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A birthday carries many different meanings in various cultures, and has had many different contexts over different times in history. In olden times it was a recognition of survival in an otherwise short and uncertain life, and in our more modern age it is a means by which we delineate and track our passage through the different stages of our lives, and celebrate each new coming of age. Just as this is true for people, so too does it hold true for the founding of an institution like the Navy. As the 247th birthday of the United States Navy approaches, it prompts us to look back on the history of this decorated and historic force so as to better appreciate the values and legacy we inherit, and to better understand the evolution of the Navy from that of a vulnerable fledgling power, to being the preeminent maritime fighting force on the world stage.
Just as life was uncertain in ages past, so too was our Navy in a precarious position in its early existence. On Oct. 3, 1775, General George Washington took command of three schooners off the coast of Massachusetts to intercept British munitions supply vessels. 10 days later, at the behest of Washington in a letter, the Continental Congress voted to form the first true iteration of an American Navy, in the form of the Continental Navy. It was an organization borne from legislation which sought to outfit, arm, and crew two vessels for the purposes of protecting the trade and seaside settlements of the American colonies from the threat of one of the greatest naval powers of the world at that time, the Britain’s Royal Navy.
Over the next eight years, the Continental Navy of the newly formed United States of America would grow to a total of 55 ships, and a maximum of 31 ships at one time. Often outmanned and outgunned, it was through a fair measure of wit and grit on the part of various heroic figures such as John Paul Jones, John Barry, and others, that the Continental Navy would achieve a number of notable victories over their British adversaries. The Battle of Flamborough Head was the origin of that most famous quote by John Paul Jones, the father of our Navy, “I have not yet begun to fight!” This embodied very essence of the American spirit in courageously confronting such an overwhelming foe. These victories, alongside those won by the other armed forces of the United States, culminated in the long-sought objective of their young nation. The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, officially secured the independence of United States from Britain.
Though independence had been won, it was soon apparent that freedom from tyranny had not. Congress had disbanded the Continental Navy following the Treaty of Paris, only to find that the United States’ sprouting global trade efforts had been hampered by acts of piracy off the coast of Africa, and later further harassment by the British, and so in 1794, the Continental Navy was reassembled in the form of the U.S. Navy. International tensions with various European power players of the time provided Congress the impetus and public support needed to see the newly-restored Navy expanded and refit for service in a more permanent form. Never again would the United States be left without its protection. Soon after, the conflicts and harassment by British forces boiled into open warfare once again, leading to the War of 1812.
Once more the naval forces of the United States were poised against a well-established, lethal enemy, and again they rose to the challenge. The Navy’s forces consisted of 17 vessels
to the British Navy’s 600. Though they were overwhelmingly outnumbered, that same indomitable American spirit carried them to fight on. Never was this more evident than in the battle of Boston Harbor, in which a mortally wounded James Lawrence, captain of the USS Chesapeake Bay, in that same unyielding and courageous manner as his forbearer John Paul Jones, gave out the cry “Don’t give up the ship!” In 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed, ending the war, but it was throughout this early era of the Navy’s history that the actions of these courageous Sailors laid the foundations of our most cherished core values of honor, courage, and commitment.
Though the passage of time and a changing world has reassembled, restructured, and modernized the Navy into a force more suited to the tasks before it, the forge of warfare has served only to consolidate and further ingrain those essential values which underlie the actions and purpose of our Navy. The demands the world places upon America’s Navy are everchanging, and in service of those demands it has shifted in form and function many times over, but all throughout that indelible spirit has persisted, and has become the inheritance of those of us who serve today.
Just as we recite in the Sailor’s Creed, “I represent the fighting spirit of the Navy, and those who have gone before me to defend freedom and democracy around the world,” with
the 247th birthday of the Navy’s founding drawing near, it serves well to remind each of us not of what we are given for our service in the Navy and to our country, but what we inherit in the legacy and values that fall to us to embody and uphold, and of the ever-present necessity of the Navy’s role in protecting the United States of America, her interests, and our allies abroad. 247 years of history, on watch twenty-four-seven.
| Date Taken: | 10.13.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 12.29.2022 21:05 |
| Story ID: | 436081 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 68 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Born on a Wave: Birth of the US Navy, by PO2 Caylen McCutcheon, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
