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By Root 943 0

and gun against gun, numerical odds were always considered the decisive factor, and for our first navy they were not favorable. Its ships numbered less than one-third and its guns less than one-quarter of the enemy’s in American waters. The British were deployed the length of the coast from Halifax to Florida. They had three ships of the line and six smaller warships, with a total of 300 guns, based on Boston and at New England ports further north, two sloops of war in Narragansett Bay off Rhode Island, one ship of the line and two sloops at New York, three sloops in Chesapeake Bay, another with 16 guns at Charleston and ten smaller vessels of 6–8 guns at various ports along the way. Against these odds it was small wonder that some of the Patriot party who were offered commissions as officers declined on the grounds that “they did not choose to be hanged.” Soldiers of the army if captured were treated as prisoners, but sailors as pirates. Bolder gentlemen accepted the assignments, among them Captain Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia, who took command of the Andrew Doria, and his successor, Captain Isaiah Robinson, the captain who was to take the ship into St. Eustatius.

“Was it proof of madness in the first corps of sea officers?” asked John Paul Jones, looking back after the Revolution had been won, “to have at so critical a period launched out on the ocean with only two armed merchant ships, two armed brigantines and one armed sloop” (a fifth ship, the Providence, had been added to the first four). So small a force “had no precedent in history to make war against such a power as Great Britain.…”

Feeling the force of Jones’s argument, the delegates in Congress nervously debated the proposal for a national fleet. Samuel Chase of Maryland affirmed that to build an American fleet to oppose Britain was, indeed, “the maddest idea in the world,” but a fellow-delegate from Virginia, George Wythe, argued what was to be Washington’s thesis, that “no maritime power near the sea-coast can be safe without it. Had not Rome built a fleet for the Carthaginian war? Why should we not take counsel from the example?” Even more than the practical need or historical example, it was the aching desire for a weapon of retaliation against the British for the savagery of their attacks on the coastal towns that created the navy. “You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to an English M.P. “Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations! You and I were long friends. You are now my enemy and I am yours.”

Embracing the delusion of all invaders in every time that punitive brutality will cow defenders into giving up their resistance, the British burned houses, farms, barns and timber resources, slaughtered livestock and left a trail of ruin wherever the redcoats and Hessians reached, and their marines were doing no less. Desire to return the injuries in some way upon their tormentors fired the Colonies’ naval enterprise.

Adopting Rhode Island’s resolution, Congress decided to establish a national navy, and on October 13, 1775, appointed a Naval (later Marine) Committee to govern naval affairs, with authority to spend up to $500,000 to purchase and equip four armed ships and construct thirteen frigates, the class of warship carrying fewer than 44 guns, next below ship of the line. With some overconfidence, it was announced that they would be ready for sea in three months’ time. The first four were purchased in November, marking the physical birth of the United States Navy, called at this time the Continental Navy. Because the United Colonies possessed no regular ships of war, merchant and fishing vessels had to be purchased, converted and armed. Hulls had to be reinforced, holes pierced to receive the guns for the broadside firing that was the basic and only tactic of naval warfare. Masts and rigging had to be strengthened for belligerent action and crews had to be recruited. Washington arranged for the small rough vessels newly transformed into warships to be chartered, armed and manned