[Thoss]

How significant was the Continental Navy during the American War for Independence? That is, to what extent did the Continental Navy affect the overall course of the war, the war at sea and the American victory?

Discuss.

[The American Lion]

Well our Navy could not win a full scale battle agaist the british. We only had a few frigates. Our Navy did not really affect the war. It was a nice moral booster when raiding british supply ships.

Also USS Ranger is the only US ship to attack the British Isles during the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ranger_%281777%29

[Thoss]

I suggest that the Continental Navy was almost entirely irrelvent militarily, while symbolically, it was part of an overall appearance of nationhood that faciliated victory.

The symbol of nationhood, which, Navy's being a fixture of only the most powerful nations at the time, was a tool for the Second Contiental Congress to boost legitimacy in America and in the courts of Europe. Then, as we know, once the Imperial French Navy engaged the British in American waters, the Royal Navy was finally challenged, particularly at Chesepeake Bay 1781.

But, other than the symbol to itself and Europe, the USN was nothing to the British. The American privateers on the other hand, were almost like the American militia on land 'sand in the gears of the British war effort'. American privateers scored many prizes of British shipping.

[The Immortal Goon]

John Barry, I believe, was the first (and possibly one of only a very few) to capture a British warship. There's a statue of him in Tacumshane, Ireland. That's about the beginning and the end of my early American naval knowledge.

-TIG