By Steve Deal

Editor’s note: The following address, ‘Two Hundred and Fifty Years of American Sea Power,’ will be delivered by Steve Deal, Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.) at the Vermont Veterans’ Home in Bennington on Monday, October 13, 2025, the 250th birthday of the United State Navy.

Two and a half centuries ago, a new people, barely formed, and hardly united, together made a bold, courageous decision that would secure both their economic future and our most cherished freedoms today.

Good afternoon to our beloved family of the Vermont Veterans’ Home, residents and staff; distinguished guests, shipmates, and my fellow Veterans.

Everything we love about America today — the chance to shape and live out our dreams, to make a better life for our children — was forged in that desperate struggle of 1775.

In that year, Americans were not yet a nation, but a collection of disparate colonies under a distant empire.

For more than a century, Britain’s Navigation Acts had darkly loomed over the future of American commerce.

And just sixteen years earlier, on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec City, British forces had finally defeated the French and claimed Canada — a victory that changed the political structure of North America, and indeed, the power map of the world.  

But Britain’s triumph came with crushing debt, and in the years that followed, London turned to its colonies to help pay for it. 

What began as victory over France soon became a slow, economic stranglehold over America, as Britain began to enforce those Navigation Acts, and what was formerly passed over with a royal wave now came down with an iron fist.

After that war, known here as the French and Indian War, taxes rose, and restrictions tightened. 

British warships policed the coast to enforce new laws like the Sugar Act and Stamp Act, all meant to raise revenue from the colonies.

British captains stopped colonial vessels, seized their cargoes, and even abducted American Sailors — called “impressment” of His Majesty’s subjects – forcing them into the Royal Navy against their will. 

Every North American harbor knew the fearsome threat of a press gang. 

Every merchant knew his livelihood could practically vanish at the sound of a British officer’s orders. 

By the spring of 1775, this was no longer about taxation or policy — it was about survival and freedom.

At Lexington and Concord, blood had already been shed. 

The British army occupied Boston, and its navy patrolled every major harbor from Halifax to Charleston.

Then, Parliament went even further. It eventually passed the Prohibitory Act, ordering the Royal Navy to blockade the entire American coast and declaring all colonial trade illegal. 

Every American vessel — whatever flag it flew, whether a pine tree, a rattlesnake, or simply the word Liberty — was fair game for capture.

Overnight, the colonies were not only under military siege but economically cut off from the world.

Farmers could hardly sell their crops. Merchants could not move their goods. The lifeblood of the New World — commerce — had been choked off.

The British Empire thought the message was clear: submit – or starve.

But in that moment of crisis — when the colonies were without money, without allies, and without ships — a few men in Philadelphia decided that America would no longer beg for permission to trade or to live free.

One of them was John Adams.

In the autumn of 1775, Adams rose in the Continental Congress with a proposal many of his colleagues called “the maddest idea in the world.”

He urged the creation of a navy.

At a time when most of Congress feared to provoke Britain further, Adams dared to imagine an America that could command its own destiny at sea.

To most delegates, the idea seemed reckless.  What was Adams thinking?  

Congress had few shipyards, little treasury, no trained sailors — and no hope of matching the Royal Navy, which ruled the oceans with more than 250 ships of war.

But Adams saw the matter differently. He argued not merely from pride, but for economic survival.

He understood that Britain’s true power did not come from its armies or its king, but from its commerce.

If commerce was the source of British strength, then the defense of commerce must be the foundation of American independence.

As a Massachusetts lawyer who had watched his own state’s trade strangled by British patrols, Adams knew the colonies could not remain free if their harbors were closed and their merchants ruined.

He had five clear purposes for a navy — all economic at their core:

• To Protect American Commerce. Maritime trade was the lifeblood of the colonies. Without ships to defend their ports and coasts, the economy would collapse before the Revolution could begin.
• To Wage Economic Warfare. Britain’s empire depended on trade. By seizing its merchant ships and supply vessels, America could “strike at the very heart of the enemy.”
• To Generate Revenue. Captured ships and cargoes — prizes — could be sold, turning naval combat into a means of financing the war itself, while some of those captured ships could be used to fight the British.
• To Avoid a Ruinous Land War. Vast armies drained manpower and money. A small, mobile fleet could defend coasts and move troops and supplies at a fraction of the cost. A navy, Adams thought, is a natural defense for a maritime people.
• To Secure Foreign Recognition. No nation would support a rebellion that could not reach the sea, much less feed itself. A navy would prove that this new republic intended to stand among the maritime powers of the world.

Many in Congress still scoffed, but Adams refused to yield.

He reminded them that the British maritime stranglehold had already made this an economic war.

If we cannot trade, he warned, we cannot live; if we cannot defend trade, we cannot be free.

