USS Ganges
sloops-of-war of the United States Navy
USS Ganges was a man-of-war in the United States Navy during the Quasi-War with France.
She was originally a fast sailing merchantman, built in Philadelphia in 1794 for the East Indies trade and named for the Ganges, India's principal river, which flows into the Bay of Bengal. Ganges regularly sailed to Calcutta and Canton. Apparently, she returned to civilian service after serving in the U.S. Navy between 1798 and 1801.
Service history
She retained her merchant name when the U.S. Navy purchased her from the firm of Willing and Francis of Philadelphia on 3 May 1798. She cost $58,000 or $80,665, depending on the source. With hostilities with France imminent, the Navy hastily fitted her out, making her the first man-of-war to fit out and get to sea under the second organization of the Navy. In Navy service, she is described as being of 504 tons and carrying 24 guns and a crew of 220 men. Her first captain was Captain Richard Dale, who had returned in her from a voyage to China.
1798
Ganges sailed from Philadelphia on 24 May 1798 under Richard Dale, whose orders directed him to "seize, take and bring into a port of the United States" French armed ships "committing depredations" within one marine league of the coast between the Capes of Virginia and Long Island.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “USS Ganges” as sloops-of-war of the United States Navy. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as sloops-of-war of the United States Navy. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3547397. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1794, 1798 and 1801.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Ganges” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.