CHAPTER ONE

Anchors Aweigh

This is the story of the United States Navy, and every sailor ought to know it. To begin with, it's a bang-up, thundering good story.

Some may call it a history, but don't let that word dismay you. History after all, is only a story-a true story of the past. And just as truth can be stranger than fiction, it is often five times as interesting.

Some folks say that history is "dry" and then they tell you an exciting incident that happened yesterday, and so become historians themselves. You've heard Joe down at the lunch car go over last year's batting averages-well, that's history. Your grandad's recollections of the first automobile, your Dad's recollections of World War I, your brother's or your pal's descriptions of the fighting at Omaha Beach or Iwo-you've been hearing American history all the time. What's more, as a bluejacket today in the Navy, you are making history. And when you go home and relate your own experiences, you (but stick to the facts!) will be a historian in your own right. So, first hand, you know that history can be interesting. And certainly the story of the Navy won't be dry.

Why Study History?

But aside from the fact that it's a whale of an interesting story, why bother with past history? What's the good of going back to the old days, or even yesterday, when you've got your hands full as a bluejacket in the present? You're kept jumping by what's going on around you here and now. You're busy with what you're doing here today.

Well, look at it this way-what you do today depends largely on what was done yesterday. And yesterday's doing depended on the day before that, and so on back through the months and years, yes, and centuries. So you're not so far removed from the old days, after all. Past events are linked up together like a chain, and the present you're in is at this end of it. For instance, you're in the Navy now. But there wouldn't have been any U. S. Navy for you to be in, or any U. S., for that matter, if it weren't for things that were done in the past.

People are likely to associate the word "past" with the phrase "past and done"-meaning, "It's all over." They may consider history in that light. The trouble here is with the time element. Go back 150 years, for example. But that was "long ago," someone will say. Long ago? Not so long when scientists figure the world is several billion years old! That brings 150 years a little closer to home. It shaves the whiskers off American history and brings it up to date. Yes, that goes back to the time of George Washington; but historically speaking, it's in your time. Actually there are men alive today who have shaken hands with men who shook the hand of George Washington. You can figure that one out on your abacus, if you want, but the point is that Washington wasn't some old fogey in a time of long ago that's "past and done."

The past, then, is closer to the present than people sometimes think. And the things done in the past are not "all over with." For another simple illustration, there was World War I. Many Americans thought it was all over with. But in World War II America faced the same enemy, Germany-in some places on exactly the same front. In many respects it was the same. war, fought for the same reasons. Only the faces of those in the line had changed. Time marches on, but it doesn't leave the past behind.

You can see, then, how the things you're doing now result from, and are a continuation of, things done in the past. History can tell you about some of those past things, and give you a better understanding of "what it's all about" and what you're doing today.

As a bluejacket making history in the American Navy you want a clear idea of what America is, to begin with, and just why you are an American. You want to know what kind of history you're making, why you're making it, the reason for making it at all. Past history gives you a blueprint of the job you're working on, a design of the vital events you're helping to shape. The story of the American Navy-as a part of American history-can tell you why you're aboard, and make you sure of your objective.

There's another reason for taking a bearing on the past. History can be a guide for the future. Like a navigational chart, it can show you where you've been, how you arrived at where you are, and it can also give you an idea of where you're heading. People who waste money on fortune tellers to find out what may happen tomorrow could learn more from yesterday's newspapers. You've heard the old axiom, "History repeats itself." If you want to know what may and can happen, look back and judge accordingly.

So you have four good reasons for acquiring a little knowledge of your Navy's history: it's a whacking good story-it can give you an idea of what today is all about-it can tell you some things about the service you're in and why you're in it-it can serve as a reference bearing on your objective.

But these are broad generalities, and you want to learn something you can apply to your immediate job. You're out for something specific. You're Seaman First, perhaps, striking for Gunner's Mate 3/c. Or you're a Bosun's Mate, a Signalman aboard a BB, a Chief Fire Controlman on a flat top, a Motor Machinist's Mate. What's there in this story of the Navy for your practical use?

Well, this manual can't tell you how to break down and repair a 5"38 gun. Or how to pipe the watch, or execute flag signals, or maintain a Mark 51 director, or change an oil filter on a Diesel engine. It won't even show you how to stow your seabag. You have other manuals for such specific instruction.

