USS Warrington (DD-383)

Lewis Warrington, born on 3 November 1782 at Williamsburg, Va., attended the College of William and Mary briefly before accepting an appointment as a midshipman in the Navy on 6 January 1800. His first duty, in the frigate Chesapeake, took him to the West Indies where his ship cruised with a squadron during the last year of the Quasi-War with France. His ship appears to have engaged in one action near the end of the cruise. On New Year's Day 1801, she took the French privateer La Jeune Creole.

Following the cessation of hostilities with France, Midshipman Warrington remained in the Navy. His ship spent most of 1801 in ordinary at Norfolk. The following year, Warrington was transferred to the frigate President for service in the Mediterranean against the Barbary pirates. Over the next five years, he remained with the Mediterranean Squadron, serving successively in President, Vixen, and Enterprise. Promoted to lieutenant in 1805, he returned home in 1807 to assume command of a gunboat at Norfolk, Va. In 1809, Lt. Warrington voyaged to Europe in Siren as a dispatch courier. He next served a tour of duty in Essex.

When the war with England began in June of 1812, Warrington was in Congress serving as the frigate's first lieutenant while she patrolled the North Atlantic. During his tour of duty in that warship, she made two successful war cruises, capturing nine prizes off the east coast of the United States during the first and four off the Atlantic seaboard of South America during the second.

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From the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, compiled by the Naval History and Heritage Command (Warrington II (DD-383)). A work of the United States Government, in the public domain.