Hardcover with Dust Jacket and Clear Protective Cover. 530 pp.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
John Barry (March 25, 1745 – September 13, 1803) was an Irish-born American naval officer who served in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War and in the United States Navy during the Quasi-War. He has been credited by some as "The Father of the American Navy", sharing that moniker with John Paul Jones and John Adams, and was appointed as a captain in the Continental Navy on December 7, 1775.[1][2] Barry was the first captain placed in command of an American warship commissioned for service under the Continental flag.[3] After the Revolutionary War, he became the first commissioned American naval officer, at the rank of commodore, receiving his commission from President George Washington in 1797.
The dust jacket flap reads as follows:
No American naval hero has deserved of posterity greater appreciation of his career, and- until this biography - received less than John Barry.
Acrimonious disputes and confusion about his services, pro- and anti-Barry propaganda as to their merit (with all the misstatements that propaganda produces), and religious controversy and prejudice to religious controversy and prejudice to becloud and misconstrue his actions- all have contributed to rob the grand old Commodore of his proper and important place in the history of the infant republic and its naval growing-pains.
Barry's is a imposing and commanding figure, which rises to heroic heights in the continental navy during the American Revolution, and stands, stalwart and forthright, in the midst of the politics and incompetence which marked the establishment of the American navy and the naval war with France.
The author shows the development of this young, self-educated Irishman into great American amid vicissitudes that submerged most of his naval contemporaries. He describes his career-0perilous voyages and cruises, thunderous sea-fights, mutinies, insubordinations, attempted bribery, hardships and heartaches- through the slow and torturous birth of the new navy....