Marine Corps

Soldiers at Sea

Influenced by the Royal Navy's marines of the 18th century, the Continental Congress and its congressional successor under the Constitution of 1787 provided the warships of the Continental Navy (1775–83) and the U.S. Navy (1794– present) with detachments of marines for routine shipboard duties (to prevent or suppress mutinies, to enforce ship reg-ulations) and for combatant functions like firing muskets from “the fighting tops” or sail platforms, manning guns in an emergency, and leading boarding parties and raids against shoreline objectives. The Continental Marines, authorized by Congress on November 10, 1775, never exceeded 2,000 officers and men and did not play an important role in the Revolution. Nevertheless, ships' guards did participate in the few ship-to-ship engagements of the sea war, formed two small battalions for naval expeditions against British posts in the Caribbean and Canada, and participated in one cam-paign (at Princeton, 1777) with the Continental Army. A force recruited and deployed for local missions and single ship cruises, the Continental Marines disappeared with the Continental Navy at war's end.

Convinced that the new nation required a navy to com-bat pirate operations in the Mediterranean and to deter an Anglo–French naval war against “neutral” maritime com-merce in the Caribbean, Congress reestablished the Navy in 1794 by authorizing the building of six new frigates and the commissioning of lesser warships. The Naval Act of 1794 provided that large warships would have marine ships' guards; another act, the Naval Act of July 11, 1798, desig-nated these guards as a “Corps of Marines.” The Act of 1798, refined by the Marine Corps Act of 1834, made the U.S. Marine Corps a separate service within the Department of the Navy. The operational control of marine ships' guards and detachments at naval stations (marine barracks) rested with the senior naval officer in command. A senior Marine Corps officer, however, designated the commandant, would serve as the commanding officer of all marines for recruit-ing, training, support, discipline, administration, and related administrative matters as defined by Congress. Members of the Marine Corps would govern themselves ashore by the Articles of War (U.S. Army) and at sea by naval regulations; any confusions (and they were many) were adjudicated by the secretary of the Navy and Congress.

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