BATH (AP) – When she was 10 years old, Cathy Forst watched her mother christen the third USS Gridley with champagne as hundreds of spectators cheered. It was a bright, sunny day at Puget Sound Bridge and Drydock Co. in Seattle. The year was 1961.

Swept up in the moment, the youngster asked her mother whether she’d one day have the honor of christening a ship named for her great-great grandfather. “I remember telling her, I’d like to do this one day,”‘ Forst, who lives in Gunnison, Colo., recalled. “She was very kind and said, Well Cathy, he was a great man, but I don’t know that they’ll be building a fourth Gridley.”

Nearly 45 years later, four generations of Gridleys watched her dream come true Saturday with a splash of champagne on the bow of newest Gridley warship at Bath Iron Works.

“On behalf of all the Gridley sailors who came before you I wish you fair winds and following seas, to the men and women in uniform who will serve upon this magnificent ship I pray for protection as you protect us, and in honor of my great-great grandfather, it is a most humbling privilege that I christen thee USS Gridley,” she said.

With that, she swung the champagne bottle, the band broke into “Anchors Aweigh,” and red, white and blue streamers shot into the air.

Afterward, she returned to the VIP platform and was embraced by her mother, Jean Rose, of Burlington, Mass. Forst’s daughter, Samantha Welling, and Welling’s daughter, 7-year-old Haleigh, also were at Forst’s side.

Forst said she was honored to have the opportunity to serve as the ship’s sponsor, and she said she planned to keep in touch with the crew. On Saturday, she was already making plans to bake Christmas cookies for the ship’s sailors.

“I feel an emotional tie to this ship, and I’ll follow its travels,” Forst, clutching a bouquet of roses, said.

It was a much colder day than the last Gridley christening, which was in the summer. Saturday’s temperature hovered around 20 degrees and the wind whipped across the Kennebec River. The river was filled with chunks of ice.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said the cold didn’t compare to the last time Bath Iron Works christened a ship in the dead of winter. She recalls the temperature being a bone-numbing 17 below zero when the Hopper was launched on Jan. 6, 1996. “It’s a balmy day compared to that,” she joked.

The latest warship bears the name of the commander of Admiral Dewey’s flagship Olympia during the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. Dewey commenced the battle with the command, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.”

Charles Vernon Gridley, who was born in Indiana in 1844, was terminally ill at the time of the battle in 1898, but he insisted on leading the warship into combat. The ensuing battle ended with the destruction of the Spanish fleet. Gridley succumbed to illness less than two months later.

“They offered to relieve him of his command, but he wouldn’t do that,” said Jean W. Rose, who has Charles Gridley’s rope-handled sea trunk at her home in Massachusetts.

Also in attendance were a former commanding officer and several additional former sailors from the previous Gridley on which Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry served, as well as at least one sailor from a World War II destroyer that bore the Gridley name, said Philip Carter of Slingerlands, N.Y., who maintains a Web site dedicated to the Gridley.

The latest Navy warship to bear the Gridley name is the 51st of the Navy’s 62 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The $1.15 billion destroyer is built to withstand chemical attacks while waging battle with enemy airplanes, warships and submarines.

For workers at Bath Iron Works, the shipyard is entering an uncertain period as the shipyard moves from construction of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers like the Gridley to the next-generation DD(X) destroyer that’s larger and more expensive.

Bath Iron Works has reduced its work force from 12,000 in the 1980s to 5,600 now, and further cuts are expected even under the most optimistic scenarios.

Delores Etter, the Navy’s assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition, said Saturday that the Navy’s current leadership is committed to building more ships and providing a stable workflow for shipbuilders.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations, is committed to building the Navy from its current level of 281 ships to 313 ships, and the long-term plan “is going to help us all so we can plan,” Etter said after the ceremony.

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On the Net:

Bath Iron Works www.gdbiw.com

Gridley veterans http://home.nycap.rr.com/pwcarter/index.html

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