The Off-Key Bard
History

This Day in History — The Birth of the United States Navy

On this day in 1775

On October 13, 1775, Congress ordered two armed ships fitted out to intercept British supply vessels, launching the Continental Navy before independence.

The Off-Key Bard stands on the waterfront in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1775. Merchant ships crowd the docks, sailors unload cargo, and news of fighting reaches the colonies from Massachusetts. Across the Atlantic stands the most powerful naval force of the age: Britain's Royal Navy. The American colonies have no unified navy, few purpose-built warships, and almost no experience operating a fleet under a central government. But they have a revolution to fight.

"How do thirteen colonies challenge an empire that rules the seas?"

On October 13, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, passed a resolution authorizing the outfitting of armed vessels to intercept British ships carrying military supplies. That decision marked the beginning of the Continental Navy, the Revolutionary War predecessor of today's United States Navy. The colonies had not yet declared independence, but the conflict with Great Britain was well underway. Fighting had erupted at Lexington and Concord in April, followed by Bunker Hill in June. George Washington had taken command of the Continental Army, and British forces remained entrenched in Boston.

A War With No Fleet

The colonial cause faced a critical disadvantage: Britain controlled the sea. The Royal Navy had hundreds of warships, extensive naval bases, experienced officers, and the infrastructure to project power from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. The colonies had merchant vessels, skilled sailors, and a substantial maritime economy, but not the resources or central organization to build a conventional navy that could challenge Britain's fleet directly.

That imbalance created an immediate problem for the Continental Army. British troops depended on shipments of gunpowder, weapons, ammunition, and other supplies, many of which arrived by sea under Royal Navy protection. American forces were desperately short of many of the same things. If colonial vessels could intercept British transports, they might accomplish two goals at once: deprive the enemy of essential matériel and obtain it for the American war effort.

Individual colonies had already begun experimenting. In June 1775, American forces at Machias, in present-day Maine, captured the British armed schooner Margaretta. Washington, too, saw the potential of maritime operations. During the siege of Boston he fitted out small armed schooners to prey on British supply vessels, and one of them, the Hannah, sailed from Beverly in early September 1775. But these were not yet ships of a national navy. They operated under local or Army authority, and the distinction mattered. A national naval force would require congressional funding, regulations, officers, crews, and administrative organization. It would also signal that the colonies were preparing to fight Britain at sea as well as on land.

A Debate in Philadelphia

Not everyone in Congress was ready for that step. Some delegates still hoped for reconciliation and worried that building a navy would make a negotiated settlement harder. Others doubted that the colonies could afford warships or operate them against the Royal Navy. Their concerns were understandable: ships required money, experienced crews, cannon, powder, provisions, repairs, and safe ports.

Still, the pressure was growing. On August 26, Rhode Island's assembly instructed its delegates to press Congress to build a fleet at continental expense, an instruction the delegates presented on October 3. Congress postponed the question. On October 5, it took up a narrower proposal to intercept two British brigs carrying supplies to Quebec; opposition was strong, and the matter went to a committee of John Adams, John Langdon, and Silas Deane. Then, on October 13, Congress voted to fit out a vessel.

Its resolution called for "a swift sailing vessel, to carry ten carriage guns," along with swivel guns and a crew of eighty men, prepared for a three-month cruise to the eastward to intercept transports carrying military supplies to the enemy. Congress also resolved to fit out a second vessel for the same purpose. A committee consisting of Silas Deane, John Langdon, and Christopher Gadsden was named to estimate the costs and make arrangements.

Modest Beginnings

The scope was modest. This was not a battle fleet, but a plan for small, fast vessels that could attack vulnerable shipping and capture cargo the Army urgently needed. Even so, the resolution had a significance beyond the number of ships involved. For the first time, the Continental Congress had formally authorized a naval force under its own authority. A historian of the era notes that the exact wording was awkward and the debate poorly recorded, a reminder that the Navy's birth was a practical compromise worked out in real time rather than a grand founding ceremony.

Congress soon expanded its plans. On October 30, it specified fourteen guns for the second vessel and ordered two more ships fitted out quickly, one carrying up to twenty guns and the other up to thirty-six, for "the protection and defence of the United Colonies." The same day it enlarged the naval committee to seven members, adding Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Hewes, Richard Henry Lee, and John Adams, making it the first executive body for American naval affairs. On November 10, Congress authorized two battalions of Marines, a date now commemorated as the birthday of the Marine Corps.

