Posted
on October 13, 2015
It's
a bit tough to say when some beginnings are...
For
example, can you have a United States Navy before you have a United
States?
Apparently,
you can! The official birthday of the U.S. Navy is October 13, 1775 –
even though the Declaration of Independence wasn't until July, 1776,
and the nation didn't win its Revolutionary War against Britain until
its victory in Yorktown in October, 1781. Even then, the war didn't
officially end – and the United States become recognized as a
sovereign nation – until September, 1783.
It
was the Continental Congress of the 13 colonies that first
established a small navy on this date in 1775. This Continental navy
wasn't created to fight the British navy for control of the Atlantic
Ocean! After all, the Royal Navy was the most powerful navy in the
world.
However,
the Continental navy was designed to work with “privateers” –
which are armed ships owned by individual people, not by the
government, that are authorized for use in war – to attack and raid
British supply ships. It was a smart tactic – the Continental navy
and privateers would wait and watch for a transport on its way to
resupply British forces, and then they would dart in and attack.
Whenever they saw Royal Navy men-of-war – the battle ships – they
would wriggle away and avoid fights if possible.
The
start-up Continental navy was made up of rather small ships that they
had purchased, converted, or built. Here are the major types of ships
used by that first navy:
frigates:
brigs:
sloops:
schooners:
Honestly,
I'm not sure of the difference between the various ships – number
of masts, number of sails, speed and agility all probably factor in,
somehow – but if you're interested, you could look up the
definition of each of the ships.
Nowadays,
of course, the U.S. Navy has a lot of much larger, more powerful
ships. Some of the ships are more like small cities than like, say, a
sloop or a frigate! Again, I'm not positive of the exact difference between, say, cruisers and destroyers, but you could find out what defines each of these kinds of ships.
Here
are some of the most important types of modern naval ships:
aircraft
carriers:
amphibious
assault ships:
amphibious
transport docks:
dock
landing ships:
cruisers:
destroyers:
frigates:
littoral
combat ships:
patrol
ships:
mine
countermeasures ships:
P.S.
Guess who has the world's most powerful navy now?
If
you answered “the U.S. of A.,” you're right!
Also
on this date:
Plan
ahead:
Check
out my Pinterest boards for:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for:
nice pictures. loved them.
ReplyDeleteHappy Independence Day Essay 2018 For Senior College Students