Some quotes

**Anav** · 11-30-2011, 17:04

Famous Navy Quotes: Who Said Them and When

"...without a Respectable Navy, Alas America!"

Captain John Paul Jones, 17 October 1776, in a letter to Robert Morris.
[Morgan, William James ed. Naval Documents of the American Revolution. vol. 6. (Washington, DC: Naval History Division, 1972): 1303.]

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"I have not yet begun to fight!"

Captain John Paul Jones said this during the famous battle between Bonhomme Richard and Serapis on 23 September 1779. It seems that some of Jones' men cried for surrender, but not John Paul Jones. Captain Richard Pearson of Serapis asked Jones if he had surrendered. Jones uttered the immortal words: "I have not yet begun to fight!" So, at least, Lt. Richard Dale later recalled.

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"I wish to have no Connection with any Ship that does not Sail fast for I intend to go in harm's way."

Captain John Paul Jones, 16 November 1778, in a letter to le Ray de Chaumont.
[Morison, Samuel Eliot. John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959): 182.]

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"It follows than as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious."

President George Washington, 15 November 1781, to Marquis de Lafayette.
[The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799. vol.23. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1937): 341.]

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"Don't give up the ship!"

Tradition has it that Captain James Lawrence said these heroic words after being mortally wounded in the engagement between his ship, the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, and HMS Shannon on 1 June 1813. As the wounded Lawrence was carried below, he ordered "Tell the men to fire faster! Don't give up the ship!"

Although Chesapeake was forced to surrender, Captain Lawrence's words lived on as a rallying cry during the war. Oliver Hazard Perry honored his dead friend Lawrence when he had the motto sewn onto the private battle flag flown during the Battle of Lake Erie, 10 September 1813.
[William S. Dudley, ed., The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History. vol.2 (Washington, DC.: US Government Printing Office, 1992): 559]

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"We have met the enemy and they are ours..."

Oliver Hazard Perry's immortal dispatch to Major General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, 10 September 1813, "We have met the enemy and they are ours-- two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop." The victory secured the Great Lakes region for the United States and ended the threat of invasion from that quarter.
[William S. Dudley, ed., The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History. vol.2 (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1992): 553.]