Pascagoula — Where the Ships Are Built

Jimmy Buffett was born here on Christmas Day, 1946. Pascagoula means "bread eater" — the name of the people who lived in villages along this river when Europeans arrived. The Singing River meets the Gulf at the edge of town. Ingalls Shipbuilding is Mississippi's largest private employer. The giant cranes visible from Beach Boulevard are building destroyers for the United States Navy. A Chevron refinery — the largest in the world — processes crude. Rolls-Royce builds ship propulsion systems here. Before World War II, this was a fishing village of about five thousand. The war-driven shipbuilding industry changed that. The population peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Cold War defense spending ran highest. Hurricane Katrina's twenty-foot storm surge came ashore during high tide on August 29, 2005. Nearly ninety-two percent of Pascagoula flooded. Most homes along Beach Boulevard were destroyed. The media focused on New Orleans and Biloxi-Gulfport; many Pascagoula residents have said they felt neglected or forgotten. Two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers under construction at Ingalls were damaged by the storm, along with the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island. The first European settlers were Jean Baptiste Baudreau Dit Graveline, Joseph Simon De La Pointe, and his aunt, Madame Chaumont. The region changed hands — English, French, Spanish — until the United States took permanent possession in 1812. For seventy-four days in 1810, Pascagoula was part of the Republic of West Florida. This is not a tourist town. It's a working city on a working river. The cranes on the horizon are building the United States Navy.