Heermann's Gull (Larus heermanni), a gull resident in the United States, Mexico and extreme southwestern British Columbia
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Lewis Heermann, (1779–1833), German, commissioned Surgeon's Mate in the United States Navy in 1802
On 16 February 1804, during the War with the Barbary States, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur left Heermann in command of the bomb ketch Intrepid while he and a fearless band of American seamen boarded the captured frigate Philadelphia in Tripoli Harbor, swept her Barbary captors' crew overboard, and set the frigate ablaze.
Heermann lived in Köben, Silesia, when he wrote the hymn, an area which suffered under the war.