Security· American Civil War
Mare Island California garrison
The establishment of the Marine guard at the navy's principal Pacific base.
In November 1862 a company of Marines under Major Addison Garland, the same officer whose battalion had been captured and paroled by the Alabama on the voyage out, reached the Mare Island Navy Yard on San Francisco Bay and took up the garrison there. Mare Island was the chief naval establishment on the Pacific coast, and the Marine detachment furnished its guard, securing the yard and its stores for the Pacific Squadron through the rest of the war and beyond. The duty was garrison and security rather than combat, and no casualties were involved. The posting reflected the navy's need to protect its far-western base at a time when Confederate raiders and privateering schemes occasionally threatened the Pacific, and it began a long Marine presence at Mare Island that would continue well past the Civil War.
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Record no. 454