This manual is designed to teach you something about Navy life, about Navy ways, about the Navy as a fighting organization. It is a story to be read as a story, giving you something to think about, to get excited about, to form opinions on, perhaps to chuckle over. For this is chiefly the story of the Navy's men, the officers and bluejackets of the past, the things they thought and did, and why.

On The Record

Some episodes in this human story you may find hard to believe--such as the long odds in some of the battles. But you won't find anything stated as fact that isn't down somewhere in the records. The early sailors kept their log books, the captains turned in their reports, documents were filed, letters written, and events recorded which can be checked just as you can check the Declaration of Independence by going to. the Library of Congress in Washington and looking at it today. Sometimes uncertainty may arise over an episode in history, and where such uncertainty exists it will be indicated. When something is quoted as having been written or said, and the exact words are given, the quotation is in italics.

Yes, yesterday's Navy is "on the record," and its men left -marks for you to shoot at. Targets at which any modern bluejacket can profitably aim. You'll find some challenging scores in their story-scores in skill, resolution, and "guts" that in some cases have never been equaled. Incidentally, as a member of the American Navy-YOUR Navy-you should become acquainted with its manners, customs, and traditions. Do you know why, in the Navy, you honor your ship's quarterdeck? Why a visiting officer is piped over the side? Do you know the origin of the American flag that you salute? You can brush up on the answers in this story as you read along. And perhaps you can find the answers to some other, more basic questions concerning your Navy. Such as the importance of sea power in modern warfare. The development of American naval strategy. The vital necessity for Navy training.

Watch how that factor, TRAINING, particularly influences the whole story. How naval victories depend, 35 many instances have proved, on a welded combination- of brains, discipline, and target practice. For though forces are often even, and courage can often be equaled, victory comes to the side that has the better discipline, that does the better thinking and the better shooting.

But draw your own conclusions-they're up to you. And now push aside those heavy words-training-education-indoctrination-instruction-history. Think of this manual as an introduction (the handshaking kind) to old comrades you'd like to meet. A chance to see some of the great American Naval leaders, to be in on some of the greatest sea battles of all time, to become personally acquainted with the captains and crews who served before you in the U.S. Navy.

Would you like to walk the deck with John Paul Jones? Go pirate hunting with Stephen Decatur? Catch a glimpse of Farragut at Mobile? Serve one of the old guns under Dewey? Believe it or not, you are serving under those leaders.

Old John Adams once shocked his stiff-necked neighbors by announcing (when he was eighty) that he was never going to die.

He didn't.

He lives today in the Navy Department in Washington, and you can hear him (if you listen sharp) still urging stout ships, a good set of Navy Regs, and top pay for the enlisted man. John Paul Jones still roams the sea, and you can see him (if you have the eye) all over your warship from stern to forepeak, on her gun decks, in the wardroom, on the bridge.

Who can say the old captains and crews are gone when their words still echo through the Navy, their actions go on influencing the present, their personalities continue making history? Meet them, and they'll give you a hand on deck. Make friends with them, and they'll serve alongside you in the Navy as it puts out for the future.

Now to go on with the story -

Civilization and Sea Power

The American Revolution, called the War for Independence, did not explode all at once like a powder mine. Like the Navy, it was a long time building before it went into action. The forces which set it off were long at work under the surface.

The American War for Independence was a part of something taking place all over the globe, a revolution that began long before America was discovered-before Britain was discovered, for that matter. For centuries men had been struggling to win their independence. And man had to think of independence before he could aspire to fight for it. He had to work it out in his head, had to learn to reason. In other words, before he could free himself from tyranny he had to become educated. As H. G. Wells, the historian, has put it, "History is a race between education and disaster."

As soon as man reasons, he begins to ask why. And as soon as he learns the answer, he starts becoming educated. One occupation at least led to a broadened outlook and independent thinking-seafaring. From the first the ancient mariner had to use his head. Fishing, sailing, exploring, seafaring men were among the best educated of early times.

You can see how civilization followed the sea. First, fishermen. Then explorers. Then sailors of commerce. Then sea fighters to protect that commerce. Sea power and civilization (or call it education, or man's advancement) went hand in hand.

Go back to the island of Crete. Two thousand years before Christ the Egyptians had a war Fleet of some 400 ships. But Crete was carrying on commerce with Egypt centuries before that. Her warships in the Mediterranean are the earliest on record, and Crete is regarded as the world's first great sea power.

