Naval Station Mayport by the Numbers: Room for 34 Ships, an 8,001-Foot Runway and 5 Former Carriers

Jacksonville, Fla. - Naval Station Mayport's harbor can hold 34 ships, its runway stretches 8,001 feet, and five aircraft carriers once called it home. The base on San Pablo Island in Jacksonville is the third-largest naval surface fleet concentration area in the United States.

Today it's home port for 12 destroyers, 10 littoral combat ships and a Coast Guard cutter, plus three Navy helicopter squadrons. Here's Mayport by the numbers, from its World War II beginnings to the carriers that defined it for half a century.

Mayport by the numbers

Built for war, grown for carriers

Mayport was built from 1939 to 1942 and commissioned in December 1942.

The base changed fast during the war. It was reclassified as a Naval Sea Frontier base in 1943, and a Naval Auxiliary Air Station opened there in April 1944. After the war, it closed.

It came back in June 1948 as a naval outlying landing field. In October 1952, USS Tarawa became the first carrier to use Mayport's new basin, and in July 1955 the base was redesignated a Naval Auxiliary Air Station. In the mid-1950s, the base expanded to 1,680 acres, just in time for the carrier era that began in 1956.

Later changes were mostly on paper. Mayport was redesignated a naval air station in 1988, then merged back into Naval Station Mayport in 1992.

The 5 carriers that called Mayport home

For more than 50 years, from 1956 to 2007, aircraft carriers were part of the view at the mouth of the St. Johns River.

A few things stand out:

• Saratoga stayed longest. Its 37 years at Mayport are more than any other carrier on the list.
• Three at once. From 1960 to 1971, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Saratoga and Shangri-La were all homeported at Mayport at the same time.
• A handoff in 1977. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Mayport years ended in 1977, the same year Forrestal's began.
• Kennedy was the last. Its 12-year run ended in 2007.

Today's fleet: 23 ships

Carriers are gone, but Mayport is still busy.

The 12 destroyers are Ramage, Carney, The Sullivans, Donald Cook, Winston S. Churchill, Lassen, Mason, Farragut, Jason Dunham, Thomas Hudner, Delbert D. Black and John Basilone. The 10 littoral combat ships are all the Freedom variant, and the Coast Guard cutter is Valiant.

Destroyers make up just over half of the fleet (12 of 23, about 52%; my math).

Keep in mind that these are home port counts, not how many ships are tied up on a given day. And the 34-ship figure is how many the harbor can hold, not how many are based there.

Home of the Fourth Fleet

Mayport is also home to the U.S. Fourth Fleet. The fleet was deactivated in 1950 and brought back at Mayport in 2008, 58 years later (my math).

An airfield, too

Mayport isn't only a harbor. It has one asphalt runway, 8,001 feet long and 200 feet wide, at an elevation of just 15 feet.

Three helicopter squadrons are based there today:

• HSM-40
• HSM-48
• HSM-50

That aviation side goes back decades, from the 1948 landing field to the years Mayport carried the naval air station name.

What the numbers mean for Jacksonville

Each Mayport number answers a different question:

• How big is it? A harbor for 34 ships on a base that grew to 1,680 acres.
• How important is it? It's the third-largest naval surface fleet concentration area in the country.
• What's there now? 23 homeported ships and three helicopter squadrons.
• What's the history? Five carriers over more than 50 years, including three at once in the 1960s.

Quick Q&A

Where is Naval Station Mayport? On San Pablo Island in Jacksonville, at the mouth of the St. Johns River.

How many ships can the harbor hold? 34.

Are any carriers based there now? No. The last one, USS John F. Kennedy, left in 2007.

Which carrier stayed the longest? USS Saratoga, from 1957 to 1994.

How long is the runway? 8,001 feet, about 1.5 miles.

How we did this

This numbers guide is based on Wikipedia's "Naval Station Mayport" entry, reviewed Oct. 23, 2026. Year counts, totals and percentages are our math from those figures. Base access, events, personnel and economic figures were not verified and are not included.