Powder to Parchment

October 2, 1775 – The Birth Pains of a Navy

The year 1775 had not yet settled into its second autumn when the American Revolution began to look like something more than a spasm of angry farmers around Boston. There were armies in the field now, armed men holding lines, muskets leveled at red-coated professionals. There were generals on both sides drawing up plans, measuring supply routes, watching the horizon for reinforcements. Boston remained the flashpoint, George Washington’s new Continental Army holding the city under siege, hemming General Howe’s British garrison inside. But while the land war creaked forward in New England, a different kind of crisis loomed larger with each tide. The British Navy ruled the coastline. It could move men and supplies with ease, choke off harbors, and plunder with impunity. If the colonies were serious about rebellion, they had to think about the sea.

On October 2, 1775, inside the State House in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress began debating whether it should create a navy. It was a discussion that at first seemed absurd. The Royal Navy was the most powerful maritime force on earth, with nearly five hundred commissioned warships, hundreds more in support, and an officer corps hardened by decades of service. The thirteen colonies had no navy at all, not a single frigate to their name. Their harbors were home to merchantmen and whalers, not warships. And yet, here were farmers and lawyers and merchants, seated in their hall, daring to ask if America should have a navy of its own.

“Without a Navy we cannot do much.
With one, we may do everything.”

– John Adams, 1775

No man pushed harder for this than John Adams of Massachusetts. Adams was a lawyer, a man with little taste for ships or salt spray, but he understood the sea in a way many of his colleagues did not. Massachusetts lived by trade. Its wealth rose and fell on what sailed in and out of Boston, Salem, and Marblehead. Adams knew that if Britain’s navy sealed off the coast, New England would starve. He also knew that British supply lines stretched thousands of miles, vulnerable to harassment. He was convinced that even a small force of swift, well-armed ships could slash at those arteries and provide Washington’s army with captured powder and food.

Adams did not lack passion. He could be blunt to the point of arrogance, his words cutting through hesitation like a musket ball. To Adams, there was no sense pretending the quarrel with Britain was temporary. The King had already declared the colonies in open rebellion. The only path left was to fight, and to fight with every weapon they could muster. That included ships. “Without a Navy,” Adams wrote, “we cannot do much.” His vision was not of grandeur, not yet. It was practical. Seize what you can from enemy transports. Protect the coasts. Give the Revolution a fighting chance to survive.

But not all in Congress agreed. Moderation still had a foothold in 1775. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, the so-called “Penman of the Revolution” who had written the Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, was one of the strongest voices urging caution. Dickinson had no love for British overreach, but he dreaded an outright break. He believed reconciliation was still possible, still worth preserving. To him and others of like mind, creating a navy was not a defensive measure but an act of open aggression. Building ships and sending them against Britain’s merchant fleet would announce to the world that the colonies had abandoned any hope of peace. For men still clinging to the possibility of a negotiated settlement, this was too much, too soon.

Others raised practical objections. Where would the money come from? Congress was already straining to clothe and feed Washington’s army. Powder was so scarce that soldiers were ordered not to fire their muskets unless they had a clear shot. Cannons were even harder to find. To build a navy required iron, timber, rope, canvas, carpenters, and skilled sailors. The colonies had the raw materials and the shipwrights, but outfitting warships demanded cannon and powder that were already desperately needed on land. Was it not folly, they asked, to sink scarce resources into ships that could never hope to match Britain’s fleet?

That was the gulf in the room on October 2. To Adams and the New Englanders, not having a navy was the greater risk. To Dickinson and the moderates, trying to build one was reckless.

Meanwhile, in Boston, Washington was already acting as if the decision had been made. Washington had always been a man who believed that waiting for Congress to debate a problem was wasted time. He had taken it upon himself to commission a handful of schooners from the tough seamen of Marblehead. These little vessels, barely larger than coastal fishing boats, were fitted with a few cannon and sent to harass British supply ships. By September, Washington’s so-called “Navy” had already captured several small prizes, including desperately needed gunpowder. These victories, though minor, proved Adams’ point: America could strike at Britain on the water, even with meager tools.

It is easy to look back and smile at the audacity of it all. A group of delegates in a borrowed chamber debating whether a handful of refitted merchantmen could stand against His Majesty’s Navy. But it was in these moments that revolutions either lived or died. To hesitate was to wither. To act was to risk everything. The men in that room knew it. They did not resolve the issue in a single day. Congress rarely moved that fast. But on October 2 the seed was planted. Within days, the idea would germinate into a Naval Committee, and by October 13 Congress would authorize the first official ships of the Continental Navy.

The debate on October 2 reflected the larger spirit of the Revolution. It was a mix of boldness and doubt, idealism and pragmatism, all clashing in the same chamber. The colonies were still not ready to declare independence, but they were already behaving like a nation at war. By entertaining the idea of a navy, they admitted that this struggle would not be confined to farms and hillsides, but would stretch across oceans.

The consequences of that day were profound. The first ships commissioned by Congress were small, almost laughably so compared to Britain’s warships. But they struck at supply lines, they captured transports, they delivered sorely needed cargoes to Washington’s army. They gave the Revolution breathing space. And they laid the foundation for what would become the United States Navy, a force that in time would surpass Britain’s as the guardian of global seas.

There is something almost poetic in the audacity of October 2. The colonies had no business dreaming of a navy. They were broke, divided, poorly supplied, and surrounded by an empire. Yet they dared. In that sense, the debate was not just about ships. It was about mindset. It was about whether these colonies saw themselves as beggars on Britain’s leash, or as a people willing to risk ruin to grasp freedom.

Adams understood that risk. Dickinson feared it. Washington ignored it and built his schooners anyway. And Congress, slowly, cautiously, came around. The Revolution’s first navy was born not in a shipyard, but in a debate among men who had the nerve to imagine it.

From that Monday in Philadelphia, October 2, 1775, the Revolution ceased to be only a land war. It became a struggle for the seas, too. The men who spoke that day could not have known that two and a half centuries later, the United States Navy would number hundreds of ships and stretch across the globe. But they sensed that if America were to be free, it must also be bold. And boldness was the one thing they had in abundance.