To Provide and Maintain a Navy: 1775-1945

By Captain Richard L. Wright

The United States Navy evolved from an ill-formed collection of merchant vessels, privateers, and small frigates into the most capable maritime force in world history . The author employs an historical narrative that describes this evolution of American warships, technology, and force structure as opposed to the battles or tactics in which they engaged.

He examines the history of the U.S. Navy from the perspective of the American people and their elected and appointed political leadership—the President, the Congress, the Secretaries of the Navy— and the captains, commodores, and admirals who carried out their directives, as well as the changing nature of the naval establishment, physical infrastructure, and human capital that constituted the industrial base in each era.

The U.S. Navy is our nation's first line of defense, composed of the most capable aircraft carriers, surface ships, submarines and naval aircraft ever built. It represents an enormous investment of our nation's treasure, but is designed, built, and operates largely out of the public eye. Naval professionals and students of naval history should learn the forces that determine ‘how’ and ‘why’ we build the ships and aircraft we do, and their true value to the American taxpayer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664111813

Captain Richard L. Wright

Captain Richard L. Wright, USN (Ret.) is a 1973 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and holds an MA in Naval Intelligence and International Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. In a twenty-eight-year naval career, Captain Wright served in numerous command and staff billets ashore and afloat. At sea, he commanded an anti-submarine warfare frigate, a strike destroyer, and a destroyer squadron. Ashore, he served on the staffs of secretary of the navy, the chief of naval operations, and commander in chief, U.S. Atlantic Command. Retiring in 2001, Captain Wright became a general associate at Strategic Insight Ltd., a technical consulting firm headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

Book preview

To Provide and

Maintain a Navy:

1775–1945

CAPTAIN RICHARD L. WRIGHT

(U.S. NAVY, RETIRED)

CONTRIBUTING

Thomas B. Carter Jr., Robert E. Gray, Paul F. Richardson,

Taylor I. Sinclair, Sam J. Tangredi, PhD, and James M. Warren

BOOK LAYOUT AND DESIGN

Jennifer R. Shirley

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Michael L. Cecere III

Copyright © 2022 by Captain Richard L. Wright. 826201

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021922339

Rev. date: 01/12/2022

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks for their invaluable guidance and recommendations:

Norman Friedman, PhD

Larrie D. Ferreiro, PhD, naval architect and historian, George Mason University

David F. Winkler, PhD, staff historian, Naval Historical Foundation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter I: In The Beginning

Chapter II: Warships From The Barbary PiratesTo The Battle Of New Orleans

Chapter III: Warships From The Era OfGood Feeling To Fort Sumter

Chapter IV: Warships From The BlockadeOf The South To Appomattox

Chapter V: Warships From ReconstructionTo The Abcd Ships

Chapter VI: Warships From The Steel NavyTo The Great White Fleet

Chapter VII: Warships From DreadnoughtsTo The Treaty Of Versailles

Chapter VIII: Warships From TheWashington Naval ConferenceTo The Great Depression

Chapter IX: Warships From The NationalIndustrial Recovery Act Of 1933To The Navy Expansion AndDeficiency Acts Of 1938

Chapter X: Warships From The Two-OceanNavy Act Of 1940 To Vj Day

Epilogue: Lessons Of HistoryNot To Be Forgotten

Glossary Of Ship Types

Bibliography

Evolution of the U.S. Navy 1775-1945

Evolution of the U.S. Navy Shore Infrastructure 1775-1945

PREFACE

Origins

I n 2005, incoming Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael G. Mullen tasked retired Rear Admiral Wayne E. Meyer to conduct a study to assist the Navy in defining a compelling and enduring strategy for the evolution and introduction into the U.S. Navy’s Surface Combatant fleet, especially cruisers and destroyers, capabilities and supporting infrastructure needed to cope with projected threats of the first half of the 21 st century. This tasker, which chartered the Surface Warfare Capabilities Study for the 21 st Century (SWCS-21), came out of discussions that had gone on between the two admirals since Admiral Mullen had last served in Washington as the Vice Chief of Naval Operations.

