Two Ships Against an Empire

Two armed ships. A three-month mission. An enemy whose navy could reach across the Atlantic.

On October 13, 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the fitting out of two vessels to intercept supplies bound for British forces in America. The colonies had no realistic prospect of matching Britain’s fleet. But they could make supplying its army more difficult.

An Army Needed an Ocean

The war had begun on land at Lexington and Concord. Yet the ocean mattered to the struggle from the start. Britain could move troops and supplies by sea, while American coastal communities faced a powerful enemy offshore.

Rhode Island pressed for a Continental fleet, and John Adams became an outspoken supporter of naval action. Congress debated whether the colonies could afford such an undertaking, and whether a small fleet could accomplish anything against British sea power.

The October 13 decision gave that debate a practical answer: begin with a limited mission. Find the ships carrying military supplies. Capture what the British army needed.

A Navy Before a Nation

Congress was authorizing ships for a struggle whose outcome remained uncertain. The Declaration of Independence was still nearly nine months away. Even the flag we associate with the Revolution had not yet been adopted.

The Continental Navy began to take shape that fall. One of its early ships, the Alfred, had been a merchant vessel called Black Prince. Converted for naval service, she became the flagship of Commodore Esek Hopkins’s squadron.

Lieutenant John Paul Jones served aboard her. On December 3, 1775, he raised the Grand Union flag as the ship entered service at Philadelphia.

Thirteen Stripes. No Stars Yet.

The Grand Union flag combined thirteen red and white stripes with the British Union flag in its upper corner. To modern eyes, that British emblem on an American vessel can look surprising.

It belongs to the unsettled period before independence, when Americans were fighting British forces while their political future was still being determined.

Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes on June 14, 1777. The Navy’s beginning therefore predates both the Declaration and the official adoption of that familiar national flag.

A Beginning Worth Remembering

The Continental Navy did not survive intact after the Revolution. Its last warship was sold in 1785. Nine years later, threats to American merchant ships led Congress to build a new fleet—a second beginning we explore in the story of the Naval Act of 1794.

But October 13, 1775, remains the date the U.S. Navy recognizes as its birthday. In 2026, that first congressional authorization is 251 years old.