Beginnings of a Global U.S. Navy Presence
Our Founding Fathers faced a combined international commerce/foreign policy/military conundrum. From the very beginning of their history, the Thirteen Colonies were involved in what we would call international trade or commerce today.
Initially, the colonies were a source of food, lumber, indigo, and other natural resources that were sent initially to England. In return, American traders bought manufactured goods to sell to their domestic customers.
When the American Revolution began, U.S. merchants were trading with England, France, The Netherlands, The Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, along with most of the other Italian duchies, The Holy Roman Empire, Norway/Denmark, Spain, and Sweden. The goods and materials traveled by ship. Before April 19th, 1775, they were under the protection of the Royal Navy, the largest and most powerful maritime force in the world.
The American Revolution ended that protection. Naively, U.S. leaders believed that by staying neutral, their merchant ships would be safe. That worked to a degree until the French Revolution began. Suddenly, both the French and British were pressuring the new United States to take sides. We refused.
Between 1783 and 1794, the United States didn’t have a standing Army or Navy. Except for detachments kept to guard Fort Pitt (near modern Pittsburgh) and West Point, the Continental Army was dissolved and its weapons given to state militias. All the ships of the small Continental Navy were either sold or scrapped.
Some in Congress, mostly Federalists led by Washington and Adams, wanted to create a small, frigate-based, standing Navy. Those in the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Jefferson and Madison, opposed this idea.
Pressure from merchants whose ships and cargoes were at risk, and a raging war in Europe, led the Congress to pass the Navy Act of 1794. Through it, despite the efforts of the Democratic-Republicans in Congress to hinder the construction and manning of the ships, the bill authorized six heavy frigates – Chesapeake, Constellation, Constitution, Congress, President, and United States – plus sloops and brigs.
They arrived none too soon because in 1798, the French Revolutionary Government ordered its Navy and privateers to seize U.S. merchant ships in the Caribbean in what is known as the Quasi-War. The fight ended in 1800, and now President Jefferson proposed to mothball the frigates and create a small, coastal defense force that would be cheaper to man and maintain.
Greedy Barbary Pirates caused Jefferson to change directions. He sent ships to the Mediterranean to change their behavior. Once peace broke out in 1805, except for a few ships, the squadron was recalled, put in ordinary, and again, Jefferson forced his idea of a coastal defense force composed of small gunboats on the U.S. Navy.
We again learned the folly of this approach in 1812 when the Royal Navy swept the gunboats and small sloops (and the U.S. Army) aside and landed the British Army on U.S. soil, burned Washington, and attempted to take Baltimore.
With the Treaty of Ghent signed, we were again at peace with Great Britain, but the Barbary Pirates raised their ugly head again. Two squadrons were sent to the Mediterranean to show the Barbary pirates the error of their ways.
This was the second time that the United States Navy and Marine Corps were ordered to conduct expeditionary warfare far from the U.S. The Navy had to figure out how to support ships and Marines more than 4,000 miles from home using bases in foreign lands.
At the end of his presidency, Madison, having learned the lessons from Jefferson’s (and his failed naval policies between 1800 and 1815), gave in to the faction in Congress that urged him to maintain a small standing navy based on heavy frigates. He also authorized the U.S. Navy to maintain a squadron in the Mediterranean to protect U.S. shipping.
Since then, the United States Navy has maintained a presence in the Mediterranean that continues to this day. By the 1820s, the U.S. Navy had ships stationed in the Caribbean and off Africa. By the 1840s, the U.S. Navy had a squadron in the Western Pacific.
1813 Thomas Birch Painting of United States defeating H.M.S. Macedonian.
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