Taking Charge

To the sound of a clanging ship’s bell, Capt. Daniel L. Hambrock on Friday took the helm of the Port Hueneme Navy base in a formal change-of-command ceremony steeped in two centuries of naval tradition.

Hambrock relieved Capt. James L. Delker as commander of the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme in the ceremony performed before 400 spectators and 800 Seabees standing in formation in their dress whites.

“I was last stationed here 20 years ago as a lieutenant junior grade,” Hambrock said in an interview after the ceremonies. “When I left here, I never thought I would be coming back here to take command. It is a great honor.”

Hambrock comes to Port Hueneme from Seabee headquarters in Alexandria, Va., where he was director of manpower, management and Seabee support and the Navy’s assistant chief of civil engineers.

The Seabees are the Navy’s construction crews trained to fight as well as build runways, docks, tents and anything else needed by the Navy or Marine Corps troops on foreign soil.

The Port Hueneme base is one of the nation’s two Seabee bases, where recruits are prepared to join one of the Navy’s 600-member mobile construction battalions or “CBs,” the acronym from which the phonetic “Seabees” nickname is derived.

The other Seabee base is in Gulfport, Miss.

“We only get two opportunities to command a base,” said Hambrock, an officer in the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps. “I think this is one of the premier jobs.”

Hambrock, 46, said he wants to maintain good neighborly relations with the surrounding civilian community and continue to support the 40 Navy organizations that are tenants on the base.

He said he has been struck by the warm reception he received from people on and off the base. “I’ve always liked the Oxnard plain,” he said.

“It is very, very warm here, a small-town atmosphere that I definitely didn’t see in Washington, D.C.”

He also lauded the work of his predecessor, Capt. Delker, who is leaving Port Hueneme after a two-year tour of duty.

Delker is headed for a new post at Pearl Harbor, as commanding officer of the Navy Public Works Center.

Hambrock said he will be joined at Port Hueneme by his wife, Sharon, and two children, 11-year-old Katherine and 9-year-old Robert, at the end of the school semester.

A native of Fort Wayne, Ind., Hambrock earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Purdue University and a master’s degree from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Since he was commissioned as an officer in 1973 through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps, he has served in a number of positions across the continental United States and Alaska.

In 1990, he took command of the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion One, a Navy construction team based in Gulfport.

Hambrock’s 23-year career with the Navy has been mostly during peacetime, although he was the commander of some of the Seabee troops who helped prepare the U.S. for the Gulf War against Iraq.

Friday’s ceremonies, which were centered on a red-carpeted gangway lined by five-inch artillery shells, drew from customs dating back to the earliest traditions aboard wooden sailing ships in the U.S. and British navies.

The ceremonies included a color guard, inspection of the troops and a variety of speeches punctuated by the mournful tones of a boatswain’s pipe.

The event was attended by an assortment of Navy brass, with the key address made by Rear Adm. David J. Nash, who as head of the Seabees, is nicknamed the Kingbee.