Excerpt from A History of the United States Navy, Vol. 1 of 3: From 1775 to 1901 It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of the services that have been rendered by the United States navy. The Continental cruisers and privateers - the latter corresponding to the militia on land - during the War of the Revolution captured about eight hundred vessels from the enemy, and, making the moderate allowance of fifteen men to each craft, we have a total of twelve thousand prisoners taken on. the high seas by a maritime force which at no time consisted of more than five thousand men. About five hundred of these prisoners were soldiers of some of the best English regiments, and had they been captured on land the incident would have occupied many pages in our histories. It was by means of our maritime forces that the American armies were supplied with the munitions of war during that terrible struggle. In our two years of naval war with France the work was all done by the navy. About eighty vessels, mostly privateers, carrying over three thousand men, were captured from the enemy. Again, the wars with the States of Barbary were brought to a highly honorable termination by the unaided efforts of the navy, the United States securing privileges that had been denied to European powers. The naval War of 1812 did more to humble the pride of Great Britain than any other contest. The Revolution was a struggle for independence on land, but it required a second fight to secure our "inalienable rights" on the high seas. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.