The conditions in the Navy that led Admiral Mullen to make this assignment went back to the end of the Cold War, fifteen or so years before. With the end of that war, there were no global competitors to the United States, and the reasons for the nation to continue investing in advanced military capabilities were no longer as obvious. In the time since, the Navy had tried to respond to the constantly changing priorities voiced by various administrations, often on an annual basis, as the national debate over what type of standing military the country needed ebbed and flowed. The demand for a peace dividend often drove budget reductions. For some of that time, there was a generally perceived need for a completely transformed or reformed military; and, as part of the larger Defense Department, the Navy sometimes got caught up in discussions that were perhaps more relevant to what type of standing army was needed. These conditions were further complicated by the transience and fragmentation of sponsorship that characterized the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations—very few admirals, captains, or commanders stayed in office long enough to ensure a consistent line of thinking or argument.

The Surface Navy, the largest part of the U.S. Navy, was directly affected. During that fifteen-year period, it had achieved the start of only two new combatant shipbuilding programs. First was the DDG 1000 destroyer, or Zumwalt class, which gained traction for a brief period because it promised to affect events ashore and, later, because it introduced a myriad of new ship technologies the Navy believed it needed for the future. However, Zumwalt, as its purpose evolved into a land attack destroyer, had no historical precedent as a destroyer and was more like a battleship, if it were to be related to any previous combatant. Second was LCS, or the Littoral Combatant Ship, which met the national desire for transformation as it could morph into almost any type of ship merely by returning to a port for a few days to change warfare mission modules. Even its designation was transformational as the U.S. Navy had never had an LCS.

Both of these new ship classes were unprecedented and, thus, experimental as operational warships. They were also somewhat dissatisfying to many naval officers as neither was of much use in controlling the oceans of the world as an integral part of the Navy’s battle forces, a capability the U.S. Navy already had. Not only that, but also as the priorities of the nation changed from year to year and administration to administration, the rationale for these ships, especially Zumwalt, also changed. In its yearly submissions to Congress, the Navy justified it with a very different story on a regular basis. A compelling and enduring strategy was missing.

Admiral Meyer was uniquely qualified to advise the Navy on this task. He was the Father of the Aegis Fleet, composed of cruisers and destroyers, which was, and remained, the Navy’s largest and longest-running shipbuilding program. Its origins dated back to the 1970s and the Carter Administration, also a period of tight defense budgets. At that time, they were the first heavily armed surface warships that the Navy had been able to build since the 1960s. Admiral Meyer was a veteran in dealing with the types of problems Admiral Mullen was facing.

Study Approach

Admiral Meyer assembled a team of graybeards and subject-matter experts. His tasker was to assist the Navy, so active-duty officers and civilians also participated on a regular basis. His team included a number of other admirals and senior civilians who had helped him create and manage the Aegis Program. To create a venue for discussion and debate, the admiral’s team created six war rooms (or planning centers) to address the evolution of the Navy, force requirements, air and missile defense, ship characteristics, shipbuilding and modernization, and organization of the Navy; and one main war room to integrate all the others. It did not take long to determine that compelling was not as available to the current leadership of the Navy as it may have been during the Cold War. The United States had the largest and most powerful navy in the world with no peer competitor or near-term threat that was obvious to the nation at large. Certainly, there was no compelling need such as Pearl Harbor or the Soviet Union around which a compelling strategy could be quickly composed.

Thus, the study turned more to trying to discover the nation’s enduring needs to base a strategy and, in so doing, also attempted to discover those that were eternally compelling. In particular, members of the study recognized that perhaps the hardest needs to understand are those that have already been met by previous generations, but must continue to be met over and over again. Reflecting this orientation, every war room began with a historical analysis on how the problems they posed had been met in the past.

