Naval Battles Quotes

The Persians arrived at an abandoned city and burned some of the major buildings. All the Athenian men went to the island of Salamis where he gathered Greeks from the other city states. They boarded ships and tricked the march larger Persian fleet into coming into the narrow part of the straits where it could not maneuver. The Greeks destroyed the Persian fleet with relatively few losses and with it went Xerxes dreams of conquest of the Greeks. The Persian navy could not feed their army and the Persians, the greatest empire of the day, retuned to Persia in defeat.

On October 7, 1571 the Spanish fleet delivered a crushing defeat to the Ottomans at the bay of Lepanto in Greece. Cervantes was a proud veteran of Lepanto.

The sloop Margaretta was escorting 2 small merchant vessels came into the port of Machias, Massachusetts to purchase some lumber and firewood. However the commanding officer of Margaretta did not like the terms of the negotiations and threatened the town. An aroused and angry group of patriots then boarded and attacked the two merchant ships. The commander of Margaretta then maneuvered out of the port having lost the two small ships. But the Patriots were angry with the commander of the sloop and being excellent seamen who knew the local waters, used one of the merchant ships and a small local vessel to chase down the Naval sloop. They then boarded and captured Margaretta and fatally wounded the commander, James Moore. While Lexington was the first land victory for the patriots, this was the first sea victory and the Margaretta was the first British warship that was captured by the Patriots.