No Navy Day Observance This Year

The on-again, off-again celebration of Navy Day is off this year. 

Main Street Coordinator Bruce MacGunnigle, who organized the celebration in 2000 and from 2005 through last year, says it has fallen victim to lack of participants and lack of funding. Money from the town’s parade budget isn’t available this year.

has been one of the events connecting residents to the town’s role in the Revolutionary War, usually involving a parade and sometimes key Navy officers.

The celebration has also been an annual reminder of the East Greenwich and Rhode Island claim as the birthplace of the Navy.

On June 12, 1775, the Rhode Island Navy was created by an act of the legislature while in session at the Kent County Courthouse in East Greenwich.

This first formal navy in this hemisphere consisted of two ships, the Katy and the Washington, under the command of Commodore Abraham Whipple.

The ships were the forerunner of the Continental Navy, which was authorized by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. That bill was introduced by Rhode Island delegate Stephen Hopkins on instructions of the state’s General Assembly.

The Katy was renamed the Providence and became the Continental Navy’s first ship and later became the first command of John Paul Jones.

Because the Continental Navy began in Philadelphia on October 13^th, 1775, the Navy claims that date as its birthday.

A number of other towns claim to be the birthplace of the American Navy, but there are no dates as early as the resolution which passed in East Greenwich and none involve specific government authorization.

As part of the Navy Day observance in 2000 the schoolship Providence sailed into Greenwich Bay, docking at Norton's Marina for student visits.

The ship was idle for the last three years, but was launched again this spring in Newport by owner Thorpe Leeson, who purchased the replica from the city of Providence. He said it would be avaiable for charters and Tall Ships education and training.