Commodore John Barry

WE are not what might be called a nation with a long maritime tradition.

Irish Shipping Ltd has long since gone, before there was ever a mention of selling State assets. For years, the Irish Navy was the butt of jokes and most of our fishing fleet is tied up not allowed to fish by EU regulations.
Yet two Irishmen are honoured in their adopted countries for the contributions they made to establishing their navies. William Brown from Mayo is considered the father of the Argentinean Navy and John Barry the father of the US Navy.
John Barry was born on a small tenant farm at Our Lady’s Island in Wexford in 1745. When the family was evicted, they were forced to move to the seaside village of Rosslare. His uncle had a fishing boat and Barry was determined to have a career at sea. He started as a cabin boy but, by the end of his teens, he had worked himself up to the rank of mate. The ships he worked on traded between England and the colonies in the New World and he eventually settled in Philadelphia. He continued his association with the sea and was Master of the Black Prince.
In the lead up to the American War of Independence, he traded between Philadelphia and England but during his last two voyages in 1774 and ’75, the war had broken out.
Barry offered his ship to the Continental Congress. They fitted her out as a warship and renamed her Alfred. Barry’s first lieutenant on the Alfred was John Paul Jones who went on to be equally as famous in American Naval history. Their ship took part in what is considered to be America’s first amphibious operation, the capture of Fort Nassau in the Bahamas.
Barry was awarded the rank of captain and commanded the Lexington, the Effingham and the Alliance during that war. He captured several British trading vessels and privateers and also three Royal Navy warships. The last naval engagement of the war was led by Barry and he captured the British Man of War the Syblle.
In 1794 he appointed senior captain of the newly formed United States Navy and given the rank of Commodore. His commission was signed by George Washington and he is regarded as the first ever commissioned officer of the US Navy. He captured a number of French vessels in the naval war in the late 1790s but that was the end of his active service.
When the Barbary pirates began attacking American ships in the Mediterranean and even selling American sailors into slavery, Barry was appointed to command the fleet sailing against them but ill health forced him to remain at home. He died shortly afterwards at his home in Strawberry Hill, Philadelphia.
A statue in his memory was erected in Wexford in 1956 and the inscription says  “Presented to the people of Ireland by the United States of America, 1956, in recognition of Commodore Barry’s outstanding contribution to the naval annals of his adopted country”.
Commodore John Barry, the first commissioned officer of the US Navy, the first to capture a British War vessel on the high seas and the son of a Wexford tenant farmer, died on September 13, 1803 – 208 years ago this week.