States, Constitution, and Constellation), and on 27 April the President
was empowered to build, purchase or hire twelve additional ships
of not more than 22 guns each. On 4 May the acquisition of ten
more smaller vessels was authorized.

While hostilities had thus virtually been decided upon no ship
could be gotten ready until 24 May when the recently purchased
armed merchantman Ganges sailed from Philadelphia under Captain
Dale. Upon the passage of the Act of 28 May the President directed
ships of the Navy to "seize, take and bring into any port of the
United States" French armed vessels.

It was not until 24 June that the next ship sailed--the Frigate
Constellation from Baltimore under Captain Truxtun. She was
followed on 6 July by the Delaware, another purchased merchant-
man sailing from Philadelphia under Captain Decatur, and by the
Frigate United States, Captain Barry, from the same port early in
July. Gradually this small force grew to a total of fifty-four gov-
ernment vessels, including eight Revenue Cutters, which operated
off our Atlantic coast and in the West Indies, with occasional cruises
to Europe.

To supplement these naval efforts on 25 June 1798 Congress
authorized armed merchant vessels to repel attack from armed
French ships; and by the Act of 9 July authorized the issue of Com-
missions to our armed merchantmen. These ships were not privateers
in the strict sense since they were permitted to attack only armed
ships of the French and were forbidden to prey upon enemy commerce
in general.

During the first nine months of hostilities such commissions were
issued to 365 armed merchant ships while others carried guns for
defense without obtaining formal authorization. In the entire three
years of war probably upwards of a thousand armed merchantmen
supplemented the naval efforts against the very numerous French
privateers which continued actively to harass American commerce on
the ocean.

Meantime our Navy also sought out ships of the regular French
Navy and succeeded on several occasions in bringing them to action,
with a view to affording further protection to American shipping.
The most notable among the engagements between regular naval ships
were two fought by the American Frigate Constellation. Her oppo-
nent on the first occasion was the Frigate L'Insurgente and on the
second the Frigate La Vengeance. Both actions were fought in the
West Indies and will be covered in subsequent volumes.

The creation and mobilization of naval forces for this war was
rendered especially difficult because at the start there were neither
completed ships, nor any adequate personnel, or machinery of organ-
ization and administration. At a later time it is expected to publish
volumes dealing with the design and construction of the early frigates,
and with matters of naval administration.

This first volume aims to present data related to the operations of
ships and other naval units, and to exclude questions of logistics
(material, personnel, supply, etc.) except in so far as they may affect
the readiness and operations of Naval forces with a reasonable degree
of immediacy.

The documents as far as practicable, are arranged chronologically,
and the dates of the communications generally determine their chron-

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