Approximately four thousand people visited and participated in the study, going through all or some of the war rooms. They included the Secretary of the Navy and other members of the Secretariat, two Chiefs of Naval Operations and their staffs, members of Congress and their staffs, naval officers and civilians, members of the other services and the Department of Defense, officers from some of our allies, members of think tanks, and numerous acquisition professionals and experts. The study ended in 2010, after Admiral Meyer passed away. However, soon after it ended, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, the Honorable Sean J. Stackley asked the members of the study to keep parts of it intact. Secretary Stackley was concerned with the training his senior acquisition professionals were receiving. He was particularly concerned that the uniqueness of ships and things Navy were not reflected in their education and discussions. A student of naval history himself, he was drawn to the historical analysis that had been done in the study and wanted to capture it for use in the Navy’s acquisition training program. In 2010, the effort began to convert the war rooms from planning centers into training centers. Some rooms were kept almost intact, some were deleted, some were adapted, and a few new ones were created.

Scope and Purpose of this Book

One of the study rooms that was kept almost intact for use in the training of acquisition professionals addressed the Evolution of the Navy. It had been one of most popular and most participated in during the study. It attempted to understand how the character of the Navy had evolved since the nation’s beginnings and what factors drove it. Character meant how many and what kinds or types of ships had the nation built or bought through the years; while factors were the main issues, debates, and capabilities that drove that character. This book grew out of that room and was written primarily by a member of the study who created the room, with written inputs from other members of the study. It does not cover the complete history of the Navy that was covered by the training room. Instead, it covers the period from the beginning of the country up to end of World War II.

At the end of World War II, the United States had the strongest navy in the world, a capability it has maintained ever since. That navy had grown as the nation had grown and was the outcome of wars and conflicts, changing national priorities, emerging armaments and ship technologies, and constant learning. Some of the learning that led to the first instantiation of the powerful fleet the nation has today was originally acquired by people no longer alive, and much of it was not codified in one source, so an acquisition professional today can find the enduring guide stars to provide and maintain a Navy. That is the main purpose of this book.

Limitations of this Book

This book is not an operational history of the Navy. Neither is it an esoteric theoretical text meant to extend the professional historian’s understanding of history, nor should it be viewed by that audience as authoritative. It is intended instead as a practical guide for an acquisition professional to help understand the history of how U.S. naval force structures and ship types were created from the nation’s beginnings through World War II when it attained its status as the world’s dominant navy: what methods and techniques were successful, what were the larger political and national backdrops against which shipbuilding decisions of the day were made, and how and why they worked or did not. Acquisition professionals may also find this history useful in identifying parallels to today’s problems with those of the past, helping them understand if issues today are truly new problems.

This book is also written for undergraduate-level students, junior officers, and midgrade officers who seek to understand how the Fleet is designed and acquired, which is generally not covered in our educational experience as midshipmen and training as junior or even midgrade officers. It examines how the U.S. Navy, the Executive branch, and the Legislative branch interact to arrive at ship and system designs that are eventually authorized, appropriated, designed, and built. This process is highly imperfect and changeable, and depends on many variable factors: protagonists, national security considerations, economic picture, fiscal matters, and political influences of the day.

It examines the evolving organization of the Navy, and how it interacts with other agencies in the government as well as with the private sector. The shipbuilding environment for the period covered in this book differs greatly from today; the Secretary of the Navy was one level below the President, and bureau chiefs two levels below the President. These bureau chiefs were often intimate with the respective chairmen of the House and Senate Naval Affairs Committees who authorized and appropriated money for the Navy in relatively few accounts compared to today, thus permitting these bureaus a greater degree of freedom how they spent their money.

Finally, this book profiles the development and growth of the Navy’s material establishment as well as the nation’s private industrial base, and the dominant effect they had on building the Navy’s force structure. All should find a new appreciation for the fact that the health of the United States industrial base and naval shipbuilding infrastructure is the indispensable element to the Navy’s success in war and peace, a truly enduring lesson for all. We trust that it will lead to the reading of even more in-depth historical treatments, some of which were its sources.

Robert%20E%20Gray_signature.psd

Robert E. Gray

Deputy Director,

Surface Warfare Capabilities for the 21st Century Study

INTRODUCTION

Where We Are Today

A t this time in our history, the United States Navy finds itself in a dilemma created by its own historical success. Despite the threat of terrorist activity and new peer competitors, the United States is safer and more secure today than it has been during most of its existence. This is in large part because it possesses the only navy in the world with a sustained, effective global reach that can deploy forces to every region, exert sea control, and project power into any area on earth, with naval aviation, surface ships, and submarines able to conduct strikes at sea, in space, in coastal areas, and in landlocked countries. Other navies are able to perform many of these same missions, but to a lesser extent and for limited duration and in fewer areas of operation. Commercially, the nation’s maritime access to international markets and raw materials is generally unimpeded.

