Naval Station Charleston South Carolina Patch

SERVICE TO THE FLEET is stitched across the waves on this patch, and at Charleston that fleet meant cruisers, destroyers, tenders and both attack and ballistic missile submarines tied up along the Cooper River. Naval Station Charleston was the host command of Naval Base Charleston, on the west bank of the Cooper River in North Charleston, South Carolina. The shipyard there began work in 1901 as a drydock. For most of the twentieth century it was one of the Atlantic Fleet's busiest homeports. If you reported aboard a ship there, you remember the heat, the river and the long walk down the piers.

The yard's first destroyer, USS Tillman (DD-135), was launched in 1919. World War II turned the yard into a shipbuilding plant, and wartime production added destroyers, destroyer escorts, two destroyer tenders, Landing Ship Tanks and more than a hundred Landing Ship Mediums. Employment peaked at 25,948 workers in July 1943. In the Cold War, Charleston homeported Atlantic Fleet cruisers, destroyers, attack submarines, fleet ballistic missile submarines and the destroyer and submarine tenders that kept them going. In 1966 the yard overhauled USS Skipjack and USS Thomas A. Edison, one of the first fleet ballistic missile boats. The 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommended closure, and the naval base closed on 1 April 1996.

This is a round patch, 4 inches across, with a merrowed orange edge and an iron-on backing that can also be sewn on. NAVAL STATION arches across a light blue sky in darker blue letters. In the center a gray mast and superstructure stand above a black submarine hull and sail seen bow-on, the surface Navy and the submarine force sharing one silhouette. Blue wave lines cross the middle carrying SERVICE TO THE FLEET in orange. Below, CHARLESTON in big blue block letters and SOUTH CAROLINA in orange fill a silver-white lower half.

Charleston was a working Navy town in the full sense, where the base, the shipyard and the city grew up together across three wars. Generations of sailors stood their first watches there, and plenty of them married into the Lowcountry and never left. Submariners rotated crews through the boats homeported on the river, while tin can sailors and tender crews kept the surface side running. After the 1996 closure, the yard was leased to Detyens Shipyards and the waterfront went on to new work. For the people who served there, Charleston is still the homeport on their discharge papers.

Iron it on a ship's ball jacket or a reunion vest, or mount it in a shadow box with your ship's patch and the boats you rode out of Charleston. It makes a thoughtful gift for a father or grandfather who was stationed on the Cooper River. A good piece for anyone who called this base home.