Since the October 19, 1781, victory at Yorktown, Virginia, five U.S. Navy ships have been named Yorktown. The first (1840) was constructed at Gosport Shipyard, the present-day Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The 16-gun ship sloop hit a reef in the Cape Verde Islands and sunk in 1850. The second (1888), a gunboat with both steam engines and schooner-rigged masts, was decommissioned in 1921. The third (1937), anaircraft carrier built at the Newport News Shipyard and sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt, was sunk during the Battle of Midway in 1942. The fourth (1943), alsoan aircraft carrier, was constructed in just 16½ months at the Newport News Shipyard. Decommissioned in 1970, this USS Yorktown (CV-10) is a museum at Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in South Carolina. The fifth was a guided-missile cruiser commissioned at Yorktown on July 4, 1984, anddecommissioned in 2004.
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