Phoenicia followed Crete as sea power No. 2. The Phoenicians were a maritime people, and they developed an alphabet as an aid to keeping track of commercial deals. Phoenicia grew up on sea power. Her cargo carriers, known as "round ships," were all over the Mediterranean. Her warships, called "long ships," set the model for the Greek and Roman "bireme" and "trireme"-oar galleys with double and triple banks of rowers, high bulwarks to protect the men, and a beak-nosed ram on the bow. Early records indicate that a Phoenician naval squadron circumnavigated Africa some seven hundred years before Christ. The early Greek sailors were the most advanced in ancient history. They employed astronomy and mathematics in navigation. They were aware of the earth's magnetic influence, and invented a primitive form of compass. Their warships used strategy and tactics to fight sea battles that rank as historic classics. They drew charts. And they studied geography.

The early Romans had brains, too, and they conquered and developed a mighty empire. Their legions conquered southern Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, and had voyaged by sea in triremes to Britain.

Slaves pulled at the oars of the Roman warships heading for Britain, and the captains did some remarkable navigating considering they mixed navigation with advice from pagan idols and their sailors were always on the verge of mutiny. They found no gold in Britain, so they let the colony go to seed. The last legionnaires were called home to fight the invasion by northern tribes.

Swarming out of the north, these ferocious barbarians-Goths, Visigoths, and Vandals-fell on Rome like an avalanche of tigers. They fauna the Romans fat, juicy, pickled in alcohol, and to their taste. When the barbarians returned to their northern homelands, the Roman Empire lay in fragments, and even the culture which Rome had borrowed from the Greeks was buried in the ruins.

Europe plunged into an age of darkness that set it backward a thousand years. Tyranny was rampant as individual feudal lords gained control, robber barons pillaged the continent, and the average man became a dull-witted serf living in want, fear, voiceless humility, and hobgoblin superstition. Only the Christian Church struggled to keep alive a spark of culture.

Then came the Moslem invasion of Europe. The Arabians were rallying to the call of Mohammed, who called himself the "Prophet of Allah," and preached a religion of fire and sword. "We Arabians are destined to rule the world," they cried. This was some eleven hundred years ago, and they nearly succeeded. For three hundred years the struggle against the Mohammedans lasted. The Christian armies, referred to as the Crusaders, played an important part in stopping the threat to Europe. And upon returning home, they brought back into Europe a renewed knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography that had been all but lost to Europe's people since the fall of Rome.

Commerce started up again, ships put to sea again, people began thinking again, and Europe woke up to enter that period of history known as the "Rebirth"-the Renaissance. And? And a bright, new page was turned in the story of man's struggle for freedom.

Then an amazing event took place. In England a group' of barons and knights cornered King John at a place called Runnymede and forced him to sign a document guaranteeing them certain rights. "Just which ones doesn't matter. What matters .is that a group of men were demanding their rights from a king, a being hitherto considered unapproachable on this subject. And you can see this document today-the Magna Carta, or "Great Charter"-man's first big step toward a constitutional form of government.

The Magna Carta fired the minds of all who heard of it back there in the year 1215. It showed how power could be used to obtain rights as well as to withhold them. And this revelation made an echo. In France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain-the maritime countries in contact with England-the idea grew.

Other people-the Netherlanders and Italians, for example-kept in step with the English and wrenched a little liberty from their sovereigns. Venice set up a sort of republic that became one of the most progressive in Medieval Europe. It was Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, who expl6red all the way across Asia to China, and brought back vivid tales of the Far East.

These tales of the rich Far East, magnified by a wealth of imagination, started a treasure-hunt for gold. Eager faces turned toward Damascus and Bagdad; adventurers embarked on the long overland journey for India and China. If they came back with little gold, they did return with cloth, porcelain, drugs, and spices which they could sell for gold.

But the fierce followers of Allah's Prophet straddled Asia Minor, and made overland travel deadly dangerous. If only another route to the Orient could be found-a sea-route around the dark coast of Africa.

The idea came to Prince Henry of Portugal, a maritime country 'whose people were learning to think. This prince distinguished himself by setting up a school of navigation and sending out expeditions to explore the western coast of Africa. So he came to be called Prince Henry the Navigator. Although he died in 1460 his project was carried out in 1487 when Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope.

Eleven years later Vasco da Gama followed this lead and continued on across the Indian Ocean to reach India. The first all-water route to the Orient had been found.

But meantime the world had been rocked by the discoveries of another mariner, who added two new continents to mankind's knowledge.

