USS DOLPHIN vs. Echo

                                                21 AUGUST 1858                                           USS DOLPHIN vs. ECHO Despite human slavery being a way of life in the antebellum American south, official US policy forbade trafficking in slaves as early as 1807.  On 3 March 1819 Congress granted President James Monroe the Read More

The Passing of Farragut

                                                14 AUGUST 1870                                      THE PASSING OF FARRAGUT It is hard to overstate the reverence our Navy holds for David Glasgow Farragut.  He entered our Navy at age 9 through the influence of his adoptive father, CAPT David Porter, in 1810.  He Read More

USS JARVIS

                                                 9 AUGUST 1942                                                      USS JARVIS The morning of August 7th, 1942, saw the US Marines make their first landings on Japanese held Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain.  The enemy counter attacked with airstrikes, the second coming around noon on the Read More

USS WEASEL vs. Gallago Segunda (cont. from 22 JUL)

                                            200th ANNIVERSARY                                                  3 AUGUST 1823                 USS WEASEL vs. GALLAGO SEGUNDA (cont. from 22 JUL) Continental and US Navy warships had been cruising the Caribbean Sea since the earliest days of our Revolutionary War.  Their initial mission was to suppress British Read More

Saltonstall at Penobscot (cont. from 25 JUL)

                                                19 JULY-17 AUGUST 1779                                    SALTONSTALL AT PENOBSCOT Four hundred Continental and colonial Marines led the numerically superior American assault, clamoring up the cliff to within 600 yards of the fort.  But here they came within range of the three small Read More

Penobscot Expedition

                                                  19 JULY-17 AUGUST 1779                                         PENOBSCOT EXPEDITION The land stretching northeast from the Kennebec River in modern Maine (location of Augusta) to New Brunswick was contested by France and England for a century.  Then with the British victory in the French Read More

USS BEAGLE and GREYHOUND (cont. from 11 JUL)

                                                   200th ANNIVERSARY                                                  21-22 JULY 1823                     USS BEAGLE AND GREYHOUND (cont. from 11 JUL) The demise of Diabolito ten days earlier did not bring piracy along the coast of Spanish Cuba to an end.  Far from it.  Piracy remained rampant Read More

Shimonoseki Incident

                                                         16 JULY 1863                                         SHIMONOSEKI INCIDENT Negotiated by Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1854, the Treaty of Kanagawa opened Japan to commerce with the western world.  It also polarized traditionalist Japanese factions who wished a return to economic isolationism.  One of Read More

The Death of Diabolito

                                            200th ANNIVERSARY                           11 JULY 1823                      THE DEATH OF DIABOLITO Frank piracy reemerged in the Caribbean in the early 1800s with the sanctioning of privateering by newly independent former Spanish colonies.  One of the more notorious of such pirate cut-throats Read More

(James) Farragut Birthday

                                                              5 JULY 1801                   DAVID (JAMES) GLASGOW FARRAGUT BIRTHDAY Jordi Farragut Mesquida was a Minorcan-born sea captain sailing Spanish merchant ships between Vera Cruz, New Orleans, and Havana in the 1770s.  With the outbreak of our Revolutionary War, Mesquida anglicized his Read More