The New American Navy

By the time the energetic Fifth Congress adjourned on July 19, the new American navy was already at sea. The Ganges had been patrolling since May and was joined by another converted merchantman, the 20-gun Delaware, under Captain Stephen Decatur Sr. After leaving Delaware Bay on July 6, Captain Decatur was put on the trail of a French privateer and sighted her off Egg Harbor, New Jersey. The next day, he captured the first prize of the war, the 12-gun Croyable. She was taken into the American service and renamed Retaliation, under the command of Lieutenant William Bainbridge. In November, however, while cruising off Guadeloupe in company with the 20-gun Montezuma, under Commodore Murray, and the 18-gun brig Norfolk, under Captain Williams, Bainbridge got separated from his companions and found himself trapped by two French frigates, the 40-gun Insurgente and the 44-gun Volontaire. He wisely surrendered without a fight.

Congress adjourned on July 19 to escape the yellow fever that plagued Philadelphia every summer. Six days later, as the dreaded disease took control of the capital, the Adamses set out for Quincy. The president made it a practice to leave the city during the annual outbreak of fever and run the government from his farm in Massachusetts until late fall. He saw no reason why he couldn't manage just as well from Quincy as from Philadelphia.

While Adams was away, Secretary Stoddert was hard at work in Philadelphia putting together the new navy The president wanted the work to proceed as fast as possible, not only to impress the French but because he knew the public would support a large military establishment for only a limited time. The clamor for military preparations in 1798 was unique in his experience, with the possible exception of the brief moment in 1794 when the people were angry enough to approve Washington's limited naval program. Stoddert had to build the Navy Department from scratch. At the time, this was viewed as a great handicap, and it might have been had Stoddert been a man of lesser ability. But given his talents and drive, he could operate unhindered by an entrenched bureaucracy or a long naval tradition.

Stoddert had a tiny staff consisting of a chief clerk and five subordinate clerks, one of whom was nineteen-year-old Charles Washington Goldsborough, an articulate, hardworking young man from a wealthy Maryland family. In addition, the accountant of the navy had seven clerks. Stoddert was forced to rely on naval agents in the six cities where frigates were being built, and on the captains of the warships under construction there. He also had the services of the talented constructor of the navy, Joshua Humphreys. Besides his own ability and the strong backing of the president and Congress, Stoddert had the priceless body of knowledge gained during the Revolution by shipyards up and down the coast. It was during the critical summer of 1798 that the legacy of the Continental Navy became so important. If Stoddert had been obliged to start anew, as the builders of the Continental Navy had been forced to, he could not have accomplished the remarkable feat that he did. Thanks to their experience during the War of Independence, the nation's shipyards had the expertise to build and convert men-of-war in a remarkably short time. They were particularly adept at constructing vessels of roughly 20 guns, similar to the large privateers they had turned out by the dozens at the end of the Revolution. Building 20-gun warships, especially in New England ports like Salem, had become routine. These fast, powerful vessels were miniature frigates.

Stoddert also had available the officers and men who had served in the Continental Navy or whose fathers and uncles had, as well as those who had been on the over two thousand privateers during the Revolution. These seamen were far superior to the mix the Continental Navy had to draw from in 1775. Not that recruitment in the new federal navy was ever easy; it wasn't. But captains of American warships, unlike their British counterparts, always seemed to manage. Delays might occur, but rarely would lack of men stop an American warship from getting underway. Stoddert, a slaveholder, barred "Negroes or Mulattoes" from serving in the new navy, and the Marine Corps did the same. Given the need to fill out their crews, however, captains often took free blacks as crew members. Both free blacks and slaves had served in the Continental Navy, the state navies, and privateers during the Revolution, but that precedent had been forgotten. Stoddert also had help from the British, who were anxious to support America's anti-French mood. They supplied critical items such as copper, cannon, and other materials.

Stephen Higginson, the influential naval agent in Boston and a friend of President Adams, warned Stoddert to be careful when selecting officers and men who had served in the Continental Navy. Higginson viewed them with a skeptical eye, disregarding the many authentic heroes and patriots who had served selflessly in the Revolutionary navy. A successful privateer during the Revolution, Higginson had famously declared that the Continental Navy "was a bad school to educate good officers in." He had something of the privateer's contempt for the Continental Navy, believing that private vessels were far more useful in attacking British commerce. Truxtun shared some of these prejudices when he was a privateer during the Revolution.

Of course the Continental Navy had had a hard time recruiting; it offered individual seamen little compensation and had to compete with privateers. But it was also a service that had not existed before—a fact Higginson conveniently ignored. Any navy with a similar task was bound to have personnel who were less than desirable. But the Continental Navy did make a beginning. What was truly remarkable was how many good men it did attract.

Despite all the difficulties, Stoddert had the navy up and running in six months, exceeding even Adams's expectations. By the end of 1798, Stoddert had twenty-one warships in service, by the end of 1799, thirty-three, and by the end of 1800, fifty-four. His predecessors, Secretaries Pickering and McHenry, had three frigates to construct. Although they had been authorized in 1794, they were still not ready for sea in January 1798.

Not only did Stoddert send more than a score of warships into action in a matter of a few months; he also gave them strategic direction. His task was far simpler than the one confronting the Continental Navy. He had to contend with a French navy that had been decimated by the Revolution and was being checked by the Royal Navy. Few French warships escaped the British blockade, and those that did slipped out of blockaded ports singly, so that the small U.S. Navy was soon more powerful than the French along the American coast and in the West Indies.

