United States Naval Training Center Bainbridge (USNTC Bainbridge) was the U.S. Navy Training Center at Port Deposit, Maryland, on the bluffs of the northeast bank of the Susquehanna River. It was active from 1942 to 1976 under the Commander of the Fifth Naval District, based in Norfolk, Virginia. Located on the appropriated campus of the Tome School for boys, the training center sat between various important naval centers of World War II: about northeast of Baltimore, Maryland, and from Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was reached via Maryland Route 222, about halfway between US 1 and US 40. History Origin President Franklin Delano Roosevelt personally approved the site, which was seized from the Tome School by Congressional order. Roosevelt also chose the name to honor Commodore William Bainbridge, who commanded the frigate Constitution when it defeated the British frigate HMS Java during the War of 1812. The campus was expanded by government purchase from to . More than five hundred new buildings were built, some designed by Eggers & Higgins. World War II Recruit training The center was activated on 1 October 1942, and the first batch of recruits arrived 10 days later to begin "boot camp" training. They came in busloads from transportation collection points at Havre de Grace and Perryville, Maryland. The recruits were given a battery of tests to determine their educational and skill levels, then trained in ordnance and gunnery, seamanship, fire fighting, physical training, and military drill. Recruits were trained in shipboard duties aboard the R.T.S. Commodore, a 200-foot "ship" built on dry land. The trainer was equipped with deck guns, a pilot house, davits with whaleboats, and mooring lines fastened to earth-bound bollards, so that crew members could learn casting off hawsers and other lines connecting the ship to its dock. Halfway through boot camp, recruits had a "service week", which generally included kitchen duty, peeling potatoes, mopping, picking up cigarette butts, etc. Recruits with desirable skills, such as typing, could end up on an office typewriter rather than in a kitchen. One winter, recruits were sent to shovel snow off roads to a largely rural area near Colora and Rising Sun. By the end of World War II, the center had trained 244,277 recruits who transferred to various ships and stations throughout the world. Non-recruit training USNTC Bainbridge also trained new boot camp graduates and other sailors in technical and other skills.