themes framed the San Diego business and civic community after the departure of the Great White Fleet. First, all recognized that San Diego's economic prosperity depended on trade and revenue that could only be generated by a deeper harbor, a project that only the federal government could afford to undertake. Second, San Diego was wrapped in an all-consuming citywide debate between those who supported economic growth by any means including vigorous industrialization (a model similar to that of nearby Los Angeles) and others who favored "soft" industries such as tourism to anchor the economy and save San Diego's aesthetic surroundings. This "smokestacks versus geraniums" contest was ultimately resolved by the city "joining the Navy," according to California historian Kevin Starr. It was an elegant solution. By attracting the Navy, a new economic model was born for San Diego: a continuous stream of federal revenue, a paycheck-in-your-pocket-every-payday workforce, and harbor improvements to strengthen its tax base while avoiding the evils of industrialization. 3
In 1919 Congress authorized the establishment of a naval training facility at San Diego, a move that was due in large part to the diligent lobbying of William Kettner, a local U.S. congressman and spokesman for the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. Above: Recruits pass in review during one of the San Diego Naval Training Center's weekly parades.
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Beginning with William Kettner's election to Congress in 1912, efforts swung into motion to convince the Navy to move to San Diego despite the Department of the Navy's reluctance. In fact, in a Navy evaluation of western ports, San Diego stood last in desirability behind San Francisco, San Pedro, Hawaii, and even Puget Sound. Typical was an official comment from the Navy's General Board: "Referring to the proposed establishment of a naval station at San Diego, the General Board believes that this place is not naturally well adapted for the purpose and that its strategic value as a supplement to other stations now existing in the same area would be small as compared with that of [San Francisco and Puget Sound]." 4
Undaunted, San Diego quickly won a modest but groundbreaking dredging contract for the harbor. Then, when the Navy announced their intent to build a larger radio station somewhere on the West Coast, a motivated San Diego surprisingly won the competition, in part due to Kettner's deft lobbying of Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels. Significant as this triumph was to San Diego, it was but a remote sideshow to major naval operations that, in 1914 and 1915, were centered on the East Coast, which faced a European war.
The Great War's Impetus
Just as San Diegans had done, business supporters in Norfolk began to target Josephus Daniels who, with his North Carolina roots, was considered somewhat a friend at court. Just like San Diego, Norfolk aimed to increase naval appropriations. But Norfolk's motivation to attract naval revenue soon dramatically diverged from that of San Diego. Those in Norfolk saw the Navy not as a choice against industrialization but as a primary stimulus for heavy industry across the Virginia tidewater. 5 In their plan, naval appropriations would bring armor plants, foundries, machinery mills, huge increases in shipbuilding, and improved transportation nodes—all fueled by coal-burning power plants. Although those in San Diego and Norfolk viewed their Navy through different lenses, both saw the Navy as a compelling means to a desirable end.
But as San Diego and Norfolk promoters carefully lobbied Navy Secretary Daniels, the world was changing and so, too, were the Navy's needs for naval bases. Between 1907 and 1915, Norfolk boosters had repeatedly pressed a disinterested and unresponsive Navy to establish an expansive new operating base and training center on the undeveloped grounds of the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, at nearby Sewell's Point. But with the onset of the European war, it became clear that the Navy faced a different kind of conflict, with dreadnoughts of greater size, flotillas of newly introduced submarines and destroyers, and—most radical of all—airfields, hangars, and ramps for aircraft, including seaplanes. Bases for an expanding fleet would have to be more industrialized, sophisticated, and efficient with centralized repair, refueling, supply, rearming, medical, communications, and training services.
As war urgencies took hold (and despite its earlier reluctance), the Navy took possession of Sewell's Point in June 1917 and began a crash program to develop a new Norfolk Naval Operating Base (NOB). An aircraft landing field, a protected manmade lagoon for seaplanes, and a new training station rose at Sewell's Point by October. Within a year, water depths had increased to 35 feet and dredge material expanded the original NOB tract from 474 to 800 acres behind a 22,000-linear-foot bulkhead along the Elizabeth River. A submarine base and supply depot quickly followed, and Hampton Roads supported the first deployments of U.S. destroyers and the embarkation of troops to France. 6
Far as it was from the impetus of World War I operations, San Diego still cleverly kept itself in the naval picture. Although not fully realizing it at the time, San Diego's appeals to the Navy began to follow Norfolk's model of providing integrated base services in a single location. While again faring poorly in two major West Coast base studies, Congressman Kettner took a new tack by pressing for a new naval training station, an installation not mentioned in the Navy's studies. San Diegans first provided a temporary wartime naval training site at no cost and then helped the Navy to stake out a permanent tract, again for free. Quietly Kettner then pressed for a naval hospital, a supply depot, and aviation operations on North Island. Although not a major base, by war's end, San Diego was the only West Coast city that could offer the efficiencies of centralized fleet services.
The Navy Moves West
The war had concentrated the American fleet along the East Coast, much to Norfolk's economic advantage, but with rising concerns about Japan in the Pacific, the Navy began to quietly plan for a post-war, two-ocean fleet. Although such a rebalancing of the fleet should have surprised no one, Virginia's tidewater was thunderstruck when news broke that half of the Navy's battleships—all of them from the most modern oil-fired classes—and great numbers of other ships were to be ordered westward. 7
The West Coast was similarly caught off balance. Despite a rosy naval optimism centered on its budding naval infrastructure, San Diego's status in official Navy studies was no higher than "the third naval base on the coast," after Puget Sound and San Francisco, and most in the Department of the Navy avidly wanted San Francisco to become the primary western fleet concentration site, mirroring that of Norfolk. But with overextended western bases and shrinking post-war budgets for any new fleet facilities in San Francisco, the Pacific Fleet commander was forced to distribute his ships to "temporary" bases at several western ports. The Pacific battleship force was ordered to San Pedro, and the shallow-draught destroyer force was sent to San Diego. 8
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