[Footnote 1:  John Barry was a native of Ireland; he came to America at thirteen, entered the merchant marine, and at twenty-five was captain of a ship.  At the opening of the war Barry offered his services to Congress, and in February, 1776, was put in command of the Lexington.  After his victory he was transferred to the twenty-eight-gun frigate Effingham, and in 1777 (while blockaded in the Delaware) with twenty-seven men in four boats captured and destroyed a ten-gun schooner and four transports.  When the British captured Philadelphia, Barry took the Effingham up the river; but she was burned by the enemy.  In 1778, in command of the thirty-two-gun frigate Raleigh, he sailed from Boston, fell in with two British frigates, and after a fight was forced to run ashore in Penobscot Bay.  Barry and his crew escaped, and in 1781 carried Laurens to France in the frigate Alliance.  On the way out he took a privateer, and while cruising on the way home captured the Atalanta and the Trepassey after a hard fight.  As Barry brought in the first capture by a commissioned officer of the United States navy, so he fought the last action of the war in 1782; but the enemy escaped.  When the navy was reorganized in 1794, Barry was made senior captain, with the title of Commodore.  In 1798 he commanded the frigate United States in the war with France.  He died in 1803.]

In March, 1776, Congress began to issue letters of marque, or licenses to citizens to engage in war against the enemy; and then the sea fairly swarmed with privateers.

In 1777 the American flag was seen for the first time in European waters, when a little squadron of three ships set sail from Nantes in France, and after cruising on the Bay of Biscay went twice around Ireland and came back to France with fifteen prizes.  As France had not then acknowledged our independence, they were ordered to depart.  Two did so; but one of them, the Lexington, was captured by the British, and the other, the Reprisal, was wrecked at sea.

%159.  Paul Jones.%—­Meanwhile our commissioners in France, Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, fitted out a cruiser called the Surprise.  She sailed from Dunkirk on May 1, 1777, and the next week was back with a British packet as a prize.  For this violation of French neutrality she was seized.  But another ship, the Revenge, was quickly secured, which scoured the British waters, and actually entered two British ports before she sailed for America.  The exploits of these and a score of other ships are cast into the shade, however, by the fights of John Paul Jones, the great naval hero of the Revolution.  He sailed from Portsmouth, N.H., November 1, 1777, refitted his ship in the harbor of Brest, and in 1778 began one of the most memorable cruises in our naval history.  In the short space of twenty-eight days he sailed into the Irish Channel, destroyed four vessels, set fire to the shipping in the port of Whitehaven, fought and captured the British armed schooner Drake, sailed around Ireland with his prize, and reached France in safety.