Columbus Sails the Ocean Blue

Some time around 1470, rich stories of the Orient and golden tales of India reached the ears of a' young Genoese dress-goods salesman named Christopher Columbus. He began to dream of India and gold. He didn't have enough of the latter to start a search, but he had plenty of the dream.

It seems that this visionary Italian, sailing to Spain with a bundle of dress goods, fell into the hands of Mohammedan pirates off North Africa, then was rescued from the corsairs by a Spanish warship. The Spanish captain took a liking to Christopher. Probably it was this mariner who told him the earth was round and gave him rudimentary lessons in seamanship and navigation.

As the idea of finding a western passage to India and Zipangu (Japan) percolated in the brain of Columbus, he studied maps, pored over and drew charts, and went to Portugal with his project. Failing to interest the Portuguese, he spent several years in Spain and finally won the support of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

Even so they didn't back him with much-three tiny vessels, a crew of about 100 men, a promise to promote him to Admiral of the Ocean if he made good, plus one-tenth of "all the pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other merchandise," he might find. Obviously, they were counting on his hitting the jackpot.

They did lend him a Spanish officer, Martin Pinzon, who was an exp6rienced sailor. It was this Spanish mariner who handled most of the navigating.

Now think of the project-sailing into an unknown, uncharted ocean where no man to your knowledge had been before and the boundary was only a myth. Would it pour off somewhere into empty space as many men continued to believe? If India was there somewhere to the west, what chance was there to reach it? What rations to take? Would the casks of drinking water last?

These questions might disturb Martin Pinzon, but they deterred Columbus not at all. The expedition set sail on August 3, 1492, and every schoolboy today knows how the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria fared.

Halfway across the crews grew terrified and wanted to turn back. Columbus put down the mutiny. He himself must have been uneasy aboard his flagship, Santa Maria, a caravel that you wouldn't dare sail on a canal today, with its top-heavy poop, its rotted timbering, and its rats. But Columbus was one of those strange idea men who wouldn't be stopped by fear. One part of him was as dreamy as a cloud, the other as down-to-earth as granite. You can see this in his famous journal, his logbook on the voyage. One day he imagines giant sea serpents on the horizon, or sees a palatial mirage in the sky. The next day he makes a firm decision, with the men. Nothing can swerve him. He sails on.

October 11, after sixty-nine days in space, the Santa Maria sighted land. Probably it was an island in the Bahamas (historians calculate Watling's Island) but Columbus believed he had found India. He sailed on to explore Cuba and the island of Haiti, and he called the peaceful natives he found there "Indians." In his imagination he also saw a lot of gold on these islands, and so reported in his journal. Doubtless this was just the shine of sunlight on the sand, for gold was not one of the things Columbus took back with him to Spain.

He returned to Spain with Martin Pinzon. Little Santa Maria had been wrecked off the coast of Haiti, and the sailors had dismantled her and used her timbers and guns to build a blockhouse.

Ferdinand and Isabella were disappointed in a cargo of parrots, cocoanuts, and brown Indians, but they still had hopes; and Columbus was showered with honors. In 1493, given another ship, Columbus set out again. Revisiting Haiti, he could not find a single trace of the blockhouse and men he had left there. He pushed on across the Caribbean, and on this and two more trans-Atlantic voyages he discovered the coast of Central America and the northern tip of South America, claiming these lands for Spain.

To his dying day he believed he had discovered Asia. And it remained for another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, sailing under Portuguese colors three years later, to proclaim the discovery of a "new world." European mapmakers gave the new continents Vespucci's name - Amerigo, or America.

Columbus received poor reward for his great exploit. Because he failed to find gold on his ensuing voyages, the Spanish rulers turned their backs on him, the crowds forgot him. Impoverished by his efforts, he ended up in debtor's prison. He died in 1506 in such poverty and obscurity that his burial place is still in doubt.

The Gold Rush

Indeed, Columbus was shabbily rewarded, for he had discovered the richest land of all. It wasn't long before Balboa, Cortez, Pizarro, and Ponce de Leon, following the trail Columbus blazed, were conquering the New World in the name of Spain. In the short space of two decades, Spain became the world's richest and most powerful nation.

In 1540, Hernando De Soto landed in Florida, and pushing cross-country, he discovered the Mississippi. Around 1542, Coronado, another Spaniard, explored as far as present-day Kansas. In 1565 the first permanent white settlement in North America was established-St. Augustine, Florida.

