Louis Brucker, age 15, of Hutchinson, Kan., for his question:
WHEN DID THE NAVY GET ITS FIRST NUCLEAR SHIP?
In 1948, Captain Hyman G. Rickover was assigned the job of building a nuclear power plant for submarines. In 1954, the United States Navy commissioned the first nuclear powered ship, the submarine Nautilus.
By the early 1970s, the Navy fleet included more than 100 nuclear powered submarines. These submarines can go more than 60,040 miles before refueling and even dive deeper and stay submerged longer than other types.
Armed with Polaris and Poseidon missiles, the nuclear submarines form a major part. of the U.S. defense system. We know that these submarines can cruise so deep, so fast and so quietly that they are difficult for any enemy to detect.
Also in service by the 1970s were such nuclear powered ships as the cruiser Long Beach and the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Nimitz. Other nuclear ships have since joined the fleet.
The U.S. Navy was "born" in 1632 when the colonists of Massachusetts built the first American warship, the 30 ton Blessing of the Bay.
By the late 1700s, the colonists had built hundreds of ships, including "privateers," or privately owned war vessels.
The Continental Congress established the Continental Navy in 1775. It set up a naval committee and later a marine committee to administer naval affairs and to build and equip warships. Several merchantmen were converted into combat vessels.
In 1776, Esek Hopkins,.the Navy's first commodore and its first commander in chief, raided Nassau in the Bahama Islands with a fleet of six ships. During the Revolutionary War, about 50 vessels served in the Continental Navy. During the war, Captain John Paul Jones uttered the Navy's famous watchwords: "I have not yet begun to fight."
The U.S. Navy ceased operations after the war. In 1785 the last warship was sold. But the need for a fleet soon arose. again. Barbary pirates off North Africa preyed on American merchant ships and killed or captured American seamen.
In 1794, Congress voted to build six frigates to fight the pirates. This sea going. force operated under the secretary of war. The launching of the ship called the United States in 1797 marked the rebirth of the U.S. Navy.
In the summer of 1796, relations between the U.S. and France had reached a state of undeclared war. France and Great Britain were at war with each other at this time. The French treated American merchant seamen like British subjects and, by 1798, the French had seized more than 300 American merchant ships.
In 1799, Congress created a Navy Department under a secretary of the Navy. The 44 gun frigates Constitution and United States and the 36 gun Constellation formed the basis of a new fleet that had grown to 49 ships by 1801.
Napoleon Bonaparte ended the undeclared war before it got started. But in the meantime, the U.S. Navy had been launched for all time.