USS Portsmouth

The sloop-of-war USS Portsmouth was launched from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in eighteen forty-three, carrying the name of the city that built her. She served in the Pacific during the Mexican-American War, and in eighteen forty-six her crew landed at Yerba Buena, the village that would become San Francisco, raising the American flag over it on July ninth without firing a single shot. During the Civil War she returned to blockade duty off the Confederate coast. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, sitting on an island in the Piscataqua River, has served the United States since eighteen hundred, making it the oldest continually operating naval shipyard in the country.