As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum is highlighting the city's deep naval roots with a new exhibit.
The exhibit features the 10 most important ships ever built, modernized, or repaired at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, which brought the first dry dock to the Western Hemisphere and remains one of the oldest shipyards in the nation.
"When our country was being founded, one of the important first steps that they did was increase their naval power and build up the navy to compete with some of their rivals during that time," Michael Hogan said.
Hogan, the history curator for the museum, said the exhibit spans centuries of American history.
"Our museum, we tell the story of that buildup and the important role that Norfolk and Portsmouth and the shipyard played in that," Hogan said.
Featured ships include the CSS Virginia, one of the first ironclads built by the Confederate Navy and a key player in the Battle of Hampton Roads. The exhibit also highlights the USS Texas, the first battleship built in the country, and the USS Arizona.
Another highlighted ship is the USS Missouri, which participated in Operation Desert Storm in the 1990s. In the 1960s, the ship famously ran aground in the Elizabeth River after a miscommunication and required almost 13 tugboats to pull it loose.
The museum, which opened in the 1960s, also displays artifacts connected to the ships. Recent additions include a cruise book from a sailor who served on the USS Ranger and a napkin ring from Williamsburg.
"The shipyard was kind of the economic anchor for the community," Hogan said.
"It provided a lot of jobs, helped develop the housing here in Portsmouth, and it's really given Portsmouth kind of its hard working class identity," Hogan said.
For visitors like David and Carol Mackusick, who stopped at the museum while traveling the East Coast on a boating journey known as the Great Loop, the history offered something unexpected.
"It's interesting to see the history from pre-revolutionary days and how long the shipyard has been in place through the Civil War," Carol Mackusick said.
"This trip that we're taking right now it's to learn a little bit more about people throughout the United States and how they came to be," David Mackusick said.
"Coming here has really shown me that and given me a different perspective of the community," David Mackusick said.
The exhibit will be on display until December of this year. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
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