USS Ranger was a sloop-of-war in the Continental Navy in active service in 1777–1780, the first to bear her name. Built at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on Badger's Island in Kittery, Maine, she is famed for the one-ship raiding campaign by Captain John Paul Jones, during naval operations of the American Revolutionary War. In six months spent primarily in British waters she captured five prizes (mostly merchantmen), staged a single failed attack on the English mainland at Whitehaven, and caused Royal Navy ships to be dispatched against her in the Irish Sea. Jones was detached in Brest, France to take charge of , turning over command of Ranger to his first officer, Lieutenant Thomas Simpson. Under Simpson Ranger went on to capture twenty-four more prizes abroad the Atlantic and along the U.S. coast during 1778 and 1779. Sent to the South in late 1779 to aid the U.S. garrison at Charleston, South Carolina, during the British siege, she continued her raiding career until ultimately forced to take station on the Cooper River, and was captured on May 11, 1780, with the fall of the city. She was brought into the Royal Navy as HMS Halifax. Decommissioned in 1781 in Portsmouth, England, she was sold that year as a merchant ship. History Ranger (initially called Hampshire) was launched on May 10, 1777 by James Hackett, master shipbuilder, at the shipyard of John Langdon on what is now called Badger's Island in Kittery, Maine; Captain John Paul Jones in command. Continental Navy After fitting out, she sailed for France on November 1, 1777, carrying dispatches telling of General Burgoyne's surrender to the commissioners in Paris. On the voyage over, two British prizes were captured. Ranger arrived at Nantes, France, on December 2, where Jones sold the prizes and delivered the news of the victory at Saratoga to Benjamin Franklin. On February 14, 1778, Ranger received a nine-gun salute to the new American flag, the "Stars and Stripes" from the ship of the line Robuste, under Lamotte-Picquet, at Quiberon Bay. This was the first salute from a warship and, the second to an American fighting vessel by a foreign power (the first salute was received by when on November 16, 1776 she arrived at St. Eustatius and the Dutch island returned her 11-gun salute). Ranger sailed from Brest April 10, 1778, for the Irish Sea and four days later captured brigantine "Dolphin" between the