The Shipyard Museum

This Vietnam-era riverine patrol craft sits at the entrance to the museum building.

This is the shipyard's bell, which was made on site.

Here is an overall view of the museum. It is built into one of the old shop buildings, and can be rented out for ceremonies. Outside, on the other side of the far wall, are the building ways where ships were constructed.

This is the plaque from the keel-laying of the USS San Francisco, CA-38 (the name-sake of the ship I served on). There was a whole wall of such plaques, but even so they represented only a small fraction of the ships built at the shipyard.

This is one of the yard's old time-clocks.

A line-up of some old electrical equipment.

These are 3 submarine periscopes. This is what they look like when they are installed and removed from the ship! The tour guide tells me the museum would one day like to rig one to look through the roof of the building.

These machine tools were all lovingly restored by retired machinists who worked at the shipyard. They look factory-new!

The sail shop at a shipyard is responsible for sewing any and everything, from flags to upholstery for seat cushions. As it turns out, the seamstresses at Mare Island made the flag that was raised over Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima in 1945.

These are two of the work outfits worn by women working at the shipyard.

In addition to the shipyard, a large naval hospital was once located on the site. It specialized in prosthetics, one of which you can see here. That shiny device on the top shelf is a 50's era dental drill (shudder).

This is a small-scale model of the hospital complex.

Here is an HO-scale (1:87) model of the building ways, with a Lafayette-class SSBN hull. Mare Island built a number of the early SSBNs and SSNs.

This is a work in progress exhibit that is seeking to re-create the control room of the USS Vallejo, a SSBN constructed at the shipyard.

This is the figure head from the USS Independence, a sailing frigate that ended its days as a receiving ship at the yard.

This is a model of the USS Vallejo.

This is a model of the USS Ward, a destroyer that was built at Mare Island and is famous for firing the US Navy's first shot of WW II, when she depth-charged a Japanese midget submarine at the mouth of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

This is a 1:3600 scale model of the shipyard in its hey-day.