APPENDIX B.AMERICAN NAVY AND ITS CAREER.
The original organization of the American Navy is noticed on pages59–60 of the text.
On the thirteenth of December, 1775, several frigates, were authorized, the annexed figures indicating theirrate, byguns:
8. Never went to sea.
8. Never went to sea.
Note.—John Paul, who took the name of John Paul Jones through gratitude to a citizen of North Carolina who assisted him in securing a naval commission (noticed on page60of the text), distinguished himself upon the British coast, and in his capture of the British shipSerapis, Sept. 23, 1779. His own ship, theBon Homme Richard, was fitted out in France, by the aid of Benjamin Franklin, to war against British commerce. Franklin, in the issue of his “Almanack,” with shrewd business and moral maxims at the bottoms of the pages, used the nom-de-plume, “Poor Richard.” It was graceful in John Paul to name the ship Richard, in Franklin’s honor, with a complimentary prefix.
Of the later navy, that of 1812, theBrandywine(44), named after the battle of that name, was placed at the service of Lafayette when he visited America in 1825. (See note at end of Chapter XVIII., concerning Lafayette as first appearing in that battle.)