In 1775, Colonel Christopher Gadsden was in Philadelphia representing his home colony of South Carolina at the Continental Congress and presented this new naval flag to the Congress. It became the first flag used by the sea-going soldiers who eventually would become the United States Marines. This flag first saw combat under Commodore Hopkins, who was the first Commander-in-Chief of the new Continental Navy, when Washington’s Cruisers put to sea for the first time in February of 1776 to raid the Bahamas and capture stored British cannon and shot.