Indeed, the U.S. Navy’s command of the seas is so complete that our ability to trade and transit the global commons is routinely assumed in today’s public forum, while the fundamental rationale and national will needed to field and maintain the strong, forward deployed naval forces to continue assuring our commercial well-being and national security are not always understood or appreciated.

Our History, Our Heritage

No explanation of today’s naval forces and ships should be undertaken without an examination of how the Navy evolved from an ill-formed collection of merchant vessels, privateers, and frigates to become the world’s most capable naval force. By what means were the ships of the Navy selected? How were their construction and sustainment costs justified to the Congress and to the American public? How and why were particular warships constructed, and how were they used? What was the technological level and national security context in which certain types of vessels were built, and other types and designs rejected?

Also frequently missing in the current national security dialogue is any mention of the United States Navy’s unique and long-standing relationship to the nation’s enduring principles, policies, and objectives that transcended transient conditions. From the time of its founding, the nation’s leaders almost unanimously recognized that America is a maritime nation, dependent on unrestricted seaborne trade and transit for its economic success and national security. Thus the Navy was always more than just one component of the nation’s military and national security strategy. The Congress and the Constitution frequently made it clear that the Navy was unique—more than just a military force. It represented the United States’ political and economic interests on distant seas and shores, projected power to defend those interests when required, and served to deter others considering actions inimical to our interests. With America’s rise as a world power in the final years of the nineteenth century, the Navy became the shield of the nation from the Caribbean to the western Pacific.

To oversee the activities of the Navy and the Navy Department, House and Senate Naval Affairs Committees were created that solely addressed naval issues. The Army and state militias were handled separately, both in Congress and in the Executive branch; they, not the Navy, were considered the nation’s military. Prior to World War II, numerous public documents used the phrase naval and military when addressing armed forces topics, clearly punctuating a distinction seldom made today.

The missions and characteristics of the warships employed to accomplish these purposes were important to the nation, its political leadership, and the Navy Department. Naval ships were instruments of national policy, fundamental force elements in America’s international security strategy. Congress, charged by the Constitution to provide and maintain a Navy, was very much interested in the types and missions of the ships the Navy was asking to build as it was of the sheer numbers.

Some Findings from the Surface Warfare Capabilities

Study for the 21st Century (SWCS-21)

The SWCS-21 Study found that since World War II, in every official study conducted on the type of navy the nation needed, certain missions or purposes for the U.S. Navy at large were always present or enduring, and others were intermittent depending on the time frame. The enduring purposes of the U.S. Navy were: (1) sea control, (2) power projection, (3) deterrence, and (4) forward presence. Intermittent purposes included maritime security, defense of U.S. territory, and humanitarian assistance.

Additionally, the study found that five basic planning factors consistently affected the evolving character of the Navy’s ships over its history and were particularly relevant to the ongoing debates of the early twenty-first century. These were: the need for and balance between general purpose and special purpose warships, the priorities and tradeoffs between service unique versus joint or coalition warfighting requirements, the size of the force structure desired, the enemies and threats faced (particularly the technical capabilities), and the capabilities of the shore infrastructure.

The study also examined the roles that different types of warships played in the evolution of the Navy and our nation’s history. The celebrated British military historian Sir John Keegan noted that, for thousands of years, naval warfare was ship versus ship or ship versus fort. In today’s terms, ship versus ship can be viewed as sea control capability and ship versus fort as power projection. The study defined ships designed for both ship versus ship (or sea control) and ship versus fort (power projection) warfare as general purpose warships. Certainly, through our history, there have been various degrees of general purpose ships, and they have been variously referred to as battle line ships, ships of the line, or capital ships. Conversely, the study defined special purpose warships as those designed with a specific capability for countering a specific threat, equipped to perform a certain mission or deal with an adversary of known capabilities in a particular location. This book uses these terms when it discusses the many types and classes of warships (see Glossary of Ship Types) and how they contributed to the evolution of the Navy’s warfighting capability.

