The U.S. Navy turns 247 years old on October 13, 2022, having been commissioned on October 13, 1775, by the Continental Congress, starting with two ships, each with eighty sailors, “for intercepting such transports as may be laden with warlike stores and other supplies for our enemies.”
The foe at the time was Great Britain, whose navy ruled the seas. By the end of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Navy had grown to about fifty ships. In 1789, the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the navy’s future by granting Congress the power “To provide and maintain a navy.”
George Washington once said it is “as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive—and with it, everything honorable and glorious.”
Those words are even more appropriate in the twenty-first century where U.S. interests span the globe. To serve and protect those interests, the U.S. Navy today has 346,469 active-duty personnel, 45,345 reserve personnel, 191,819 civilian employees, 300 deployable ships, 71 submarines, and more than 3,700 operational aircraft.
John F. Kennedy was the first navy veteran elected president. But five of the next six presidents also served in the navy: Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. Well-known navy veterans include baseball Hall-of-Famers Yogi Berra and Stan Musial; basketball Hall-of-Famers David Robinson and John Wooden; football Hall-of-Famer Roger T. Staubach; pro wrestling great and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura; actors Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, and Jack Lemmon; former Tonight Show host Johnny Carson; talk show host Montel Williams; musicians John Coltrane, and M.C. Hammer; and astronaut Neil Armstrong.
