USS Brandywine (1825) - 1825: Conveying Marquis de Lafayette To France

1825: Conveying Marquis De Lafayette To France

From July 1824 to September 1825, the last surviving French General of the Revolutionary War, the Marquis de Lafayette, made a famous tour of the 24 states in the United States. At many stops on this tour he was received by the populace with a hero's welcome, and many honors and monuments were presented to commemorate and memorialize Lafayette's visit.

Susquehanna—a 44-gun frigate—was laid down on 20 September 1821 at the Washington Navy Yard. Shortly before she was to be launched in the spring of 1825, President John Quincy Adams decided to have an American warship carry the Marquis de Lafayette back to Europe, in the wake of his visit to the land he had fought to free almost 50 years before.

The general had expressed his intention of sailing for home sometime in the late summer or early autumn of 1825. Adams selected Susquehanna for this honor, and accordingly—as a gesture of the nation’s affection for Lafayette—the frigate was renamed Brandywine to commemorate the battle in which the Frenchman had shed his blood for American freedom. Launched on 16 June 1825 and christened by Sailing Master Marmaduke Dove, Brandywine was commissioned on 25 August 1825, Captain Charles Morris in command.

As an honor to the Marquis, officers were selected from as many States as possible and, where practicable, from descendants of persons who had distinguished themselves in the American Revolution. One of these young men selected as officer on the Brandywine's maiden voyage was 19-year old Tennessean Matthew Fontaine Maury, who would eventually make great influences in the science of oceanography. .

After fitting out at the navy yard, the frigate traveled down the Potomac River to await her passenger at St. Mary’s, Maryland, not far from the river’s mouth. Lafayette enjoyed a last state dinner to celebrate his 68th birthday on the evening of 6 September and then embarked in the steamboat Mount Vernon on 7 September for the trip downriver to join Brandywine. On 8 September, the frigate stood out of the Potomac River and sailed down Chesapeake Bay toward the open ocean.

After a stormy three weeks at sea, the warship arrived off Le Havre, France, early in October; and, following some initial trepidation about the government’s attitude toward Lafayette’s return to a France now ruled by the ultra reactionary King Charles X, Brandywine's passenger and her captain disembarked, the former to return home and the latter to tour the country for six months to study shipyards, ship design and other naval matters.