22 MARCH 1820 ARTICLE 114. DUELING. James Barron and Stephen Decatur enjoyed distinguished careers during the wars with the Barbary pirates. They became not just colleagues, but good friends. Thus, Decatur was disheartened in 1807 when Barron, then in command of Read More
29 FEBRUARY 1844 “PEACEMAKER” DISASTER A series of advancements were made in naval gunnery in the decades before the Civil War. The commonly used material for gun construction at the time was wrought iron, being cheaper and more readily available than Read More
2 FEBRUARY 1800 “MY POST IS HERE!” We remember 1787 as the year our founding fathers finalized our Constitution and sent it to the States for ratification. Elsewhere that same year, a son was born to a prominent New Yorker, James Read More
29 NOVEMBER 1838 USS WOODBURY AND THE PASTRY WAR The Mexican Federalist War of 1835-41 pitted the aristocratic Centralist Mexican rulers against the federalist peasantry of the provinces. Foreign businessmen in Mexico who suffered collateral damages from Centralist Mexican Army operations Read More
24-27 SEPTEMBER 1778 THE LOSS OF RALEIGH On December 13th, 1775, the Continental Congress issued our young nation’s first naval construction authorization, ordering that 13 frigates be built for the Continental Navy. Five of these were to be rated at 32 Read More
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
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
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
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
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