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
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
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
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
29 JUNE 1842 “PATHFINDER OF THE SEAS” Matthew Fontaine Maury was born in a woodland cabin near Chancellorsville, Virginia, on 14 January 1806. At age 5 his family moved to Franklin, Tennessee, where Matthew attended the Harpeth Academy for teachers. Read More