Happy 251st birthday, U.S. Navy
On October 13, 1775, the Continental Congress decided to purchase two armed ships to attack British supply ships and keep supplies from reaching British soldiers in the colonies. A second resolution passed the same day created a naval committee to oversee the purchase and to write regulations for managing the ships. Thus was born the Continental Navy, and October 13 remains the official birth date of the U.S. Navy.
The Continental brig Andrew Doria receives the first official salute to the American flag in a foreign port, St. Eustatius, Nov. 16, 1776. Painting by Phillips Melville. (Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 85510-KN, public domain)
The new Navy went on the offensive quickly. On February 17, 1776, Commodore Esek Hopkins, the “commander in chief of the fleet,” sailed from the Delaware with eight vessels. On March 3 he landed 300 sailors and marines on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, took Forts Nassau and Montagu, and captured some 73 cannons and mortars and a large quantity of munitions for the Continental Army.
After independence the Continental Navy’s ships were sold. In 1794, to protect American shipping from Algerine corsairs, Congress authorized six frigates. One of them, USS Constitution, launched October 21, 1797, is still in commission and homeported in Boston: the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat. On April 30, 1798, President John Adams signed the act establishing the Department of the Navy. To every Navy veteran of Post 8555: happy birthday, shipmate.
USS Constitution under sail in Boston, Aug. 19, 2012, the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat. (U.S. Navy photo by MCSN Michael Achterling, public domain)
Beirut: October 23, 1983
Forty-three years ago this month, American service members were in Lebanon as part of a peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb at a building housing the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines (Battalion Landing Team 1/8) of the 2nd Marine Division, killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and three soldiers: 241 Americans. Minutes later, a second suicide bomber struck the Drakkar building, killing 58 French paratroopers.
Smoke rises from the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, Oct. 23, 1983. (Official USMC photo, public domain)
It was the deadliest single-day death toll for the Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima. Each year the City of Jacksonville, N.C., home of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, holds an observance honoring those who served in Lebanon from 1958 to 1984 and in Grenada, and especially those killed in Beirut. This year October 23 falls on a Friday. Take a moment that day to remember the 241, and their families.
Chaplains, Marines, and families observe a moment of silence at a memorial service for those killed in the Beirut bombing. (DoD photo DM-SC-87-12363, Gunnery Sgt. R.D. Lucas, public domain)
Sources: All Hands Magazine (allhands.navy.mil), Navy Birthday timeline; U.S. Navy, “SECNAV Marks the 40th Anniversary of Beirut Bombings” (navy.mil, Oct. 23, 2023).