While there, John Paul Jones embarked on her, and she received additional salutes to the American Republic from the French.

Independence was a Continental sloop built in Baltimore, Maryland, and purchased and fitted out by the Marine Committee.

In September 1776 she cruised under Captain John Young along the Atlantic Ocean coast to the Caribbean Sea to guard American merchant trade in the West Indies.

In mid-1777 she sailed for France, arriving at Lorient in late September with important diplomatic dispatches.

She was in Quiberon Bay 14 February 1778 when John Paul Jones in Ranger received the first national salute to the flag—the first official recognition of the American Republic by a foreign power.