American naval institutions preceded the present United States Constitution. The Continental Navy and the navy under the Articles of Confederation provided continuity into the later federal service. The modern Royal Navy likewise owes substantial institutional form to the Interregnum settlement, in addition to its sixteenth-century organization. Both examples show why service birthdays simplify a longer process of legal and political inheritance.
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The institutional origins of the US and Royal Navies
Both navies resist a single founding-date story because their modern institutions carried structures across constitutional and political transitions.