Naval Act of 1794: Birth of the U.S. Navy

Algerian pirates were the reason America built a navy. Congress passed the Naval Act of 1794 on March 27 after corsairs from the Barbary states captured eleven American merchant ships and enslaved over 100 sailors in the Mediterranean. The act authorized the construction of six frigates, creating the foundation of what would become the United States Navy. The young republic had dismantled its Continental Navy after the Revolution, leaving its merchant fleet completely unprotected. American ships had previously sailed under the protection of treaties that Britain and France maintained with the Barbary states of North Africa. Independence stripped that protection away. The Barbary corsairs, operating from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, demanded tribute payments from any nation whose ships entered the Mediterranean. The U.S. initially paid, but the ransoms and annual tribute consumed nearly 20 percent of the federal government's revenue by the early 1790s. The six frigates authorized by the act were designed by Joshua Humphreys, a Philadelphia shipbuilder who created vessels that were larger, faster, and more heavily armed than standard frigates of any European navy. The most famous, USS Constitution, carried 44 guns and was built with live oak from Georgia so dense that cannonballs bounced off her hull, earning the nickname "Old Ironsides." Construction took years and cost $688,888, an enormous sum for the infant republic. The frigates proved their worth almost immediately. The Quasi-War with France in 1798-1800 and the First Barbary War of 1801-1805 demonstrated that the United States could project naval power across the Atlantic. The War of 1812 confirmed it, as American frigates won a series of shocking single-ship victories against the Royal Navy. The Naval Act of 1794 transformed the United States from a coastal trading nation into a maritime power capable of defending its commerce worldwide.