On October 13, 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the fitting out of two sailing vessels to intercept British supply ships — and with that resolution, written in the cramped and urgent language of a revolutionary government fighting for its survival, the United States Navy was founded. The Navy that exists today — with its nuclear carriers, its Aegis destroyers, its ballistic missile submarines, its global reach — descends in a direct institutional line from those two ships. The line is not unbroken in every particular; the Continental Navy was disbanded after the Revolution, and the modern Navy was established by Act of Congress in 1798. But the tradition claims October 13, 1775, as its founding date, and the Navy has celebrated that date every year since 1972, when the Secretary of the Navy designated it as the Navy's official birthday. This year, the Navy turns 251.
The Continental Navy
The Continental Navy that fought the Revolutionary War was an improvised force built from merchant vessels, crewed by men who had no tradition of naval warfare to draw on, commanded by officers who were learning their profession under fire. John Paul Jones — who raided British ports, who fought the Serapis in the North Sea and refused to strike his colors — is the figure the Navy has chosen to center its founding mythology on, and the choice is apt. Jones was aggressive, capable, and dramatic in a way that the institutional Navy finds useful. "I have not yet begun to fight" is the right sentiment for a service whose job requires it to close with the enemy regardless of the odds. Whether Jones actually said it is a different question.
What the Navy Does
The Navy's role has changed dramatically across 251 years. The Continental Navy fought for survival against the world's most powerful fleet. The nineteenth-century Navy fought pirates, projected American power into distant waters, and — in the Civil War — blockaded the Confederacy into submission. The twentieth-century Navy fought two world wars, developed carrier aviation, built the nuclear submarine force, and maintained the forward presence that sustained American alliances through forty years of Cold War. The twenty-first-century Navy fights terrorism, responds to humanitarian crises, conducts freedom of navigation operations in contested waters, and maintains the deterrent credibility that prevents the wars that are most dangerous to fight.
What has not changed is the requirement to be at sea, continuously, in every ocean. The Navy's presence is not a posture that the fleet strikes in response to a threat. It is the baseline condition — the forward deployment, the carrier strike group in the Pacific, the submarine somewhere nobody knows, the destroyer maintaining the watch in waters that the news hasn't mentioned yet. That presence is what 251 years of naval service has built and what every sailor who has worn the uniform has contributed to.
The Birthday Ball
The Navy Birthday is celebrated aboard ships, at naval stations, and in the Navy communities that exist wherever the fleet has been homeported. The Navy Birthday Ball is the formal celebration — dinner, uniform, the cutting of the cake with a ceremonial sword, the tradition of giving the first piece to the oldest sailor present and the second to the youngest, symbolizing the passing of tradition from those who have served longest to those who are just beginning. The cake-cutting ceremony was adopted from the Marine Corps Birthday tradition, which is a detail that the Navy tends to omit when telling the story.
But the birthday is also marked informally — by the sailors who are currently deployed and hear the date mentioned in a message from home, by the veterans who note October 13 on their calendars and think for a moment about what the date means and where they were when they were part of it, by the families who understand that the Navy's birthday is also, in some sense, the anniversary of the service their family member gave. Two hundred fifty-one years of continuous service. Not every year was glorious. Every year mattered.
Happy Birthday to the United States Navy. If you wore the uniform — or love someone who did — The Ship's Store is here to honor that service.
251 Years and Counting
The Navy that turns 251 this October 13 is different from the Navy that fired the first shots of the Revolutionary War at sea, different from the Navy that fought at Midway, different from the Navy that patrolled the Cold War's submarine front. It is also the same Navy — the same institution, the same traditions, the same fundamental commitment to the sea and to the nation the sea defends. The sailors who serve today are the inheritors of a very long line. They know it, whether or not they say so. The birthday is a day to say so.