OUR FIRST FRIGATES. SOME UNPUBLISHED FACTS ABOUT THEIR 



CONSTRUCTION. 



By Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy. 



[Read at the twenty-second general meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, held in 



New York, December 10 and 11, 1914.] 



After the sale of the frigate Alliance in 1785 the United States ceased to 

 have a navy. It is, of course, well known that the present navy of the United 

 States had its origin in the Act of Congress of 1794 which authorized the building 

 of six frigates. Of the causes which led to the foundation of the navy and the 

 actual work of constructing our first ships little, however, is known. 



The navy of the United States first came into being, not as a measure of defense, 

 but as a means of affording protection to commerce. Almost immediately after 

 the close of the Revolutionary War American merchant vessels began to suffer from 

 the depredations of corsairs belonging to the Barbary powers. In 1785 the schooner 

 Maria of Boston and the ship Dauphin of Philadelphia were captured by the Al- 

 gerines and their crews held for ransom. Many attempts were made by the ad- 

 ministration to come to some agreement through diplomatic channels with Algiers 

 and Morocco, but the negotiations dragged on and American shipping to Spain and 

 the Mediterranean continued to be threatened by the corsairs. That the officials of 

 our government were seriously concerned and proceeded to consider plans to give 

 armed protection to our shipping, is shown by an old letter-book now in the posses- 

 sion of the library of the Navy Department at Washington. The Navy Depart- 

 ment did not, of course, come into existence until 1798, and this book contains the 

 out-letters of the War Department which concern navy affairs from 1790 until the 

 business was turned over to the Navy Department in 1798. 



The first entry, dated October 30, 1790 — nearly four years before the first ships 

 were authorized — is a copy of a letter from Capt. John Foster Williams, formerly 

 of the Massachusetts Navy in the Revolution, to the Secretary of War, sending 

 him, agreeably to his request, an estimate of a frigate of 900 tons, thus proving 

 that at this early date the administration of President Washington was gathering 

 data regarding the building of ships of war. This is followed by estimates of cost 

 of a 40-gun frigate, of ordnance stores, of the pay of officers and crew, of provi- 

 sions, of sails and rigging, and of the annual expense of maintenance. The letter- 

 book shows that in 1791 these and other estimates were submitted to a committee 

 of the Senate. 



No action seems to have been taken, however, and the depredations of the Bar- 

 bary States continued until in 1793 over a dozen American ships had been captured. 

 Late in that year Samuel Hodgdon, of Philadelphia, submitted an estimate of the 



