gship of Commander-in-Chief Esek Hopkins.
This vessel was of English build and had been employed in commerce for
nine or ten years, making two voyages to the Indian Ocean during that
time. She had space for two hundred and twenty men, and had sixteen
guns, carried for the benefit of pirates. She had been put in full
repair and had now become a frigate of twenty-eight guns. Such was the
first vessel of the Continental Navy. An old account of the
embarkation of Commodore Hopkins at Philadelphia says:--

The Alfred was anchored at the foot of Walnut Street. On a
brilliant morning early in February, 1776, gay streamers were
seen floating from every masthead and spar on the river. At nine
o'clock a full-manned barge threaded its way among the floating
ice to the Alfred, bearing the commodore, who had chosen that
vessel for his flagship. He was greeted with thunders of
artillery and the shouts of the multitude.

When he stepped on board the deck of the Alfred, Captain Saltonstall
gave a signal, and Lieutenant Jones hoisted a new flag prepared for
the occasion. It is believed to have displayed a union with thirteen
stripes crossed by a rattlesnake in some position, with the ominous
motto, "Don't tread on me." When the flag reached the mast-head, the
crowds cheered and the guns fired a salute,--as well they might, for
this was the first ensign ever flung to the breeze on an American
man-of-war. Paul Jones appreciated the honor of raising it, but he was
no admirer of the rattlesnake flag. In his journal he wrote:--

I was always at loss to know by what queer fancy or by whose
notion that device was first adopted. For my own part, I never
could see how or why a venomous serpent could be the combatant
emblem of a brave and honest folk fighting to be free. Of course
I had no choice but to break the pennant as it was given to me.
But I always abhorred the device.

Three weeks after the Alfred was put in commission, the little fleet
sailed away from Philadelphia amid the cheers of thousands of people.
One of the eye-witnesses said that the ships wore the Union Flag with
thirteen stripes in the field. Of the admiral's flag an English writer
said, "We learn that the vessels bearing this flag have a sort of
commission from a society of people at Philadelphia, calling
themselves the continental congress." Scornfully as he spoke of
Congress, there is at least one record