ABSTRACT
About the middle of December, 1775, the committee recommended the appointment of five captains, five first lieutenants, and eight junior lieutenants. There had been earlier appointments by individual Colonies, but this was the first national navy list, the foundation of the American Navy. The senior captain, Ezek Hopkins, was nominated commodore, and the four other captains were Dudley Saltonstall, Nicholas Biddle, Abraham Whipple, and John B. Hopkins. Paul Jones was placed at the head of the list of lieutenants. Jones sailed at once in the Providence to New York, where he took in stores and shipped a crew of regular seamen, the old crew of the sloop being, with the exception of a dozen or so, landsmen, mainly soldiers loaned from the army. Limitations of space alone forbid greater detail of these interesting operations, the chief value of which, after all, was the fact that they served to call public attention to the remarkable character of the man.