Relevance Today

Today, the U.S. Navy is the only navy in the world that can exercise sea control in all areas of the world (i.e., the ability to use the seas where and when desired and deny others from doing so). According to the late ADM Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.), Sea Control is the most fundamental mission of the Navy, because the country cannot thrive in peacetime and cannot fight overseas in wartime in any sustained way without it—and no other military service can perform it.1*

Identifying the Navy’s future warfighting requirements while assuring the existence of a strong industrial base, capable technology centers, and a ready shore infrastructure are essential, if our ability to control the sea is to be maintained. By studying how the Navy evolved through its political, economic, and industrial base dimensions, naval leaders should be better equipped to analyze and synthesize the myriad of complex and competing factors that drive the requirements of our individual ship characteristics and the capabilities of our Navy at large. This book was written to further that aim.

In summary, this historical perspective is intended to provide a foundation to stimulate broader strategic thinking and understanding of the continuum of activities, influences, and decision-making required to provide and maintain a Navy from era to era, technological state to technological state, and industrial base to industrial base, now and in the future. As acclaimed historian David McCullough has said, History is a guide to navigation in perilous times.

Whatever challenges the Navy may face in the remainder of the twenty-first century, it is likely that the service has been there before, and the decisions much debated. As President Harry Truman was fond of saying, The only thing new is the history you don’t know.

CHAPTER I:

IN THE BEGINNING

F rom the earliest European explorations of North America, sea power was the principal determinant in the success or failure of colonization, trade routes, ports, frontier outposts, building foreign alliances, and conflicts between competing powers for dominance of the continent.

The settlement of America east of the Appalachian Mountains occurred during a period in military history when the parameters of warfare were significantly changing, particularly in the capabilities of warships. The wooden warship had been an efficient, highly developed instrument of war since the ancient empires of Athens and Rome. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain, France, England, Portugal, and the Netherlands had developed technologies that facilitated sustainable maritime power projection far beyond those ancient regimes’ Mediterranean theater of operation. Mounting increasingly effective shipboard artillery, these European powers sought to prevail far beyond their own coastal waters and inland seas.

American Colonies and the Sea

The coastal colonies that would eventually become the first thirteen states of the United States all held an inclination toward the sea. From whaling ships and fishing vessels to commercial ships hauling tobacco, timber, spices, and slaves, America possessed a seagoing culture. Early colonial industrial infrastructure focused on the sea, with new ships being built and older ones repaired in shipyards and building ways from New England to South Carolina. A nascent middle class in the colonies provided the skilled labor—principally shipwrights, carpenters, and caulkers. For its part, Great Britain reinforced America’s seaward inclination by legislating tax policies that favored imports coming from the colonies over international rivals, particularly the Dutch.

As sea-based industries and settlements in the colonies matured, their international outreach expanded; American fishermen and whalers pursued their quarry as far away as Greenland, Guinea, and the Falkland Islands. Benjamin Franklin published a chart of the Gulf Stream, codifying information obtained from ships’ masters who came calling in Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. As European cities began to light their streets and homes at night, the demand for whale oil increased dramatically, bringing record profits to American whalers. In the early 1770s, more than 360 whaling ships and 5,000 seamen claimed the Americas as their home ports. A recent study of whaling in colonial America concluded that the industry had fueled an active national and international trade that made colonial whalemen the pride of the colonies and the envy of all other whaling nations.¹

Military Aspects of Maritime Power

In addition to the economic advantages, the military aspects of maritime power were also obvious to colonial leaders. In repeated British wars with the French and Spanish empires in the New World in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they had watched (and sometimes participated) as Great Britain exploited its domination of the seas to project power into the Caribbean basin, Central and South America, and French Canada. The French, starting in 1720, spent twenty-five years building what was reputed to be the strongest fortress in North America at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The colonials rightly saw that fortress as a threat to their fisheries and trade. A joint colonial-British expedition besieged Louisbourg in 1745 during the War of Austrian Succession. The colonial fleet consisted of small frigates, sloops, Boston Packets, and captured privateers, supported by a Royal Navy squadron of frigates and ships of the line. Sailing six hundred miles from Boston, the fleet landed regiments from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut on the island and compelled the fortress’s surrender. It was a feat of arms that surprised the court at London almost as much as it shocked the French King Louis XV at Versailles.

