The US re-established its Navy with six frigates
On this day · 27 March 1794
Pirates in the Mediterranean pushed a reluctant Congress to vote a navy back into existence, frigate by frigate.
On March 27, 1794, Congress passed the Act to provide a Naval Armament, reestablishing the United States Navy and authorizing the President to acquire six frigates. President George Washington approved it the same day.
The young republic had scrapped its Continental Navy after the Revolution, but Barbary corsairs out of Algiers were seizing American merchant ships and ransoming their crews. With no warships to answer them, lawmakers relented, voting four vessels of 44 guns and two of 36.
A peace clause even allowed the whole program to be suspended if Algiers came to terms.
Designed by Joshua Humphreys to outgun any frigate and outrun any ship of the line, the six became famous names: United States, Constellation, Constitution, Congress, Chesapeake, and President. One of them, the USS Constitution, is still afloat in Boston as the world’s oldest commissioned warship, a wooden survivor of a navy born from frustration with pirates.
Sources & references
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