During the late 1790s, the United States Navy was just beginning to emerge from a near-defunct status that resulted from its having been disbanded at the end of the Revolutionary War. American shipping at sea was extremely vulnerable during this time. Attacks by Barbary pirates on American shipping prompted the Naval Act of 1794, which reestablished the Navy, but the newly commissioned ships, which included the frigate USS Constitution, took years to enter service. The years from 1798 to 1800 mark the period of the so-called Quasi-War with France, an undeclared naval war that resulted largely from disagreements over the United States’ repayment of war debts incurred to finance the Revolution.

This tankard by Philadelphia silversmith Joseph Lownes is a record of this moment in French-American relations. As its inscription recounts, Captain J. C. Breevor, commanding the ship Fair American, left Philadelphia for Havana with a cargo of flour, timber, furniture, and other goods, only to be captured on October 7, 1798, by French privateers, who operated quite extensively against American shipping. By what must have been a feat of considerable courage and daring, Captain Breevor and two of his men managed to retake the ship from her captors and return her to Charleston, South Carolina. The tankard was part of a gift of appreciation—a “Tribute of Applause,” according to the inscription—given by the firm that had underwritten the insurance on the ship. Such underwriting was at that time shifting away from private individuals to corporations, as was the case with the Fair American’s ill-fated voyage. The ship’s story did not end with the tankard, however. Captain Breevor felt that his efforts in saving the ship and its cargo were deserving of a greater reward, and the courts agreed, issuing a judgment in his favor.

The tankard is a handsome example of the federal style, clean and simple in its outlines and profiles. Made of seamed sheet silver, this tankard is the first of this form to enter the collection. Such examples are sometimes called “hoop” tankards for the horizontal bands that decorate the body. Although silversmiths in other American cities made hoop tankards, the form is associated more with Philadelphia than with other major centers.