National Museum of the United States Navy

The National Museum of the United States Navy is located in the old Naval Gun Factory on the grounds of the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. The museum collects, preserves, and displays naval artifacts and artwork.

The U.S. Navy Museum was established in 1961 as one of 15 Navy museums throughout the country. As a National Museum, it is the only one that presents an overview of U. S. naval history. This museum was amongst America’s earliest federal museums.

Exhibitions commemorate the Navy’s wartime heroes and battles as well as its peacetime contributions in exploration, space flight, navigation, and humanitarian service.

The museum’s predecessors, the Washington Navy Yard began in 1865 and the museum features a collection that dates from the 1800s. The first artifact collected was a French gun, cast in 1793 at Lyons, captured during the Quasi-War with France, 1798–1801.

Today the permanent exhibit galleries include:

U.S. Navy Submarines
The American Revolution and the French Alliance
The Forgotten Wars of the Nineteenth Century
Civil War
Spanish–American War
Polar Exploration
Navigation
U.S. Navy in World War I
The Navy in World War II
Korea 1950–53: The Navy in the Forgotten War

The museum is on a functioning military facility, and visitors must enter the on-site visitor’s center to be cleared for a day pass.

Bridge of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Fletcher (DD-445)

Highlights of the National Museum of the United States Navy

A gun from Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes’s conquest of Mexico
French gun, cast in 1793 at Lyons, captured during the Quasi-War with France, 1798–1801
The sloop Kearsarge’s original sternpost containing a shell received during her fight with the Confederate raider Alabama off the French coast
USS Constitution’s fighting top
The world’s deepest diving submersible, Trieste
The khaki uniform of former Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
A statue of Boatswain’s Mate Charles W. Riggin made from melted dimes
A screw from the battleship USS South Dakota (BB-57)
A 6-inch gun salvaged from the battleship USS Maine
A bathysphere from the Alvin undersea exploration vehicle
Swift Boat PCF-1
14-inch naval railway gun from the First World War