Meanwhile stories of the New World had gone galloping around Europe, and the French king decided to enter the exciting treasure hunt. Presently Verranzo, flying the French flag, was probing along the wilderness. wooded shores of North America. In 1535 Jacques Cartier, seeking a northern passage to India, explored the St. Lawrence. These territories were claimed by the French crown and in 1603 Champlain was setting up trading posts in Nova Scotia and scouting around eastern Canada.

The English had been even quicker to follow Columbus. As early as 1497, the Italian navigator John Cabot had carried the flag of England to the North American coast. It was not until 1577 that England sent another adventurer to America-Sir Francis Drake.

Drake ran into the Spanish, with bad results for the latter. After a cruise around the world (which had first been circumnavigated by Magellan for Portugal in 1522) he returned to England, where Queen Elizabeth knighted him on his vessel's quarterdeck.

Queen Elizabeth was an unusual woman. Sometimes referred to (perhaps dryly) as "Good Queen Bess," she was the daughter of Henry VIII, from whom she inherited a temper and a royal talent for treachery. But she also had a lot of business sense. Under her driving influence, England went in for trade and shop-keeping in a big way. She wasn't the woman to overlook a gold mine like the New World.

In 1578 she sent out Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an energetic navigator, to lay claim to the territory discovered by Cabot. When Gilbert went down in a storm at sea, she sent his half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, to do the job. Raleigh set out in 1584, and landed in America in the region he called Virginia in honor of his "virgin queen."

And now began a race to stake out claims and establish New World colonies-Portugal and Spain in South and Central America, France and England in North America, and later the Dutch, with Hendrick Hudson founding New Amsterdam, the grandfather of New York. And then? Then began wars to hold these colonies from competing power-rivals. Wars, you might say, fought for the power of kings. And next, wars to free the colonials, themselves, from Old World tyranny-wars fought for the rights of men.

And of necessity these became sea wars, demanding battleships and fighting crews.

Spanish Armada

Drake might be considered the first great admiral in -the modern sense of the word. In 1588 the Spanish, under the fanatical rule of Philip II, launched a sea attack against England, intending to sink Queen Elizabeth and all her works. Queen Elizabeth's spies informed her of this invasion plan, and she promptly assigned the island's defense to Drake.

The Spanish fleet was the mightiest yet assembled. The warships were galleons-stubby vessels, three and four-deckers with square sails-a big advance over the one-deck caravels of Columbus time. They were armed with the newest weapons-guns. The brass carronades firing iron and stone cannon balls might appear toy-like today, but in 1588 they were the deadliest thing on earth, and had already put an end to knightly lances and chain armor.

The English had guns, too-in fact, they had used cannon against France in the Battle of Crecy, long before. However, the English fleet in size or fire power didn't hold a candle to Spain's, and things looked dark for the "tight little isle." But the Spanish hadn't counted on the weather or Sir Francis Drake.

They were no match for either. Drake's ships out-navigated; out-fought, and out-maneuvered the slower, heavier Spanish galleons. And a great storm drove through the English Channel and completed the destruction of Philip's fleet. The Spanish Armada was wrecked, and England became the world's No. 1 maritime power.

The Royal Navy

These Elizabethan Britons took to the sea like schools of salmon. Shipyards mushroomed along the Thames in company with a hurly-burly of wharves, warehouses, and docks. As the thriving merchant service opened sea lanes to the Caribbean, the British Navy developed as a protective arm.

Seamen were early impressed into the service-meaning Jack had to go whether he liked it or not. A drummer might appear on the public square. As a crowd thronged around to learn the news, the royal officers would pounce. And Jack would be carried off kicking and cussing-he was now in the Royal Navy.

The Royal Navy of old-time England was no bed of roses. Jack lived pretty much on hard-tack and hopes. If he survived' a few voyages, he might escape in the New World. Or, if lucky, he might become a Navy Boatswain.

BOATSWAIN (you call it bosu'n) is one of the oldest titles in the Navy. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word, batsuen, meaning "boat swain," or boat's servant. The boatswain of Elizabethan days was in charge of the seamen's work on deck and aloft, and he was quite an individual. As symbols of authority he carried a rattan cane and a silver whistle. The bosun's pipe makes music in the Navy to this day, as every bluejacket knows. Well, there it was, piping away in the days of Shakespeare. The rattan cane was an article less popular among the men. If Jack so much as stooped to buckle a shoe, he regretted it.