As warships became available, Stoddert first used them to clear the nation's shores and then sent them to the Caribbean. On July 30, 1798, he wrote to the president, "Our first care certainly ought to be the security of our own coasts—the next, to avail ourselves of the commercial and perhaps political advantages which the present state of the West Indies and Spanish America is calculated to afford us." Stoddert proposed ignoring hurricane season in the Caribbean (August, September, and October). He insisted that the storms were not as bad as they were portrayed. By the end of 1798 nearly all of the navy's twenty-one warships were slated for the West Indies or had arrived.The major French base was at Guadeloupe, and the American fleet was concentrated there. Stoddert wrote to Adams,"By keeping up incessant attacks on the French cruisers on their own ground they will, in a degree at least, be prevented from coming on ours."

French warships and privateers disappeared from the American coast in a matter of weeks. The number of French men-of-war and privateers operating there was lower than originally imagined. When the American fleet appeared, the French retreated permanently to their base at Guadeloupe, where Stoddert went after them. He assigned the fleet multiple tasks: convoy American merchantmen, raid French commerce, and most importantly, attack the few French warships they found, as well as the swarms of privateers and pirates. Stoddert also used the navy to transport important people and dispatches, as had been done during the Revolution.

The big American frigates Constitution, United States, and Constellation put to sea for the first time early in the summer of 1798. Captain Thomas Truxtun in the 36-gun Constellation was the first, standing out from Chesapeake Bay on June 23. John Barry, the navy's senior captain, put to sea in the United States, sailing from the Delaware capes on July 13, and the Constitution, under her controversial captain, Samuel Nicholson, left Boston on July 12. Truxtun and Nicholson had orders from Stoddert to patrol the American coastline—Truxtun from Cape Henry to the St. Marys River on the Georgia-Florida border, Nicholson to join Ganges and patrol between NewYork and Georges Bank. Barry was sent to the West Indies in company with Stephen Decatur Sr. in the Delaware. Barry was the opening wedge in Stoddert's plan to attack the French in the Caribbean.

While Stoddert was busy getting ships to sea and directing their movements, he was also thinking about the navy's future. Midshipmen were of particular interest to him. They were being trained not at a naval academy but in ships-of-war. Captain Truxtun, who took this responsibility seriously, maintained that a man-of-war was the best place to educate the young gentlemen. At the age of sixteen, Truxtun himself had received some rough training from the Royal Navy when a no-nonsense press gang had caught him in London and forced him to serve for a few months aboard HMS Prudent, a 64-gun battleship.When he was released he sailed back to America in the merchant vessel London, feeling none the worse for wear. He thought he had learned a great deal from the Prudent's captain, who had taken a special interest in him.

Some midshipmen aboard Truxtun's Constellation, including David Porter, thought the captain's methods were too strict. But First Lieutenant John Rogers, who had extensive experience as a merchant captain, thought Truxtun was hard but fair and approved his methods.Truxtun never used physical punishment as some other captains did, notably Samuel Nicholson, skipper of the Constitution. Truxtun believed that the use of physical punishment showed an absence of leadership. He thought repeated whippings were bound to alienate an American crew; that was the case with Nicholson in all his commands, both in the Revolutionary War and in the Quasi-War. "It is at all times very unpleasant to flog men, if it can in any way be avoided," Truxtun cautioned his officers, "and in an infant and totally unorganized Navy, ways and means more mild, should be devised to correct inattention, neglect, and other faults."

Stoddert tried to keep promising young officers and midshipmen in the service by offering them attractive pay and pensions, as well as reasonable chances for advancement. His success was as remarkable as the number of warships he sent to sea. The famous lieutenants and captains who would fight wars against Tripoli and Great Britain in the next century—John Rogers, Stephen Decatur, Oliver Hazard Perry, Thomas MacDonough, Isaac Hull, James Lawrence, William Bainbridge, Charles Stewart, David Porter, and many others—received their training and first taste of battle as midshipmen and young lieutenants in the Quasi-War.

On November 23, 1798, Stoddert proposed to Congress building twelve ships of the line, twelve frigates, and twenty additional warships not to exceed 24 guns. Congress responded on February 25, 1799, purchasing two dockyards, and acquiring timber and other shipbuilding materials. The measure passed by a vote of 54 to 42. Stoddert hoped to construct a respectable fleet that would become a permanent fixture in the American government, led by young officers trained in the Quasi-War. His dream, however, was never realized because of the public's unwillingness to bear the taxes necessary to sustain such a navy, and later because of Presidents Jefferson and Madison, who believed that blue water navies did more harm than good. President Jefferson discontinued the work in 1801.

George Washington was a consistent supporter of Stoddert. He wrote to him, "I cannot entertain a doubt, but it will be the policy of this country to create such a navy as will protect our commerce from the insults and depredations to which it has been subject to of late, and to make it duly respected."

While concentrating on building a blue water fleet, Stoddert and the president placed little emphasis on smaller vessels, including gunboats. This made no difference during the Quasi-War, but in the wars that followed, the usefulness of smaller fighting boats would again become evident, revealing an important flaw in Stoddert's plans for the future fleet.

Stoddert and Adams strayed from their strategy of concentrating on the Caribbean only once in the spring of 1799, when they planned to send two heavy frigates, the Constitution and the United States, to the French coast with the vague purpose of showing the flag and picking up whatever prizes might come their way. Stoddert wrote to Adams, "Our very fine ships will be seen in Europe—it will be seen there too, that we are not afraid of provoking the French Nation, when they give us cause." Complications arose, however, and the venture was delayed and eventually cancelled. Adams thought it was just as well. "Although I am very solicitous to strike some strokes in Europe," he wrote to Stoddert, "for the reasons detailed in your letter proposing the expedition, yet I feel the whole force of the importance of deciding all things in the West Indies."

George C. Daughan. . Basic Books. 2008.

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