on the Sea.%--The first step towards the foundation of
an American navy was taken on October 13, 1775. Congress, hearing that
two British ships laden with powder and guns were on their way from
England to Quebec, ordered two swift sailing vessels to be fitted out
for the purpose of capturing them. Two months later Congress ordered
thirteen cruisers to be built, and named the officers to command them.

Meantime some merchant ships were purchased and collected at
Philadelphia, from which city, one morning in January, 1776, a fleet of
eight vessels set sail. As they were about to weigh anchor, John Paul
Jones, a lieutenant on the flagship, flung to the breeze a yellow silk
flag on which were a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake, with this
motto: "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever hoisted on an
American man-of-war.

Ice in the Delaware kept the fleet in the river till the middle of
February, when it went to sea, sailed southward to New Providence in the
Bahamas, captured the town, brought off the governor, some powder and
cannon, and after taking several prizes got safely back to New London.

Soon after the squadron had left the Delaware, the _Lexington_, Captain
John Barry in command, while cruising off the Virginia coast, fell in
with the _Edward_, a British vessel, and after a spirited action
captured her. This was the first prize brought in by a commissioned
officer of the American navy.[1]

[Footnote 1: John Barry was a native of Ireland; he came to America at
thirteen, entered the merchant marine, and at twenty-five was captain of
a ship. At the opening of the war Barry offered his services to
Congress, and in February, 1776, was put in command of the _Lexington_.
After his victory he was transferred to the twenty-eight-gun frigate
_Effingham_, and in 1777 (while blockaded in the Delaware) with
twenty-seven men in four boats captured and destroyed a ten-gun schooner
and four transports. When the British captured Philadelphia, Barry took
the _Effingham_ up the river; but she was burned by the enemy. In 1778,
in command of the thirty-two-gun frigate _Raleigh_, he sailed from
Boston, fell in with two British frigates, and after a fight was forced
to run ashore in Penobscot Bay. Barry and his crew escaped, and in 1781
carried Laurens to France in the frigate _Alliance_. On the way out he
took a privateer, and while cruising on the way home captured the
_Atalanta_ and the _Trepassey_ after a hard fight.