Jacksonville, FL — For the first time, Naval Station Mayport’s soon-to-be newest ship is visiting the base.
The future USS Thomas Hudner pulled up to the pier Tuesday, where dozens of family members were waiting to reunite with their Sailors- many of whom they hadn’t seen in months. The ship is the Navy’s newest Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, and she will be formally commissioned December 1st. She will then call Naval Station Mayport her homeport.
“I have 308 of the Navy’s finest sons and daughters on board this mighty warship,” says USS Thomas Hudner’s Commanding Officer Commander Nathan Scherry.
GALLERY: Future USS Thomas Hudner visits Naval Station Mayport
While the ship was initially intended for Norfolk, Scherry says he and the crew are ready for what Mayport has in store.
“I know that the Jacksonville community will welcome Thomas Hudner and the 308 families that we have in to the community,” he says.
Mayport’s Commanding Officer Captain David Yoder says not only are they ready to welcome the ship and Sailors, but they’re excited about what that means for the future of the base.
“Naval Station Mayport, for a long time, there were some questions about what the future was going to look like,” Yoder says.
A few years ago, the base was at a historically low level of ships. The Navy moved the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group- consisting of the USS Iwo Jima, USS New York, USS Fort McHenry, and hundreds of Sailors- to Mayport, in order to start growing the base again and to keep local shipbuilding industry and other support systems viable.
Mayport was then declared as the homeport for one of the variants of the Littoral Combat Ships. Currently, the USS Little Rock, USS Milwaukee, and USS Detroit homeport at Mayport. The USS Sioux City is expected in late November, and the LCS Witchita will come after her commissioning in January.
Now, the addition of the USS Thomas Hudner means the future is “bright”, according to Yoder.
“It kind of validates how important Naval Station Mayport is to the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, and to our country,” he says.
None of that was on the mind of Scherry as he pulled the ship up to its new home for the first time. Instead, he was focused on the safety of the ship and her Sailors- and then giving those Sailors a break.
Scherry has been with the ship through the construction, and he acknowledged that some shipbuilding delays kept the crew in Maine longer than initially planned, meaning some Sailors were apart from their families for more than a year. This roughly three-week visit to Mayport will allow the crew to take leave, reunite with those families, and get to know their new home.
“I’m happy to have him home, like for good now, at least for awhile,” says Erika Santana, who came out to greet her husband, GM1 Moises Santana.
She says they have had quick visits over the last year, and he was able to help them move to Jacksonville from the Great Lakes in August, but it has otherwise been difficult without him for so long. She says- along with 4-year-old Moises Junior and 2-year-old David- they could barely sleep last night, in anticipation of the reunion.
“Especially like in the last couple of days, and you start to count down, and you get to single digits,” she says.
With another child on the way, she says she hasn’t explored Jacksonville too much, but she is excited that it’s much warmer than the weather she left behind.
The families will all briefly part again for the December 1st commissioning, but Scherry says they will be back quickly. From there, he says they’ll spend about a year testing all of the systems under warranty. They’ll then train, integrate in to a Carrier Strike Group, and likely see a deployment in 2021.