Born in a Bar: The Marine Corps' Tun Tavern Birthday
On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress ordered two battalions of Marines raised — and recruiter Samuel Nicholas set up shop at Philadelphia's Tun Tavern.
The United States Marine Corps was born in a bar.
On November 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress — then governing a rebellion that was not yet a country — authorized two battalions of Marines to serve aboard the ships of the new American navy. The resolution called for good seamen, able to serve at sea. The man handed the job of raising them was Samuel Nicholas, a 31-year-old Philadelphia innkeeper, and he set up his recruiting headquarters at Tun Tavern, the busy brewhouse he knew best.
Tun Tavern was no ordinary drinking hole. Founded near Philadelphia's riverfront in the late 1600s, it was a gathering place for merchants, Freemasons, and revolutionaries. Benjamin Franklin had drilled a militia there years earlier, and members of the Continental Congress met at its tables while planning independence. When Nicholas needed tough, sea-hardened men, he knew exactly where to find them.
According to tradition, Nicholas teamed up with the tavern's proprietor, Robert Mullan — sometimes called the first Marine recruiter in history — and signed up marksmen right at the tavern's tables, luring them with cold beer and the promise of high-seas adventure. Whether the beer did the recruiting or the cause did, the men came: the first company of Continental Marines numbered about 100 Rhode Islanders.
The timing mattered. Congress was assembling a navy and needed sharpshooters to serve as infantry at sea. Nicholas, though never formally appointed commandant, led the new force in practice. In March 1776 he led some 200 Marines and 50 sailors in the Corps' first amphibious landing, on New Providence Island in the Bahamas, seizing 88 guns and more than 16,000 rounds of ammunition from the British in a 13-day operation. That December, three companies of Marines marched with Washington's army in the surprise attack at the Battle of Trenton.
The Continental Marines were disbanded after the war and reborn in 1798 as the United States Marine Corps — but November 10, 1775 stuck as its birthday. The tavern itself did not survive: it burned down in 1781, and Interstate 95 runs over its original site today, marked by a historical plaque.
But every November 10, Marines around the world still raise a glass to a Philadelphia pub — and to the idea that some of the finest military traditions can begin over a pint.
Photo: U.S. Department of the Navy photograph, National Archives (NARA), public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).