The growing fleet needed a leader. The committee selected Esek Hopkins, and on December 22 Congress named him commander in chief of the fleet. Among the officers commissioned was a young Scottish-born sailor named John Paul Jones. The early Navy relied on converted merchant ships, among them the Alfred, a vessel built at Philadelphia in 1774 as the merchantman Black Prince, bought by the naval committee in November, and refitted as a man-of-war. She was placed in commission on December 3, 1775, with Jones, then a lieutenant, hoisting the Grand Union flag. That flag, with thirteen red and white stripes and the British Union flag in its canton, captured the colonies' awkward political position: fighting under a new authority while the relationship with Britain remained unresolved.

From Nassau to Serapis

The small fleet quickly showed what it could do. On March 3, 1776, Hopkins's squadron landed at New Providence in the Bahamas and took Fort Montague without a fight; the governor surrendered Fort Nassau the next morning. It was America's first amphibious operation, and it brought home military supplies, though the governor had already spirited most of the island's gunpowder away.

As the war continued, American warships and privateers raided British commerce across the Atlantic and Caribbean, forcing Britain to divert resources to protecting its shipping. Privateers were privately owned armed vessels sailing under government commissions, distinct from regular Navy ships, but together they disrupted British trade on a large scale. John Paul Jones became famous for operations in European waters. On September 23, 1779, commanding Bonhomme Richard, he fought HMS Serapis in one of the most celebrated engagements of the Revolution. The fight was brutal: the two ships battled at close quarters for hours, Jones's crew boarded and captured Serapis, and the badly battered Bonhomme Richard sank two days later.

Yet the war also showed how hard it was for the young nation to sustain naval power. Ships were captured, destroyed, or worn out; supplies were scarce; pay and funding were persistent problems. The Continental Navy never approached the Royal Navy's size or global reach. France's entry into the war in 1778 changed the balance, giving the American cause a fleet capable of challenging the British in major operations, and in 1781 French naval forces under Admiral de Grasse helped seal Cornwallis's army at Yorktown.

Disbanded, Then Reborn

Independence did not immediately produce a permanent navy. After the war, the Continental Navy faded away as Congress sold its remaining ships, and under the Articles of Confederation the government lacked the money to maintain a fleet. The last Continental warship, Alliance, was auctioned off in 1785. But the dangers that had inspired the first resolution had not gone away. American merchant ships remained vulnerable, and in the Mediterranean, North African corsairs captured vessels and demanded ransom or tribute.

On March 27, 1794, President George Washington signed the Naval Act, authorizing six frigates and laying the foundation for a permanent naval force; USS Constitution, launched in Boston in 1797, was among the ships that resulted. On April 30, 1798, Congress created the Department of the Navy, separating naval administration from the War Department. The Navy's modern lineage therefore includes several dates, but October 13 kept its special place in naval tradition. In 1972, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. authorized official recognition of October 13 as the Navy's birthday, and each CNO since has encouraged celebrating it.

Today the Navy has evolved far beyond the small armed vessels Congress envisioned, with nuclear-powered carriers, submarines, guided-missile destroyers, and amphibious assault ships bearing no resemblance to the sails and cannon of 1775. Yet its mission still echoes that first resolution: protect American interests, interrupt hostile operations at sea, and secure what the nation needs. The technology has changed enormously. The importance of access to the sea has not.

"Two ships were called to meet the tide,
With cannon armed and crews beside.
From modest sails on waters blue,
A nation's mighty Navy grew."

The birth of the Continental Navy is a reminder that institutions rarely begin in the form they eventually take. The delegates who voted on October 13, 1775, were not creating the worldwide naval organization we know today. They were trying to solve an immediate wartime problem with limited resources and uncertain prospects. Their decision was practical, cautious, and driven by military necessity. But by authorizing those first vessels under congressional authority, they set a precedent that survived the Revolution, the disappearance of the original Continental Navy, and the later debates over whether the United States needed a permanent navy at all.

On October 13, 1775, the Continental Congress authorized armed vessels to intercept British military supplies, beginning the Continental Navy. What started as a modest wartime measure became the historical foundation of the United States Navy, a service that celebrates its 251st birthday today.

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