Fought from 1754 to 1763, the Seven Years’ War was the world’s first truly world war. French, Spanish, and British protagonists clashed from the West Indies and India to Canada and Portugal. The climactic struggle ended in triumph for the British in November 1759, with the defeat of the French Fleet off Quiberon Bay, Brittany. Britain’s ascendance as the world’s first superpower since Rome was both a tribute to British seamanship and a testimonial to the prevailing practice among British naval commanders to accept considerable risks to destroy an enemy. It was a lesson that would not be lost on their American cousins over the next several decades. Their defeat in the Seven Years’ War remained an open wound for France and Spain, and they were constantly looking for eventual revenge. The American Revolution provided the occasion and conditions—preoccupying British military and naval forces—that permitted the French to first rebuild their fleet strength and then to look for the right time and place to enter into the war on the side of the Americans.

A Continental Navy

Though well aware of the importance of sea power in their struggle for independence, the Continental Congress, through six years of war, was never able to create a navy that could affect the outcome of the American Revolution. One study of the Continental Navy asserts that it was an abject failure, playing almost no part in winning independence.² Instead, it was the French Navy that was able to momentarily wrest sea control from the Royal Navy in the mid-Atlantic area, providing the necessary conditions for victory at Yorktown, and the eventual peace treaty that gave the colonies their independence.

The colonies’ unpreparedness to fight a war was not limited to ships. The lack of an indigenous arms and other military supplies producing capability required over 90 percent of all muskets, shot, cannons, gunpowder, uniforms, and other support to be provided by France and Spain.³ France provided the most open support to the American Revolution. Spain was a silent partner, providing funds and goods via merchant ships to protect its convoys from South and Central American colonies from being attacked and seized by the Royal Navy. Eventually, Spain would attack British forces to reclaim territories lost in the Seven Years’ War in Florida, the Gulf Coast, and West Indies.

The failure of the Continental Navy was not for want of trying, or lack of sentiment in the Continental Congress to build a fleet. Since the first shots were fired on the Lexington Common, colonial leaders had expressed the desire to build a navy. John and Samuel Adams, in particular, pressed other colonial leaders to legislate a navy built on the British example, replete with an Admiralty to administer and issue orders to ships and at-sea commanders. In August 1775, the Rhode Island delegation urged the Congress to begin building and equipping ships to carry the war to the Royal Navy. The proposal was debated in the ensuing months, with opposition largely centered among those delegates who feared such an overt action would lead irrevocably to independence and war, a situation many in the Continental Congress were not willing to accept at this early stage in the course of events.

Throughout the American Revolution, privateers armed with letters of marque (formal letters from Congress authorizing private citizens to undertake military operations with their ships, allowing them to capture enemy ships and their cargo) were very successful in attacking British merchant and resupply ships. In retaliation, in October 1775, the Royal Navy, seeking to destroy the privateers at what was thought to be one of their key bases, dispatched a squadron of ships from Halifax to attack the port of Falmouth, Massachusetts, today’s Portland, Maine. A request for parley by local officials was rejected, and the subsequent bombardment and burning of much of Falmouth hardened the resolve of many in New England to fight Britain. It also encouraged pro-navy members in the Continental Congress to renew their call for funding and building an American navy as soon as possible.

1%20Continental%20Cong%20Letter%20of%20Marque%2c%20Princeton%20University.jpg

Continental Congress-issued Letter of Marque (source: Princeton University)

Continental Congress and Shipbuilding

The colonies proved adept in building small ships that answered the inshore defensive needs of Continental Army commanders, as opposed to larger ships that could carry the fight to the Royal Navy at sea. In the summer of 1775, to defend the Delaware River approaches to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania funded and built a fleet of thirteen row galleys, each fifty feet long, with a navigational draft of four and one-half feet and outfitted with a single cannon on the bow. The cannons installed ranged from eighteen- to thirty-two-pounders, measured by the weight of the round shot they fired. These small craft were conceived and funded through Pennsylvania’s Committee of Public Safety, led by Benjamin Franklin. The contract to build them was awarded to Wharton and Humphreys Shipyard, which was soon to be awarded several more contracts for light frigates desired by the Continental Congress.

