The Naval Academy’s coat-of-arms bears the name ‘Ex Scientia Tridens’ — From Knowledge, Sea Power, which is how the Navy sees the academy’s mission. The training of a class of professional seamen first was proposed by Commodore Matthew Perry, who himself realized the convincing ability of seapower by intimidating Japan into opening up to trade with the presence of warships — without ever firing a shot. Perry helped shape the founding and the curriculum for the class that would form the nation’s first professional naval force.

On this day, June 10, in 1854 the first class of the U.S. Naval Academy graduated, after a seven-year training regimen that included three consecutive years at sea.

The USNA almost ceased to exist as an organization during the Civil War. Maryland as a whole was highly sympathetic to the South, and although they never joined the Confederacy, almost a quarter of the Naval Academy’s officers, including many of the faculty and some involved in its very founding, resigned to enter the war. The Academy persevered, however, and many of those who left came back after the war ended.