← Back to the front page

Fascinating and Lesser Known People Who Changed American History

Khalid Elhassan May 5, 2020 33 min

Normandy landings - Operation Overlord — Men of the 320th in Normandy. YouTube

37. An Exceptional Rise in the US Navy

The USS Argus, aboard which Uriah Levy served and fought during the War of 1812. Wikimedia

Uriah Levy joined the Navy as a cabin boy in 1806, and fought in the War of 1812. His ship, the USS Argus, raided British shipping in the English Channel and captured 20 vessels before it was itself captured in 1813. Levy and his crewmates spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Britain. Upon his release, he fought in the Second Barbary War (1815).

Few who started off as cabin boys rose high in the US Navy, but Levy was an exception, and exceptional. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1817, became a sailing master – a US Navy rank in those days between lieutenant and captain – in 1837, and made captain in 1844.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.