USS Recruit (TDE-1, later TFFG-1) was a landlocked "dummy" training ship of the United States Navy, located at the Naval Training Center in the Point Loma area of San Diego. She was built to scale, two-thirds the size of a destroyer escort, and was commissioned on July 27, 1949. Recruit was commissioned for 18 years, for much of that period the only landlocked ship to hold that status in the U.S. Navy. Background In 1919, Naval Training Station San Diego was established, through the efforts of Representative William Kettner to have the navy relocate recruit training from Goat Island to San Diego. Her predecessor , a wooden "battleship" built in Union Square in New York City in 1917, was dismantled in 1920. Another land-based training ship existed prior to the Recruit, the . During World War II, there was a minesweeper named , which was in commissioned in 1943, decommissioned in 1946, and was ultimately transferred to the Mexican Navy. Naval Training Center San Diego Designed to be a two-thirds scale replica of a destroyer escort, her construction began in 1949. That same year, the Recruit was commissioned by Rear Admiral Wilder D. Baker. "Sailing" on a sea of concrete at the Naval Training Center, she assisted with the training of over 50,000 new recruits per year, providing an education in the fundamentals of shipboard drills and procedures, using standard deck and bridge gear like that found on all naval vessels, including lifelines, accommodation ladders, signal halyards, searchlights, the engine order telegraph and the helm. Below decks, the ship had six classrooms where recruits were training, and adjacent to the ship were barracks where those recruits would be housed when not standing watches aboard the Recruit. However, due to her landlocked status, Recruit lacked an engine or screw, and therefore was affectionately nicknamed the "USS Neversail." In 1954, she was modified from her original configuration. Reflecting her dual identity as both a ship and a building, she was also known as Building 430, located on Geary Drive between Evans and Chauncey roads. Recruit was decommissioned in March 1967, due to the inability to classify the unique ship in a computerized registry of Navy vessels. She was later reconditioned in 1982, and refurbished to look like an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, this reconditioning extended the ship's length to 233 feet; that same year she was recommissioned. Commissioned or otherwise, she served