On October 30, 1775, Congress created a Naval Committee of seven members to consider the funding and building of a Continental Navy. The committee quickly selected eleven merchant ships then in American ports to be converted into warships. The process included cutting gun ports, modifying the ships’ rigging and strengthening almost every aspect of their hulls. Conversion of these ships took a little more than two months. Instrumental was a young shipbuilder, twenty-four-year old Joshua Humphreys, who had learned his trade during the Seven Years’ War as an apprentice building privateers to prey on French ships en route to Canada.

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Instructions for Privateers (source: Library of Congress # 90898007)

In addition to converting merchantmen to warships, Humphreys and his partner John Wharton submitted plans to the Continental Congress for the construction of light frigates carrying between twenty-four and thirty-two guns each. Congress approved the design and agreed to fund the new ship construction. Because of the delays in building, obtaining cannon, rigging, and training crews, only seven frigates would ever go to sea. All seven were ultimately captured by the Royal Navy, and six put into Royal Navy service. Another four under construction were destroyed in the yards to prevent their falling into the hands of the British.

The Continental Congress, however, was not to be deterred. In November 1775, the Rules for the Regulation of the Navy of the United Colonies of North America, authored by John Adams, was adopted. In December, the Naval Committee was expanded to become a Marine Committee, with a single member from each colony comprising its membership. The new committee’s charge was to devise ways and means for furnishing these colonies with a naval armament.⁴

The Inland Fleet

At the same time, Canada’s Governor General Sir Guy Carleton organized a British army comprised largely of Irish and German mercenaries for a southern assault starting on Lake Champlain in New York State, an important waterway between the Saint Lawrence River and the Hudson River. A former Connecticut merchant ship captain and now Continental Army brigadier general named Benedict Arnold began building a small fleet of ships on Lake Champlain to contest the pending invasion. With little funding or support from Congress, Arnold recruited New York and Rhode Island shipwrights, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut militia, and employed his dominating personality to scrape together a small fleet of fifteen row galleys, barges, sloops, and schooners to contest the Royal Navy fleet building at St. John’s on the Richelieu River in Quebec Province. Although Arnold’s row galleys, powered by oars and sails, were almost twice the size of those employed in the Delaware River, and were heavily armed with eighteen-, twelve-, nine-, and six-pound cannons, the Royal Navy inland fleet was still superior in both size and armament. As both fleets hastily completed construction in the late summer of 1776, Arnold’s small fleet sailed north and anchored in Valcour Bay on the western shore of Lake Champlain in late September to await the British onslaught.

The British invasion by land and water began the second week of October, and on October 11, the Battle of Valcour Island was joined. At the end of the day, the American fleet had been largely destroyed by the superior firepower and seamanship of the Royal Navy. Two days later, what was left of the American fleet was captured by the British or run aground and burned at Crown Point, New York. One of Arnold’s boats can be seen in the Smithsonian Museum today.

Naval Effects on Land Warfare

Arnold had lost the battle, and his fleet ceased to exist. Yet, rather than press on to Albany and the strategically vital Hudson River Valley, Carleton, who had hoped to be in Albany by the winter snows, elected to return to Canada to await a better campaigning season the following spring. Arnold’s defeat at Valcour Island was the most important naval engagement of the war up to the 1781 encounter between the French and British fleets off the Virginia Capes. Writing more than a century later, Alfred Thayer Mahan would assert, That the Americans were strong enough to impose the capitulation of Saratoga [in October 1777] was due to the invaluable year of delay secured to them in 1776 by their little navy on Lake Champlain, created by the indomitable energy, and handled with the indomitable courage of the [future] traitor, Benedict Arnold.⁵

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Battle of Valcour Island (source: NH 83140)

By this time in the war, it was apparent that senior British land commanders were reluctant to jeopardize their armies in the trackless wilderness of North America where free access to the sea and the security of logistics routes along inland waterways were not certain. It was a lesson not lost on George Washington, who would rely on similar risk aversion in the British Army in the years ahead.

