NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
It was madness. That was clear from the start. American Naval Captain John Barry had 27 men. The British had hundreds of sailors and possession of every ship in Philadelphia’s harbor.
Yet that didn’t stop Barry in 1778 from rowing up the Delaware River in the dead of night, pulling alongside two British transports, and swarming over the gunwales. Within minutes, the Americans had possession of the transports, as well as a schooner.
Nobody but Barry would have attempted such a mission. And nobody but Barry could have pulled it off. He was—from the time he received his first captain’s commission in the American (Continental) Navy in 1775 until his death in 1803—the country’s greatest seaman.
Born in Ireland in 1745, Barry began his career as a cabin boy on a merchant ship. By 1766, he had his first command, the Barbados, which sailed out of Philadelphia. While there, Barry took a liking to the city and made it his home port.
When the American Revolution came, Barry offered his services to General Washington, receiving command of the USS Lexington and the task of helping outfit a navy for the colonies. Within months, Barry gave the Continental Navy its first victory at sea and captured America’s first British prize. He would do the same repeatedly throughout the war, capturing more than 20 British ships as well as large sums of prize money, oftentimes through acts as bold as his 1778 escapade on the Philadelphia waterfront.
After the war, Barry returned to commercial shipping. A decade later, however, President Washington asked him to defend American ships from the Barbary pirates. He agreed, and as of June 4, 1794, the date of his commissioning as commodore, was the highest-ranking officer in the American Navy.
Accounts of Barry’s naval prowess abound, but so too do accounts of his -virtue—-of his deep Catholic faith, devotion to Scripture, love for his wife, honor in battle, and fatherly concern for all who served under him.
Lauded as “the father of America’s Navy,” Commodore Barry died in 1803 in Philadelphia.
