On either side of Salem, Beverly and Marblehead have a longstanding rivalry as to which is the birthplace of the U.S. Navy: the Hannah, owned by John Glover of Marblehead and the first ship to be commissioned for warfare by General George Washington, set sail from Beverly in September of 1775 with a Marblehead crew and munitions. Other places sustain that claim as well, including Whitehall, New York (where the continentals captured a British schooner and renamed her Liberty in the spring of 1775 and Benedict Arnold’s Quebec flotilla was built in the following year), Providence (or East Greenwich, where the Rhode Island passed a resolution to arm vessels in June of 1775), and Philadelphia (where the Continental Congress authorized the creation of a naval force on October 13, 1775), but these claims are of little concern to Massachusetts people. A century ago, Marblehead (seemingly unchallenged by Beverly at that time) was planning its big naval birthplace celebration when Salem historian Sidney Perley dropped a bombshell: it was Salem that was actually the birthplace of the navy with its commission of an armed vessel way back in the seventeenth century! And then all bets were off and other claimants quickly came forward: Kingston, New Bedford, Dartmouth and Somerville, Massachusetts and Machias, Maine. Somerville?
An exciting contest in the early summer of 1926! Sidney Perley was on fire at this time. He had just been through a protracted dispute over the date of the founding of Salem with the still-powerful Endicott family, who preferred 1628 when their ancestor came over. Stalwart Sidney stuck to 1626 when Roger Conant setted in what would become Salem, and resigned from the Essex Institute, then very much Salem’s pedigreed historical society, when he did not receive affirmation. Nevertheless he was slated to become the most-favored speaker of the Tercentenary celebrations that summer. I have enormous respect for him as a historian, but I suspect he was just stirring the pot with this navy assertion. His claim was based on a singular reference to a “man o’war ketch” in 1679, when the selectman of Salem reimbursed William Browne for its use. Ketches were popular vessels in Salem in the seventeenth century, used primarily for fishing, and they were small; it’s difficult to think of them as military ships. The early modernist in me has a vague recollection of the “bomb ketches” used by the French and then the English for coastal bombardment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but I don’t think that’s what we have here. A “man o’war ketch” does sound interesting though.
The Adventure (2008), a replica 17th century ketch moored at Charles Towne Landing in South Carolina.
The other claims seem more substantive than that of Salem. The Massachusetts state brigantine Independence was built in 1776 at Kingston’s Jones River Landing boatyard, one of the oldest in the country. Somerville went back even earlier than Salem: its claim was based on the Blessing of the Bay, “half-trader and half-fighter” and the first ship built in Massachusetts, which was launched on the Mystic River (some say at Medford, but I’m not getting into that rivalry) in the summer of 1631. The Battle of (or off) Fairhaven in May of 1775 is the basis of New Bedford’s and Dartmouth’s claims, although this brief battle is often consigned to the level of skirmish, giving the title of “First Naval Battle of the Revolution” to that of Machias, on June 11-12, 1775. So these are the rival claims, all of which Marblehead dismissed rather flippantly, especially that of Salem. Marblehead’s very public invitation to its naval anniversary celebrations dissed Salem several times: Like Boston, Marblehead, the second port of importance, was guarded by British warships, and so Gen Glover had the Hannah taken to his storehouses and wharf in Beverly, where quietly they worked and fitter her out, the first warship of the United States Government. But since Salem is going her own way and not sure of her own birthday, we of Marblehead have no hard feelings or malice in our hearts, but extend a cordial welcome to come to Marblehead and join with us in the celebration of the birth of the US Navy and we of Marblehead extend to that fine old city of Salem a most sincere with in the celebration commemorating the tercentenary.
The Schooner Hannah by John F. Leavitt, Naval Heritage and Command
By all accounts, Marblehead had a very successful 150th anniversary of the Navy celebration and Salem an even more robust Tercentenary in the summer of 1926 but that is not the end of the story. Less than a decade later, Beverly put forward its claim very assertively, and that claim is still standing! Not my story, so I’ll leave it at that. I think that Governor Maura Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll are quite wise to simply celebrate the Massachusetts origins of the Navy whenever the occasion calls for that salute.
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