COXSWAIN (you call it cox'n)-originally "Cocksu'n"-is another of the oldest titles. It was the cox'n's job to take charge of small boats (called cockboats) and rowing parties working from ship to shore. The cox'n also had a whistle which he used, according to one reporter of the time, "to cheer up and direct his gang of rowers, and to keep them together while waiting."

These Petty Officers also officiated at floggings, keel-haulings, and other deck sports to he discussed later. The quality of mercy, as described by Shakespeare, did not drop "like the gentle rain from heaven" on the early Royal Navy.

GUNNER'S MATE is still another naval title that goes way hack. In the early days he served under the Master-Gunner, who corresponded to today's Gunnery Officer. The Gunner's Mate's job was much as it is today-serving and maintaining the weapons aboard ship.

QUARTERMASTER is a rate as old as Gunner-'s Mate, the title deriving from the quarterdeck of the old galleon-type sailing ship. Stationed on this deck, the Quarter-Master relayed orders from the Captain aft to the forecastle, and served as assistant to the Officer of the Watch. Eventually the business of running orders forward was detailed to ships boys, called "the King's Letter Boys"-nimble lads who raced fore and aft with messages and so came to be known as "midshipmen. The Quarter-Master gave his time to steering and keeping records. He was also in charge of the ship's hourglass, ancestor of your modern chronometers.

CARPENTER and SAIL MAKER are other ancient titles that still survive. Carpenter's Mates seem to have been on deck in 1300, which apparently gives "Chips" the record. Sail makers still work with marlinspike and palm aboard "rag wagons," although the rate is now extinct in the Navy along with a host of other quaint ratings such as Armourer's Mate, Gunner's Tailor, Cooper (ship's barrel maker), and Swabber (Petty Officer in charge of swabbing decks). Meanwhile, the Navy man today who serves as Gunner's Mate, Bosun's Mate, Quartermaster, Carpenter, or Cox'n can take pride in the fact that he carries on in one of the oldest known rates at sea.

Jack of the Elizabethan Nary led a dog's life, and in the warship's foc's'le he was in the dog's house. His pay was a pittance, his food was miserable, and his life in battle wasn't worth a farthing. And he had over him a top-heavy leadership of officers drawn from the nobility and landed gentry. Many of these "gold braids" were hopeless nincompoops who got their commissions through family connections. It gave poor Jack, no matter how hard-working and intelligent, little chance to get ahead. He might work up to 'Boatswain, Gunner's Mate, or Quartermaster, but there he stopped.

How, then, with this caste system of upper-crust leadership and down-trodden Jack-tars, did the Navy of old England become the world's greatest sea power? How did England become Great Britain?

The answer is that the Royal Navy succeeded in spite of the system, and because the competing navies of the time were even more straight-jacketed by "nobility" rule. This was also true of the nations themselves in those days. The England of' four hundred years ago was an "absolute monarchy" in which the king supposedly ruled by "divine right." Even so England was out in front of her neighbors" England had her Magna Charta, and Englishmen had a few rights. And precisely as Englishmen forged ahead in that respect, the nation held a lead over backward competitors.

But the Old World back in the 17th Century seethed with fierce intolerance. In France, where fanaticism had gained the upper hand, the Protestant Huguenots had been massacred. Throughout Europe the Jews were being driven from pillar to post (sound familiar?). In England the Catholics had been ruthlessly treated. And then, in the reign of King James, a little band of nonconformists, who wanted to worship God according to their lights, were furiously set upon.

The little band was ordered to conform or else-so the Separatists, as they were called, left England for more liberal Holland. In Holland they finally obtained a land grant from the Virginia Company. With 7000 pounds ($35,000) to finance them, they chartered the Mayflower and embarked to found a settlement in the New World. You recognize this band, of course, as the Pilgrims. They were not all religiously motivated-a number of them being gentleman adventurers-but all were determined to find freedom.

On November 11, 1620, they reached the tip of Cape Cod, anchored off shore, and drew up a compact aboard the Mayflower. This compact, called the Mayflower Compact, included a pledge to obey, "such just and equal laws as shall be thought most meet and convenient jar ye general good of the colony."

Here was a government of the people, by the people, and for the people! The first true Democracy had been founded in America.

