Wichita is placed among the finest products of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, alongside the battleships, carriers, cruisers, and destroyers built there. The comparison reaches back to the 74-gun USS Franklin, laid down and launched in 1815, commissioned in 1817, and later used as a Mediterranean and Pacific Squadron flagship. That history ties a treaty cruiser to more than a century of American naval construction at the same site. Philadelphia still maintains inactive ships, but it no longer performs major new construction. The change shows how a shipyard can retain part of its institutional role after losing its building capacity.
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Philadelphia Navy Yard from Franklin to Wichita
A shipyard digression connects Wichita to Philadelphia's long record of building American warships and to the later loss of major construction there.