The U.S. Navy was created to fight the French, not the Barbary pirates

[wuushew]

If you believe that U.S. Navy had its genesis in the 1794 Naval Act, that particular piece of legislation dictated that six hulls were to be laid down and completed unless a peace treaty with the Dey of Algiers was met. Such a peace treaty was reached as were similar agreements with the other Barbary states.

When the Department of the Navy was officially created again by an act of Congress in 1798 the United States was ostensibly at peace with all the pirate states. If might made right, why did we along with other great powers continue to pay tribute to these states for decades? You can't really say the United States was simply growing the young navy to eventually take down the pirates because Thomas Jefferson being the huge anti-federalist small government fool he was, cut the navy and army greatly in an effort to shrink the size of the federal government.


What explains the dire need for a blue water navy? The answer of course is the quasi-war with France that had steady worsened after the nascent United States signed peace treaties with both Great Britain and Spain in the mid 1790s. Our small navy was designed to protect American ships in the West Indies not the Mediterranean. This was a realistic aim, after all if Great Britain the world's preeminent navy could not be bothered to stop piracy why should we be expected to do any better? Despite the distractions of ongoing Franco-European warfare Britain never was seriously challenged at sea.

The Barbary Treaties refer to several treaties between the United States of America and the semi-autonomous North African city-states of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, known collectively as the Barbary States.

Treaty with Algeria (1795)
Treaty with Tripoli (1796)
Treaty with Tunis (1797)
Treaty with Tripoli (1805)
Treaty with Algeria (1815)
Treaty with Algeria (1816)
Treaty with Tunis (1824)
Treaty with Morocco (1836)

The Navy DOES NOT exist because of pirates, although it was early on used against them. If we invoke the wisdom and lore of our early founding fathers we need to be clear what the truth of the situation was.

[DS1]

1. Actually, what became our Coast Guard was involved in piracy off New England

:)

[HamdenRice]

2. Fight pirates? Our early navy WAS pirates

In the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress commissioned pirates to prey on British shipping.

Once a pirate was given the authority of a state to do their thing and have a home port to return to, however, they ceased being pirates and became "privateers."

Our early navy consisted mostly of pirates.

[Arctic Dave]

3. Damn you and your "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" logic

[HamdenRice]

4. Rofl! nt

[baldguy]

5. France and the Barbary States - and Britain - were behaving all the same way.

The impetus of the Naval Act of 1794 was threats American shipping faced at the time. Any reasonable definition of these threats includes piracy.

[wuushew]

6. kick

:kick:

[hootinholler]

7. France??? Um, what great naval battles did we fight with France?

Alternatively, what minor naval engagements were fought with France?

I'm having trouble recalling and don't have time at the moment to research it, so since you seem to know more, I'm sure it will be no big deal to inform me.

After all, the more room there is for a smarmy attitude.

;)

-Hoot

[wuushew]

8. A true forgotten, but important war

The French inflicted substantial losses on American shipping. Secretary of State Timothy Pickering reported to Congress on June 21, 1797 that the French had captured 316 American merchant ships in the previous eleven months. The hostilities caused insurance rates on American shipping to increase at least 500 percent, as French marauders cruised the length of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard virtually unopposed. The administration had no warships to combat them; the last had been sold off in 1785. The United States possessed only a flotilla of revenue cutters and some neglected coastal forts.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-War