PORTSMOUTH NH & THE US NAVY
So many familiar names from the US Navy pantheon have Portsmouth connections; yet it’s Portsmouth’s people who helped them navigate and from the beginning Portsmouth was familiar with the international variety of visitors from Navy and mercantile ships, who frequented the town.
John Paul Jones, “Father of the American Navy,” lived in the Widow Purcell’s home at the corner of Middle and State Street (now the Portsmouth Historical Society’s John Paul Jones House Museum) for six months in 1781-82, while he awaited the completion of the ship America in nearby Langdon’s shipyard. His biographers note he passed the time enjoying Portsmouth’s hospitality – and hosted a party and parade in honor of the birth of French ally Marie Antoinette’s child.
Commodore Isaac Hull, who commanded USS Constitution from 1810 through the War of 1812 “Old ironsides” victory over HMS Guerriere, was the first Navy commandant of the shipyard. Constitution, the oldest floating active-duty Navy ship in the world, returned to the Shipyard in 1857 to serve as a training ship and now depends on the skilled workmen of PNSY to oversee her docking and undocking during the ship's rehabilitation in Boston.
Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry captured the twin cannon that flank the doors of the Portsmouth Athenaeum in Market Square in the War of 1812 Battle of Lake Erie. His younger brother Commodore Matthew Perry led the 1852 mission to open Japan (carrying President Pierce’s letter penned by Secretary of State Daniel Webster, former Portsmouth lawyer). Perry succeeded Edmund Roberts, the Portsmouth-born sea captain who 20 years earlier was the first official US delegate bearing instructions from the US President (Andrew Jackson) to make overtures to the Japanese emperor.
Admiral George Dewey, best known for his victory at Manila Bay, in 1867 married "Susie" Boardman Goodwin, the daughter of former NH Governor Ichabod Goodwin, whose home now opens its doors to visitors at Strawbery Banke.
Portsmouth-built USS Kearsarge, crewed with Seacoast sailors defeated the “notorious” CSS Alabama off Cherbourg, France turning the heads of European financiers and the tide of the American Civil War.
Admiral David (“Damn the torpedoes!”) Farragut, the first-ever rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral in the United States Navy, vacationed in Portsmouth in 1870 while his brother was commandant of the Shipyard, but died of a heart attack in Quarters A
Secretary of the Navy, New Hampshire’s William Chandler organized the 1884 rescue of Arctic explorer Adolphus Greely who had led the “Farthest North” exploration in 1881. Greely and the 6 half-starved crew members who survived were brought back to the Shipyard and welcomed with a Portsmouth parade attended by thousands.
President Theodore Roosevelt, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy, entrusted Portsmouth with the delicate task of hosting the 1905 peace conference to end the Russo-Japanese War. He depended on the Navy for the appropriate security and protocol and the people of Portsmouth for the neutral hospitality of citizen diplomacy that resulted in the Portsmouth Peace Treaty and helped earn him the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1906 Roosevelt created the “E” for excellence award.
The people of PNS still hold the record for building submarines, “32 in ‘44” and launching four in a single day. They also built the first “whale-shaped” hull for the research vessel Albacore. Now permanently dry-docked in her own memorial park, the 1953 USS Albacore (AGSS 569) was the first boat built specifically for the sustained underwater operations allowed by the new nuclear power plants in submarines. “Portsmouth-built” was recognized as the “gold standard” among Navy ships and reaffirmed when a sea of yellow t-shirts successfully made the case before the 2005 BRAC commission to keep PNSY sailing.
