I might add to that: "The ship (and its commander) helped establish the United States Navy as something that the British didn't want to mess with."
On a similar note:
If memory serves, our first test as a real nation (post-Constitution) usin our "fledgling" navy to clean out the Barbary Coast pirates in 1803 (something no other Navy or country had done for over 400 years) after they started making irrational demads for danegeld. We cleaned them out - and established the US Navy as something that *nobody* wanted to mess with. I don't think we've looked back since. Same general part of the world, too - looks like some people remember what the US Navy has *always* liked to do with pirates...