Annapolis graduates its first class, nine years after the Academy opened its doors

When the Naval Academy opened at Fort Severn in 1845, no one was quite sure what a graduate was supposed to be. George Bancroft's new school was an experiment — a land-based institution at the confluence of the Severn River and the Chesapeake Bay, replacing a patchwork of shipboard schooling and the aging Philadelphia Naval Asylum. On June 10, 1854, that experiment produced its first graduating class, nine years after the Academy's founding. Graduates still carried the rank of passed midshipmen — not commissioned officers — a designation that would not change until 1912…