What is the Blessing of the Fleets?
Passed down through generations of sailors, fishermen, merchant mariners and navies around the world, the centuries-old "Blessing of the Fleets" ceremony is intended to safeguard fishing crews and ships from the danger of the seas through a traditional blessing given by a clergyman at the water's edge.
As a tribute to our nation’s rich maritime heritage and the men and women who have contributed to its growth and success, the United States Navy Memorial hosts its annual Blessing of the Fleets ceremony each spring. The event is free and open to the public and is an official event of the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
At the United States Navy Memorial, the ceremony's highlight occurs when Sailors from the U.S. Navy's Ceremonial Guard proceed across the Memorial Plaza's "Granite Sea" to pour water from the Seven Seas and the Great Lakes into the surrounding fountains "charging" them to life and ushering in the spring season.
How You Can Help:
Events like the Blessing of the Fleets are an important part of what we do at The United States Navy Memorial as they help further our mission to honor the men and women of the Navy and Sea Services. Because we don’t charge people to attend this event and because we receive no federal funding, the Navy Memorial relies entirely on the generosity of dedicated supporters in order to continue important programs like the Blessing of the Fleets. That’s why we hope you’ll show your support with a gift today.
2010 Event Highlights:
The 2010 Blessing of the Fleets will debut the Navy Memorial's latest exhibit, Supporting the Force: Navy Supply in Action—Ready for Sea, Ready Ashore, and will kick off the Year of Navy Supply. Following on popular exhibits in recent years that have honored the Seabees, Navy Medicine and Navy Special Warfare, 2010 has been set aside to honor the Navy’s logistics, culinary and business specialists. A full schedule of events will accompany the exhibit, including food tastings, films, lectures and equipment displays. The exhibit will run through March 2011.
The following is the schedule of events for the day's activities:
11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Live broadcast of the Blog Talk Radio program "Midrats," featuring military bloggers Cdr. Salamander, Galrahn and Eagle One
12:30 p.m. Ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new exhibit Supporting the Force: Navy Supply in Action—Ready for Sea, Ready Ashore
1:00 p.m. Blessing of the Fleets Ceremony on the Plaza with the Navy Band, the Navy's Ceremonial Guard and the Chief of the Supply Corps
2:00 p.m. Serving of Navy bean soup served by the White House Mess
2:20 p.m. Screening of the new film "A Day in the Life of a Suppo"
3:00 p.m. Screening of Episode 1 of HBO's new series "The Pacific"
4:00 p.m. Screening of the Discovery Channel's film about Navy operations today "At Sea"
To receive updates on the Blessing of the Fleets activities, sign up for a community newsletter at http://www.navylogcommunity.org/newsletters.
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
IP Address: 3.144.93.73 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
") are described as follows: