On this day 250 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts, General Washington issued an order to Captain Nicholson Broughton of Marblehead, Massachusetts to

• take the Command of a Detachment of sd Army & proceed on Board the Schooner Hannah at Beverly lately fitted out & equipp’d with Arms Ammunition & Proviss. at the Continental Expence.
• You are to proceed as Commander of sd Schooner immediately on a Cruize against such Vessels as may be found on the High Seas or elsewhere bound inwards or outwards to or from Boston in the Service of the ministerial Army & to take & seize all such Vessels laden with Soldiers, Arms, Ammunition or Provisions for or from sd Army or which you shall have good Reason to suspect are in such Service.

Some historians consider the 78-ton schooner Hannah to be the first ship of the US Navy. It was certainly the first ship of the US Armed Forces.

Sources: “Instructions to Captain Nicholson Broughton, 2 September 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0292. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775 – 15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985, pp. 398–401.]; https://archive.org/details/journalsofeachprma00mass/page/242/mode/2up?view=theater