NEWPORT – The Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) will launch its celebration of the center’s 140th anniversary with a reception this evening attended by Gov. Donald L. Carcieiri and other Navy and Rhode Island leaders.

Others expected at the 4 p.m. reception include Vice Admiral Kevin McCoy, commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NavSea – NUWC’s parent command); Nancy Carriuolo, president of Rhode Island College; J. Michael Saul, acting director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation (EDC); as well as various NUWC leaders and department heads.

Since August 2005, the NUWC’s Newport division has been under the command of Navy Capt. Michael W. Byman, with Paul J. Lefebvre serving as the center’s technical director. Rear Admiral David C. Johnson, the Navy’s deputy commander for undersea technology, has overall command of NUWC, while Donald F. McCormack serves as technical director. Meanwhile, Naval Station Newport is commanded by Capt. Michael T. Poirier.

The reception is just the first in a series of events planned to celebrate NUWC’s 140th year, according to public relations officer David Sanders.

“The capstone event of the anniversary year will be the establishment of a new Undersea Collaboration & Technology Partnership Center, currently under construction in the basement of Building 80 on the NUWC compound,” Sanders said. “The center’s opening will coincide with the actual anniversary, on July 29, 2009. Other anniversary-week events scheduled for July 27 to 31 include a Family/Alumni Day, sporting events and a coastline cleanup,” he said.

The NUWC traces its origins to the former Goat Island’s Torpedo Station, an experimental facility whose founding was authorized by the U.S. Secretary of War in 1869 to develop torpedoes, explosives and electrical equipment.

“From 1869 to its disestablishment in 1951, the Station contributed greatly to the development of naval ordnance,” Naval Station Newport says in a base history posted on its Web site. “Through experiments conducted there, the torpedo evolved from the immobile explosive mine of the Civil War period to the efficient and highly mobile weapon of today.” Other projects included the development of the Navy’s first smokeless gunpowder, as well as a dynamite-throwing gun that proved impractical.

Meanwhile, the Navy’s presence continued to grow with the acquisition first of Rose Island, as a site for the storage of explosives, and later of Gould Island, purchased in 1919. By the height of World War II, the Torpedo Station employed about 13,000 people who produced 80 percent of the nation’s submarine torpedoes.

WWII also saw the establishment of the Naval Operating Base in Rhode Island, which initially was headquartered on Coaster’s Harbor Island. It also brought an expansion of the Navy presence across Aquidneck Island; to Jamestown, where harbor defense, communications and fleet landing facilities were placed; and to North Kingstown, with the 1941 commissioning of the Quonset Point Naval Air Station and the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Davisville.

After the war, as the Goat Island station and other facilities were closed, the manufacture of torpedoes was moved elsewhere. But the Naval Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station was “established to carry on torpedo development and experimentation,” the Navy says.

NUWC was officially established on Jan. 2, 1999, by the consolidation of the Naval Underwater Systems Center, Newport, and the Naval Undersea Warfare Engineering Station in Keyport, Wash. Besides its headquarters in Newport and the secondary NUWC, Division Keyport, it also has detachments at sites across North America and the Pacific Basin.

Naval Station Newport is home to more than 40 naval and defense commands and activities, from the historic Naval War College to the technologically advanced Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), Division Newport. For more information, visit www.nsnpt.navy.mil or www.nuwc.navy.mil.