The Thirteen Colonies

The Pilgrims were not the original American colonials. In 1606 King James of England had granted the famous Virginia Charter establishing the London Company and the Plymouth Company to open up trade in America. In 1607 a party of 140 colonists, including Captain John Smith, sailed into Chesapeake Bay and founded the settlement of Jamestown on the James River.

Next to settle were the Dutch, opening a trading post on Manhattan Island in 1614.

Ten years after the Pilgrims landed, some two thousand Puritans arrived to found a "Bible Commonwealth" in Massachusetts under John Winthrop. The stern Puritans, having broken with the Church of England, now refused to acknowledge anyone's right to differ with their own religious beliefs. They banished the pastor, Roger Williams, for declaring that the State had no right to dictate a man's religion, and exiled Mrs. Anne Hutchinson for holding independent views. Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire were settled by many later exiles from the Puritan commonwealth.

In 1632 Charles I gave Lord Baltimore a grant to the land of present-day Maryland, and there 300 settlers came the following year.

In 1637 another group of English immigrants settled in Connecticut. About the same time a group of Swedes founded a colony in the vicinity of Delaware which they later lost to the Dutch in 1655.

The Carolinas were opened for colonization by Charles II in 1663. (They separated into North and South Carolina in 1729).

New Jersey was parceled out as a land grant in 1664 by the Duke of York, whose fleet in the same year forced the Dutch to cede New Amsterdam to England. New York State resulted from this real-estate deal.

In 1681, to pay his military debts, Charles II granted to the Penn family the wilderness between Delaware and Jersey, and William Penn founded there a Quaker colony called Pennsylvania, which means Penn's Woods.

Georgia, last of the thirteen colonies, was set up as a buffer state between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida. It was settled in 1733 under the influence of James Oglethorpe, who desired to open a refuge for English debtors.

You don't need to memorize these facts. They merely indicate how America's seaboard was chartered, leased, donated, or sold to the settlers by the English Government, and how early America became colonized in a little over 100 years.

Well, the immigrants came over. A few at first, then crowded shiploads. Farmers and townsfolk, woodchoppers and weavers, tinkers, tailors, and traders. Many were indentured servants with debts to work off. Some were gentlemen adventurers with sword and snuffbox handy. Some were righteous men, some were rogues, some were scholars, and some were fools. But the majority were hard-working, common-sense, save-spend-and-spend-a-little human beings such as you find today on any street. By 1770 or thereabouts, there were almost 4,000,000 of them in the colonies.

And these were the early Americans. But remember. all these people were originally immigrants. Prior to the Revolution, all had considered themselves British subjects. At the same time, all had undergone a process of Americanization.

The Spirit of Independence

The type of men who left the Old World because of tyranny certainly would not put up with it for long in the New.

In Virginia the poor farmers and field hands, led by Nathaniel Bacon, rose in revolt against Governor Berkeley and set up a government of the people. Berkeley managed to crush the revolt with a savage come-back, but the Virginians later won a more liberal government. Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 against the authority of the crown was the first big straw in the American wind.

A few years later, in New England, tyrannical Governor Andros was thrown out of office. William of Orange, at that time King of England, agreed to restore a measure of home rule to these colonies.

Throughout the early 1700's, the American colonials, raising their families, working their farms, building their towns, were less and less willing to accept regulations imposed by the Mother Country. Here was the English point of view: The colonies were territories to be exploited for the benefit of the Mother Country. Therefore the colonies must be subordinate to the Mother Country.

And here was the American colonial point of view: "We colonials are just as good as the folks back home. Why should we be exploited for the benefit of anybody? We're a God-fearing, hard-fighting bunch who've had to make our own way out here."

Yet they tried to remain loyal to the Crown. From 1700 to 1776 England was engaged in a series of wars with France and Spain. These power-struggles echoed to the New World, and border warfare in America was constant. Agents of all the contesting powers kept stirring up the Indians, and the colonists usually bore the brunt.

When the French and Indian War broke out in 1754, the colonials marched with the Red Coats sent over from England. One of the colonial officers under the Red Coats was young George Washington of Virginia. New England colonials joined the British Army in the campaigns by which England finally won control of Canada.

But the English leadership was often clumsy. The red-coated troops were shot down in the forest like scarlet tanagers; the officers floundered; and the colonials frequently had to carry the ball.

