How the United States Navy was Built from Scratch in 1776: The Story of the USS Philadelphia and the Battle for Lake Champlain
When the Continental Congress convened to declare independence from Great Britain during the summer of 1776 things were not looking all that good for the newly minted United States of America. To most observers, both at home and abroad, it seemed as if the upstart Continental Army was about to crumble any day now. New York City would soon fall to the British army in August and George Washington’s dwindling forces would, that very summer, be sent into headlong retreat across the embattled colony of New Jersey. It could be said that when the delegates met in Philadelphia to declare independence that a sense of fatalism gripped them all. It was the venerable and erstwhile Benjamin Franklin who legend has it joked about all of the American leaders ending their days swaying from the end of a British noose. Several hundred miles north of Philadelphia during that July of 1776 in upstate New York near the Canadian border, American General Benedict Arnold then consid...