John Barry

John Barry left Wexford for the Delaware and then for a navy that did not yet have a country it could name without an argument. He commanded Lexington and later Alliance. In 1776 he took HMS Edward — an early Continental capture in a commissioned warship. In 1781, in Alliance, he fought and took the sloops Atalanta and Trepassey after he was wounded.

When the United States commissioned a new navy in 1794, he was the senior captain. Later writers called him the father of that service. This page will not pick a nickname fight with John Paul Jones. It will say an Irish merchant captain learned how to keep a Continental ship in the water when money, powder, and crews were all short.

He died at Strawberry Hill in Philadelphia on September 13, 1803. The navy still commissions ships in the name. The war page is the man who took prizes when the republic's fleet was a handful of hulls and a set of written orders.