ed to be against the
ministerial governors, those little petty tyrants that have lately
spread fire and sword throughout the Southern colonies. For the
happy success of this little fleet three millions of people offer
their most earnest supplications to heaven." See American Archives,
4th series, Vol. IV, page 964; also Cooper's Naval History as to
who named the vessels. John Adams claimed that honor. See American
Archives, 4th series, Vol. IV, p. 964.

The fleet made a descent upon New Providence, and, after capturing the
place and taking away a large quantity of munitions of war and stores,
it left and coasted along the coast from Cape Cod to Cape Charles,
making many captures. On the 17th of April, 1776, occurred the first
engagement between an English war vessel and a commissioned American
war vessel. The English vessel was the brig Edward, mounting sixteen
four-pounders, and, by a strange coincidence, the American vessel was
the Lexington, Captain Barry. It was at Lexington on land in April,
1775, the first shot was fired by Americans, and it was from the
Lexington at sea that the first broadside was delivered at the "Wooden
Walls" of old England. The fight resulted in the capture of the British
vessel.

No one can tell in the absence of a record the name of the vessel to
first fly the Stars and Stripes. Paul Jones claimed it for the Alliance;
but in Cooper's life of Paul Jones, page 31, occurs the following.
Speaking of Jones' claim, he says:

"He may have been mistaken. He always claimed to have been the first man
to hoist the flag of 1775 (the Grand Union) in a national ship, and the
first man to show the present ensign (the Stars and Stripes) on board of
a man-of-war. This may be true or not. There was a weakness about the
character of the man that rendered him a little liable to self-delusions
of this nature; and while it is probable he was right as to the flag
which was shown before Philadelphia on the Alfred (the Grand Union) the
place where Congress was sitting, it is by no means as reasonable to
suppose that the first of the permanent flags (Stars and Stripes) was
shown at a place as distant as Portsmouth. The circumstances are of
no moment, except as they serve to betray a want of simplicity of
character, that was rather a failing with the man, and his avidity for
personal distinction of every sort."

To corroborate Cooper I have only to state that Jones' claim is ab