On Friday, October 13, 1775, Congress decided to send two ships to harass the vessels supplying the British Army in America, thereby creating what would become the most powerful navy in the history of the world. Since that fateful day in Philadelphia, the men and women of the United States Navy have created the finest traditions of service and honor, and supplied a pantheon of heroes who have upheld them. In The Greatest U.S. Navy Stories Ever Told, editor Iain Martin has accumulated these sailors' most amazing true tales of service and sacrifice, from John Paul Jones's famous address in 1799 before beating the vastly superior HMS Serapis--"I have not begun to fight!"--to the carrier pilots and personnel who patrol in the Persian Gulf today. James Fenimore Cooper recounts the story of the navy's oldest ship still in commission--the USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides")--as she defeated HMS Levant and HMS Cyane in one of the most impressive feats of wartime seamanship in the days of sail. George Dewey gives an eyewitness account of the victory over the Spanish in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, at the dawn of the American Century and subsequent U.S. supremacy in the Pacific. From Joe Rochefort's contributions during the miraculous and pivotal victory at Midway, and the terrifying experience of a tooth-rattling depth-charge attack deep beneath the waves in the Silent Service, to the capture of the U-505 by Dan Gallery, and the tense cat-and-mouse games between submarines in the Cold War, The Greatest U.S. Navy Stories Ever Told recounts the most remarkable characters of the U.S. Navy, and the unforgettable stories they lived.