On October 13, 1775, the U.S. Navy was born when the Continental Congress authorized the arming of two sailing vessels with 80 men and 10 carriage guns to intercept British supply and munitions transports.
The Declaration of Independence came nine months later, followed by the creation of the Department of the Navy in 1798.
This from patriotpost.us.
Today, our Navy—excluding the Obiden initiatives—is the most powerful in the world.
Happy Birthday! And a note of congratulations to all our sailors for a job well done. God bless you and your families.
Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!
So ended Alexander Hamilton’s essay (no. 11 of the Federalist Papers, 1787) on the crucial role a navy would play in safeguarding America’s commerce and reputation. The essay also laid out all the hopes of the new nation:
[P]eace, prosperity, and respect
from the mighty nations of Europe.
Yet the Navy’s creation and development proceeded piecemeal and haltingly in the face of seemingly intractable political, ideological, and economic obstacles. It took a quarter century for the Navy to emerge as a stable institution, and although we now celebrate the birthday of the Navy on 13 October, that date in 1775 is but one of several important steps on the way to a permanent naval defense force for the American people.
1775: The Birth of the Navy
The origins of the Navy actually predate independence by almost a year. On 26 August 1775, the assembly of the colony of Rhode Island sent its delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to request that ‘a fleet of sufficient force for the protection of these colonies’ be established. Although Congress had already urged individual colonies to mount their own naval defenses, the Rhode Island Assembly understood that securing American ports and waters would be a bigger job than any one colony could handle.
1794: The Navy Reestablished
Relations among the United States, Great Britain, and France ultimately caused Congress to reestablish a navy but only after the constitution had been ratified and the federal powers of taxation had increased.
In the course of the French Revolutionary wars (1792–1802), which quickly spilled into the Atlantic world, Americans’ neutrality on the seas became difficult to support, and American merchants, in particular, began to press Congress for a standing naval force that could defend against ships of war and privateers, often hired by France or Britain for the express purpose of depredating American merchant vessels.
As Britain and France began to wage economic war on each other, the British government blocked American ships from the French West Indies, a crucial source of sugar and other commodities for United States merchants. Yet Congress still waffled on the issue of a navy. Events in the Mediterranean ultimately forced the issue in early 1794. Algerine (Barbary) pirates, having signed a truce with Portugal and been paid off by the British, began to attack American ships in full force and not just in the Mediterranean.
On 2 January 1794, Congress resolved to create ‘a naval force, adequate to the protection of the United States against the Algerine corsairs.’
In order to spread the economic favors that the construction of a navy would bring, Congress had no two frigates built in the same yard. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, got Congress; Boston, Constitution; New York City, President; Philadelphia, United States; Baltimore, Constellation; and Gosport (now Norfolk), Virginia, Chesapeake. The oak came from as far away as Georgia.
On 5 June 1794, the reestablished Navy got its first officers, all naval veterans of the American Revolution: John Barry, Samuel Nicholson, Silas Talbot, Joshua Barney, Richard Dale, and Thomas Truxton.
1798: The Department of the Navy
Although the Navy originated in 1794 amid worries about the British and the Mediterranean, it was concern over France and the Caribbean that made the Navy a permanent institution.
Caught up in the geopolitics of the French Revolutionary wars, the United States found itself after 1794 on the wrong side of France, now a republic. Diplomatic relations between the United States and France, the colonists’ crucial ally in the American Revolution, had so deteriorated by 1797 that French leaders refused even to receive the American minister to Paris. For the better part of a year, already, French warships and privateers had been attacking merchant vessels in the West Indies.
When John Adams assumed the presidency on 4 March 1797, the Navy had its staunchest defender yet. Indeed, the Navy was fast becoming the centerpiece of Adams’s foreign policy, which sought stability in the West Indies, now in the throes of revolution, and an end to French predation on American commercial shipping.
The Navy still lacked an adequate bureaucracy to oversee its expansion and operations. Members of Congress were already complaining in March 1798 about cost overruns and mismanagement by the Department of War, which, for its part, did not have the resources to oversee the naval buildup now underway, according to Secretary of War James McHenry.
Congress’s solution was an act establishing a new Department of the Navy with the power to make contracts, disburse funds, and manage the fleet. President Adams signed the act into law on 30 August 1798, just as chances for peace collapsed under the strain of the ‘XYZ’ affair, the diplomatic incident that sent the United States into undeclared naval war with France. For this conflict, Congress authorized the purchase of more vessels to defend American interests against the French in the West Indies, and by the end of May, the United States Navy, with the crucial support of its brand-new government Department, was engaged in battle in the Quasi-War (1798–1801), the first large-scale naval engagement in United States history.
At the end of Adams’s presidency in 1801, the Navy boasted fifty vessels, a count it maintained until the War Between the States.
Again, Happy Birthday to the U.S. Navy and everyone currently or ever part thereof.
