Existing comment:
A New Campus:
At the suggestion of William Chauvenet, a Yale graduate and instructor at the midshipman school at the Philadelphia Navy Asylum, to expand the curriculum to two years. Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft went further, creating a four-year school. Bancroft acquired Fort Severn, in Annapolis, Maryland, from the Army and ordered Cmdr Franklin Buchanan to organize the school and its programs. Bancroft's use of discretionary funds circumvented Congress's resistance to founding a naval school. |