San Diego Bay, one of the world’s finest natural harbors, has long served as a major maritime, military, commercial, recreational, and cultural center. Home to the Navy’s Pacific fleet, sport fishing craft, pleasure boats, and growing commercial and cruise traffic, it supports coastal and foreign trade while its waterfront blends industry, shipbuilding, aerospace, the San Diego Convention Center, shopping, restaurants, and hotels. Its military importance was recognized in 1908 when the United States Navy’s battleship fleet entered the harbor on a world tour, after which dredging plans prepared the bay for larger ships; during the 1920s the military presence expanded with a Marine Corps Recruit Depot, a Naval Training Station, a U.S. Navy Hospital, and in 1923 San Diego became headquarters for the Eleventh Naval District and the Pacific fleet. The bay also figures in earlier exploration, as Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claimed the territory for Spain in 1542 after arriving there and naming it San Miguel. Its later history includes John Nolan’s 1908 Park-to-Bay Link concept, the 1863 ship Star of India, restored in 1976 and now the world’s oldest active sailing ship, and the USS Midway, commissioned in 1945 and later retired as the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum. San Diego Bay also supports ferries, water taxis, cruise travel, whale watching during the Gray Whale migration, and a notable aviation heritage that includes Glenn Curtiss’s 1911 floating biplane landing beside the USS Pennsylvania, the nation’s first military aviation school at North Island, T. Claude Ryan’s Ryan Airlines in 1923, Charles A. Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, and Reuben H. Fleet’s 1935 aircraft factory that became part of Convair and later General Dynamics. The bay was also home to the world’s largest tuna fishing fleet from the early thirties until 1980, and its waters and shores support wildlife including Brown Pelicans, Pacific Green Sea Turtles, Harbor Seals, and Pacific Seahorses.