29 APRIL 1816 SHIPS-OF-THE-LINE Until the 16th century, navies, like land forces, relied mostly on hand-to-hand fighting to defeat an enemy. Tactics required warships to ram or grapple each other, then send across assault troops to attack the enemy’s crew. Fighting Read More
20 APRIL 1779 CONFLICT OF INTEREST Enlisting sailors into wartime service in the earliest days of our Navy was quite a task. Navy life was hard and risky, rewards were few, punishments were harsh and frequent, time away from home was Read More
20 MARCH 1779 “THE FEW, THE PROUD” “The Few, the Proud, the Marines” has been an iconic slogan of the US Marine Corps since it was introduced in 1976 by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency during a critical post-Vietnam recruiting Read More
15 FEBRUARY–16 MAY 1865 THE GUN FROM USS SHUBRICK (outside the NMCSD Command Suite) RADM William Branford Shubrick’s Navy career was long and distinguished. Born on 31 October 1790, Mr. Shubrick received his midshipman’s warrant in the Spring of 1806 Read More
4 MARCH 1825 EL PIRATA COFRESI Following the War of 1812, our Navy’s missions shifted to those of policing the slave trade off West Africa and combating piracy in the Caribbean. By 1825, our West India Squadron had nearly completed this Read More
28 FEBRUARY 1803 THE GUNBOAT NAVY “We are sacrificing everything to navigation and a Navy,” was candidate Thomas Jefferson’s slogan in the presidential election campaign of 1799-1800. Jefferson was an agrarian Southerner, distrustful of New England merchants and skeptical of our Read More