15 Facts About Joshua Barney

Joshua Barney was an American naval officer who served in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War and in the French Navy during the French Revolutionary Wars.

Joshua Barney later achieved the rank of commodore in the United States Navy and served in the War of 1812.

Joshua Barney went to sea at the age of 12 in 1771.

Joshua Barney's grandson Joseph Nicholson Barney was a United States Navy officer.

Joshua Barney wrote an account of this in The Memoirs of Commodore Barney, published in Boston in 1832.

Joshua Barney was given command of Monk and sailed for France with dispatches for Benjamin Franklin, returning with news that peace had been declared.

Joshua Barney then joined the French Navy, where he was made commander of a squadron.

Between 1796 and 1802 Joshua Barney served as a captain in the French Navy.

Joshua Barney sailed her from Rochefort to ferry weapons and ammunition to Cap-Francais.

At the outbreak of the War of 1812, after a successful but unprofitable privateering cruise as commander of the Baltimore schooner Rossie, in which he captured the Post Office Packet Service packet ship Princess Amelia, Joshua Barney entered the US Navy as a captain, and commanded the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, a fleet of gunboats defending Chesapeake Bay.

Joshua Barney authored the plan to defend the Chesapeake, which was submitted to Secretary of the Navy, William Jones and accepted on August 20,1813.

Joshua Barney was commissioned as a captain in the United States Flotilla Service on 25 April 1814.

Joshua Barney was severely wounded, receiving a bullet deep in his thigh that could never be removed.

Commodore Joshua Barney died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 10 December 1818 en route to Kentucky, from complications related to the wound he received at the Battle of Bladensburg.

In Washington, DC, both Barney Circle and Commodore Joshua Barney Drive, NE, are named in his honor.