The colonists blamed England for the slipshod conduct of these Indian fights. The very summer the French and Indian War broke out, 1754, seven colonies sent delegates to Albany, New York, to discuss common action against the hostile tribes. A Pennsylvania publisher, Benjamin Franklin, proposed a political union of these colonies whereby they might raise taxes to maintain a frontier army for their mutual protection. This proposition, the Albany Plan, was scowled upon by the Crown. And the colonies, themselves, couldn't get together. But it was an idea.

The Americans were becoming full of ideas. Roger Williams, William Penn, and Nathaniel Bacon were long-since gone, but they had planted seeds which had taken root. A great tree was growing in America. Thomas Jefferson called it the "Tree of Liberty."

The King of England at this time was George III. Of German descent, he was stubborn, rather thick of neck and head. His advisers told him of this tree in America, and he determined to nip it in the bud. To put down smuggling, he garrisoned a standing army in the colonies. He set British battleships to patrol the coast. He put his seal on a lot of tax laws to raise money to pay for England's war with France. He ordered stern punishments for talk of rebellion.

Some of the laws were carried out and some of them weren't enforced. No matter, it was too late to stop what came. For the colonists had become self-reliant. And self-reliant people don't need other people to do things for them-even rule them. In fact, they prefer to do such things for themselves. Self-reliance, you might say, is first cousin to independence.

Opening Gun

Now it needed but a jar to set off the explosion, and the Stamp Act did the trick. As first devised in 1765, the Act provided for a tax on many colonial imports, and the colonists protested long and loud. In Virginia a great public speaker, Patrick Henry, thundered against this heavy taxation. In Massachusetts a group called the "Sons of Liberty" raided the Royal Governor's mansion. By the time the Townsend Act was trimmed down to tax only tea, the colonists were determined to pay no taxes to the Crown on anything.

All over the country, Americans who had never even smelled a cup of tea were storming against the tax. It was the whole "royal system" they were riled at, of course-the commercial set-up which favored the Mother Country and reduced the colonies to the position of poor relations. From Maine to Georgia rebellion was in the air. Little Old New York was plastered with posters urging the people to revolt.

On December 16, 1773, a party of Boston patriots boarded an English ship in the harbor and dumped its cargo of tea in the drink.

Germanic King George lost his temper. The British Parliament ignored the advice of such democratically minded English statesmen as William Pitt, and slapped heavy penalties on Massachusetts to punish the colony for the "Boston Tea Party." The Port of Boston was ordered closed until the citizens paid for the tea . Troops were dispatched to Boston to maintain martial law.

"The die is cast," the king remarked as he put his seal on these orders. "The colonies must either triumph or submit." Massachusetts refused to submit. And every Colony except Georgia sent representatives to a meeting in Philadelphia to discuss the situation. This dramatic meeting, held in September, 1774, came to be called the First Continental Congress. Among the delegates were some great American spokesmen, including John and Sam Adams from Massachusetts, and George Washington and Patrick Henry from Virginia.

Sam Adams, a fighting school teacher, urged the colonies to take united action. But the colonies still regarded themselves much as separate countries, each with its own axe to grind. Little was accomplished beyond an agreement to boycott British trade until the penalties imposed on Massachusetts were lifted. A petition for redress was drawn up by the colonists and was forwarded to the king.

Meanwhile British General Gage and 5,000 Red Coats had arrived in Boston to enforce the royal law and arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, another patriot. Four years before, a regiment of Red Coats stationed in Boston were, involved in a riot in which a soldier had lost his head and killed four citizens. This fiasco, the "Boston Massacre," had raised a storm, and now the Red Coats on Boston Common were about as popular as smallpox.

Gage couldn't locate Adams and Hancock to arrest them. The town muttered like a brewing thunderstorm, and royalist sympathizers brought in a rumor that the colonists were storing arms and powder for a showdown. On April 18, 1775, Gage sent a detachment of troops to Concord where a secret store was supposedly cached.

Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith, rode into history to warn the countryside the Red Coats were coming. At Lexington a hundred American militiamen were ready. Gunfire crackled in the dawn, the militia was scattered, and the Red Coats tramped on to Concord. They destroyed a small bridge, didn't find much in the way of military stores, and retreated to Lexington, sniped at by colonists behind every tree and fence. The British were joined by reinforcements, but the red-coated troopers got the worst of everything. They returned to Boston with 389 casualties out of 1800 men.

And so the battle for independence was underway. From a skirmish at a small bridge the fighting was to spread all up and down the coast of America. Every colonist would soon be involved-and many Britishers, too. The Revolution had begun.