The Revolutionary War was at hand, and the United States was facing one of the largest, most powerful navies in the world. There was a need to match Britain’s naval strength, and for a while the U.S. did — before demobilizing in the years immediately after the revolution. President George Washington saw a danger in that disarmament: the U.S. merchant fleet was coming under significant threat from the Barbary Coast pirates and the British themselves, who took to pressing American sailors into service with their fleet.

On this day, October 10, in 1845, growing out of a recommendation by President George Washington to expand the naval force and President John Quincy Adams to establish an academy to train sailors for service, the U.S. Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Maryland.

Neither Adams nor Washington contributed to the decision to build a school as much as a near-mutiny by three officers on one of the training ships. News of the event shocked the country, and led to a consensus that it was better to send the teenage apprentices to study at school first, before bringing them on board a ship. The remote location at Annapolis was chosen partly to keep them out of trouble, free from “the temptations and distractions that necessarily connect with a large and populous city,” as Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft put it.