October, 2022
We visited the Naval Undersea Museum (submarines) the other day, north of Bremerton.
Today we visited a different museum, the Puget Sound Navy Museum (no submarines) right in the heart of downtown Bremerton and, of course, right near the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
The Naval Shipyard here is huge and busy, but this museum doesn’t talk about current work in the shipyard or current technology. The museum is all about history. It’s a large two-story building. It is one of the most amazing museums I’ve ever been in. But this was my third visit to this museum so I didn’t take many photos. On my other visits here, I had a film camera and I haven’t scanned any of those photo prints yet.
So let me share just a few photos here from this visit.
This first photo below is of a model of the 1944-built USS Bremerton (we are in the town of Bremerton after all). At 673-feet long and 70 feet wide, the real USS Bremerton had a human complement of 1,042 officers and enlisted personnel. She was active in the Pacific in WWII and was active in the Korean War zone, and was decommissioned in 1960.
Photo below, a restored 1958 two-cylinder steam engine used on board many Navy ships back “in the day”.
Photo below … a 1943 MK V diving helmet. This diving helmet and others like it were used extensively by shipyard employees throughout most of the 20th century.
Below … a Thacher’s calculating instrument, invented in 1897. These instruments were used by shipyard employees, machinists, architects, and engineers, to perform mathematical calculations with answers to 5 decimal places. Who needs an electronic digital calculator anyway?
Below … September, 1891, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is officially designated as such.
Below … April, 1896, construction on Drydock #1 is complete. The all-wood design and construction cost slightly more than $400,000.00.
Below … July, 1917, “Submarine 0-2”, the first ship built at this shipyard.
Three photos below … 1917-1918, during World War I, this shipyard built many Navy ships including 25 submarine chasers, 2 minesweepers, and 1,700 small Navy boats.
Photo below … 1935, construction on Building 431 is completed, making it the largest machine shop west of the Mississippi River. And yes, it’s the ENTIRE HUGE building in the photo below … four stories tall. The Navy machined their own parts … engines, prop shafts, hull plating, electronics, beds, kitchens, etc. If a ship needed it, they made it here.
Below … 1941-1942, this Navy shipyard repaired and modernized the five remaining battleships after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Below … 1941-1945, throughout World War II, nearly a third of the entire USA Navy fleet worldwide was serviced at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton.
Rest assured, this museum did not simply show photos. It has mock ups of crew quarters, officers quarters, kitchens, engine rooms, pumps, hydraulics, communication systems, heating and cooling systems, everything that the people on board needed. The museum is super … go there if you’re ever near Bremerton.
Fresh drinking water. A ship on the ocean doesn’t have much fresh drinking water around, unless it rains. The ship described in the museum had four steam distilling units. Each unit produced 400,000 gallons of fresh water every day … total of 1,600,000 gallons of fresh water daily. With about 1,000 people on board, that about 1,600 gallons of water per person. But keep in mind that the engines need fresh water, cooking and washing uses fresh water. The steam distilling units created fresh water by boiling salt water and turning it into steam. This process kills bacteria and separates the salt from the water. The steam is then condensed and distributed throughout the ship.
Below … this next exhibit wasn’t here in the museum when I had visited several years ago. I think of this technology as modern, but gosh, I guess it has become “history”! This exhibit showed how a 3D printer works, a three-dimensional printer … how it can create an object out of whatever kind of liquid you’d like to use … plastic, chocolate, liquid metal.
Below … and then the exhibit showed a bolt and a nut … and said they are almost as strong as a metal bolt and nut, and they can be created in seconds/minutes onboard the ship, and be any size/dimension wanted. Amazing.
And then right near the end of the route through the museum, I came upon the exhibit below that I’d seen before but am so impressed by it. It talked about jet planes and aircraft carriers and how all of that works. There was video and physical samples of various devices, tires, catapult pieces, etc.
And then there were these two seats from a two-seater fighter jet … pilot and co-pilot seats! I sat in one of them (no photo). I was surprised how comfortable they were, really comfortable. I could have taken a nap. But I bet if I’d been inside the jet, looking through the canopy, and roaring down the deck of an aircraft carrier at a billion miles an hour, I bet I would not be napping!
This was fun, and fascinating. The people who staff the museum are exceptionally knowledgeable and extraordinarily nice and welcoming and helpful with information, and yet they leave you alone if you’d prefer that.
Thanks for coming along on this brief tour of the Puget Sound Navy Museum. There was so much to see here! Please check out their website, especially the link to “Exhibits”.
And then, at the end of the day, after spending plenty of time in this museum, my friends and I headed back to our two neighboring campsites at Illahee State Park on the outskirts of Bremerton and near the shores of Puget Sound … and to another evening around our campfire. How can life be so perfect?!