On 13, OCTOBER 1775 the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution creating official establishment the Continental Navy. They voted to outfit two sailing vessels, armed with ten carriage guns, as well as swivel guns, and manned by crews of eighty, and to send them out on a cruise for three months to intercept transports carrying munitions and stores meant for the British army in America. Dudley Saltonstall, Abraham Whipple, Nicholas Biddle, and John Burroughs Hopkins were named commanders of the new service by Congress. The 24-gun frigates Alfred and Columbus, 14-gun brigs Andrew Doria and Cabot, and three schooners, the Hornet, Wasp, and Fly, were the Navy’s first ships. Commissions were also given to five first lieutenants, including future American hero John Paul Jones, five second lieutenants, and three third lieutenants. Throughout the War of Independence, the Continental Navy sent to sea more than fifty armed vessels. The Navy’s squadrons and cruisers seized enemy supplies and carried correspondence and diplomats to Europe, returning with needed munitions. They took nearly 200 British vessels as prizes, and some of the British Isles themselves, contributing to the demoralization of the enemy and forcing the British to divert warships to protect convoys and thier trade routes. But with the end of the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Navy was disbanded. Then with threats to American merchant shipping by Barbary pirates from four North African States, in the Mediterranean, President George Washington signed the Naval Act of 1794 the act authorizing the construction of the Navy’s first six frigates ? Congress passed a resolution to establish a national Navy that could protect U.S. commercial vessels from attacks by the Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean and nearby Atlantic waters.
