U.S. Naval Station Newport Rhode Island Patch

The FROM 1883 on this anchor is the year the Naval Training Station opened on Coasters Harbor Island, and Newport has been training sailors and officers ever since. Commodore Stephen B. Luce helped pick the site, and a year later he founded the Naval War College on the same island. The Naval Torpedo Station was already working on Goat Island by then, having opened in 1869. Recruits, officer candidates, chiefs and war college students have all come through the same waterfront. The station has been a Navy schoolhouse for most of the years since.

More than 65,000 recruits trained here in World War I and 204,115 in World War II, before recruit training moved away in 1951. Sailing ships did the teaching early on: USS New Hampshire was flagship of Luce's apprentice training squadron, and the 1854 sloop-of-war USS Constellation served at Newport as a training ship for about 20 years starting in 1894. Newport was a busy destroyer and cruiser home port until the 1973 Shore Establishment Realignment moved 39 ships out, and the last destroyer sailed in 1974. The schools stayed and grew: the Destroyer School that became Surface Warfare Officers School opened in 1961, the Naval Academy Preparatory School arrived in 1974 and the Senior Enlisted Academy opened in 1981. Officer Candidate School ran here from 1951 to 1993 and came back in 2007, and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center grew out of the old Torpedo Station.

The patch is a 4-inch circle on a black field, with a gold rope border stitched just inside the edge. U.S. NAVAL STATION arcs across the top and NEWPORT, R.I. across the bottom in gold. In the center, a light blue disc holds a gold anchor with SERVICE on its stock and FROM 1883 on the shank. A full-rigged, three-masted ship under white sails crosses in front of the anchor, a nod to the sailing ships Newport trained on.

For a recruit in 1943, Newport was boot camp. For a newly commissioned ensign it may have been OCS or Surface Warfare Officers School, for a senior chief it was the Senior Enlisted Academy, and for a commander it was the Naval War College. The same waterfront shows up at the start, the middle and the top of a Navy career. When the destroyers left in the 1970s, the station kept going as the Navy's schoolhouse. It is still where the Navy sends its officer candidates.

Hang it with your OCS or SWOS class photo, or put it in a shadow box beside your commissioning certificate. It also makes a good gift for a son or daughter headed to Newport for a class of their own. The patch has an iron-on backing and can be sewn on as well. Service from 1883 is still the right way to put it.