On October 13, 1775, Congress finally voted to arm two vessels to intercept British supply ships — a small step that became the first act that formed what would eventually be…the United States Navy.

A few weeks later, Adams and others in that Continental Congress created the Navy’s first and still-best joint partner – the United States Marine Corps.  

And Adams was appointed to the Naval Committee, where he helped draft the Navy’s first rules and regulations, steeped in the kind of classical virtue and discipline that could match the rigors of combat at sea. 

John Adams was no sailor, but he understood what many did not: commerce and naval power must rise together – or fall together.

That idea was tested just one year later — not out on the raging main, or the salty blue ocean, but right here, in the calmer and relatively shallow waters that border modern-day Vermont.

In 1776, as the British prepared to strike south from Canada and divide the colonies, Benedict Arnold and his men began building a fleet from scratch at Whitehall and Ticonderoga, using timber and iron drawn from Vermont’s forests and forges.

In barely three months, they launched fifteen small gunboats and galleys — makeshift ships armed with whatever cannon they could find — to challenge a British squadron twice their size.

On October 11, 1776, near Valcour Island in Lake Champlain, they fought from dawn until dusk against overwhelming odds.

And when that day ended, Arnold’s surviving ships slipped through the fog and darkness, tactically retreating down the lake, until they were finally cornered and burned near what is today Ferrisburgh, Vermont.

Though the fleet was destroyed, its defiance strategically delayed the British invasion long enough for winter to halt their campaign.

That delay bought the American Revolution something priceless: time — time for new armies to form, time for foreign aid to arrive, and time for Washington to strike at Trenton.

So, when we say that the U.S. Navy was born in Congress and launched in Whitehall – we must add that it was tempered not far from here, in Vermont.

These familiar waters carried the Navy’s first fight — a battle that proved that ingenuity and courage could offset numbers and power.  It proved that America was an idea built to last. 

In his diaries, John Adams records that he argued in Congress, in that fall of 1775: “Whether We can raise a Navy is an important Question. We may have a Navy—and to carry on the War We must have a Navy. Can We do this without Trade? Can we gain Intelligence without Trade. Can We get Powder without Trade? Every Vessell you send out is thrown away….Without Trade our People must starve. We cannot live. We cannot feed or cloath our People. My Resolution was that I would do and suffer any Thing rather than not be free. But I resolved not to do impossible Things.”

Adams was proven right. What began as an act of desperation became the cornerstone of national strength.

In 1776, sea power bought the Revolution time to survive. 

In the war of 1812, again waged against the British, naval force preserved our trade and sovereignty. 

In our Second World War and after 1945, American sea power carried victory and helped to rebuild a world economy. 

During the Cold War, it kept the peace by keeping the sea lanes open, deterring a burgeoning Soviet Navy, and offsetting enormous Russian ground force advantages in Europe. 

Today, many of the same truths endure.

More than 90 percent of world trade still travels by sea.

Our energy, our food supply, our manufacturing base, and even our digital economy — the undersea cables that carry our data, and thus our financial trade — depend on secure oceans.

When the Navy and our allies keep those lanes open, the world economy thrives.

When the seas grow contested, commerce falters, and ordinary citizens feel it first — at the store, the gas pump, and the paycheck.

Our Navy remains what John Adams envisioned: a shield of prosperity, a guarantor that a free nation can trade with the world on its own terms, and fear no one on the open seas. 

Finally, our Navy and Vermont together understand what resilience means.

From the defiant shipbuilders on Lake Champlain to the veterans gathered here today, our state embodies the spirit that built and sustained this Navy.

It is a spirit of ingenuity, courage, and a deep understanding that the freedom to build a life — to enjoy freedom – to pursue happiness — is inextricably linked to our ability to defend it.

As we mark 250 years of the birth of the United States Navy, let us remember the foresight of those who first called for its creation — along the bravery of all who have served — and the enduring truth they gave us:

That our nation’s economy, its security, and its liberty require a strong United States Navy and Marine Corps.  

And when we say strong, we don’t mean just a contender.  We mean second to none.  

We mean a decisive naval force, one that provides our daughters and sons the kinds of competitive advantages no other nation on this earth can match. 

Because when we go to sea in ships of war, we aren’t looking for a fair fight.  

We are counting on victory.  Or better yet, on convincing those who would challenge us that it’s just not worth the trouble.   

That is the Navy that John Adams wanted, that is the Navy we Vermonters are proud of, and the that is Navy we still need, more than ever before.

Thank you, and may God bless our Navy and Marine Corps, our Veterans, and the United States of America.

Steve Deal is a retired naval officer who resides in St. Albans, VT.  After twenty seven years of active duty and holding three commands, he last served as deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of the Navy.