Sensing the importance placed on sea control by British military and political leadership, the Continental Congress decided to contest that position. On November 20, 1776, with little grasp of the necessities of war, it over-optimistically voted to fund construction of three seventy-four-gun ships of the line, five thirty-two-gun frigates, an eighteen-gun brig, and a packet boat. At the same time, it was not convinced that the Marine Committee was up to the task of both supervising the construction of this fleet, and manning and equipping it, in addition to the thirteen light frigates previously authorized. A Navy Board composed of three individuals well skilled in maritime affairs was appointed to oversee the conduct of the committee in discharging its responsibilities.⁶ The individuals appointed were John Nixon and John Wharton (Humphreys’s partner) of Pennsylvania and Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey.

While Benedict Arnold’s tactical defeat but strategic victory at Valcour Island was the Continental Navy’s signal accomplishment in the Revolutionary War, there were notable individual achievements and ship-on-ship engagements in the ensuing five years. Commanding the eighteen-gun sloop Ranger, John Paul Jones’s raid on Whitehaven, on Britain’s west coast, in April 1778, marked the first time an enemy landing party had set foot on English soil since 1667. In the most famous sea battle of the war, to be celebrated for centuries in the lore of the United States Navy, Jones, now in command of a former French East Indiaman outfitted with forty guns and renamed the Bonhomme Richard, defeated the fifty-gun Royal Navy frigate HMS Serapis at Flamborough Head, off Britain’s east coast in September 1779. Serapis had been escorting British merchant ships to prevent them from being attacked by commerce raiders like Jones. American commerce raiding presented yet another requirement for the Royal Navy to provide protection to key merchant ships.

1%20Battle%20between%20Continental%20Ship%20Bonhomme%20Richard%20and%20HMS%20Serapis%2c%20KN-10855.jpg

Battle between Continental Ship Bonhomme Richard and HMS Serapis (source: KN-10855)

While Benedict Arnold’s tactical defeat but strategic victory at Valcour Island was the Continental Navy’s signal accomplishment in the Revolutionary War, there were notable individual achievements and ship-on-ship engagements in the ensuing five years. Commanding the eighteen-gun sloop Ranger, John Paul Jones’s raid on Whitehaven, on Britain’s west coast, in April 1778, marked the first time an enemy landing party had set foot on English soil since 1667. In the most famous sea battle of the war, to be celebrated for centuries in the lore of the United States Navy, Jones, now in command of a former French East Indiaman outfitted with forty guns and renamed the Bonhomme Richard, defeated the fifty-gun Royal Navy frigate HMS Serapis at Flamborough Head, off Britain’s east coast in September 1779. Serapis had been escorting British merchant ships to prevent them from being attacked by commerce raiders like Jones. American commerce raiding presented yet another requirement for the Royal Navy to provide protection to key merchant ships.

Jones’s accomplishments, celebrated as they were, had little influence on the war in the colonies; the Royal Navy was much more influential. In September 1777, after advancing overland from New York and defeating Washington at Brandywine, British Major General Sir William Howe occupied Philadelphia. In the following two months, to ensure access to the sea via the Delaware River, the British general’s brother, Admiral Richard Howe, sailed a British task force of six ships, including two sixty-four-gun ships of the line, up the river, overwhelmed the two forts impeding their transit, and destroyed five Continental Navy ships and the entire Pennsylvania State Navy of row galleys.

French Fleet Changes the War

Their unbroken string of successes notwithstanding, all these actions at sea, off colonial harbors, and on rivers, were not ultimately decisive for the British. The defeat and surrender of Major General John Burgoyne’s British Army of more than seven thousand men at Saratoga, New York, in October 1777, made possible by Arnold’s strategic victory at Valcour Island a year earlier, fundamentally changed

Reviews for To Provide and Maintain a Navy

[Tom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an awesome read. An excellent survey of the history of naval shipbuilding development. The author does provides not only answers to the "what" but also the "why".