THIS BOOK IS A TRIBUTE
TO THE MEN AND BOYS
WHO CREATED AND SERVED IN
AMERICA'S FIRST NAVY
"The ship of war, with its acres of canvas, white in the morning sun, has sunk forever below the horizon.... No longer is the hoarse voice of the captain heard shouting to the tops or to the gun-deck in stentorian tones.... All have gone from the deck of the galley, the frigate, the line-of-battle ship, from the decks where, in the teeth of gales, they clawed off lee shores, when the mouths of their guns drank in the seas, or fought the fogs or Arctic cold; from the decks where they led the changing fortunes of the fight in the din of desperate battle; where men take life at the uttermost hazard and clasp hands with fate."
—Edward Kirk Rawson.
FOREWORD
The road cleft by early American ships into the Mediterranean Sea has become a well-traveled one. On errands of commerce, punishment or relief, our skippers have laid an ever-broadening way into the Orient.