Act before the vessels could put to sea. Horatio and Curacio departed New York on 2 September 1818, with their armament and other equipment transported in another vessel. Both corvettes arrived in Buenos Aires on 12 November 1818. After some delay, Curacio took aboard her armament and sailed for Chile, where she participated in the liberation of Peru under the new name of Independencia. Horatio’s fate was quite different. Captain Joseph Skinner had sailed from New York with a note for 69,544 pesos to be paid upon arrival in Buenos Aires. Wary of efforts to take possession of the corvette without settling the debt, Skinner sailed for Rio de Janeiro, where he sold the vessel to the Portuguese government to satisfy the debt. In the end, Horatio did not go to her intended owners. Finally, Henry Eckford did not find a ready buyer for Regulus. He advertised the vessel while the ship was on the stocks, and the ads continued to run through the end of the year. Eckford offered the ship to the US Navy and was turned down. Regulus was ultimately sold the following August to Spanish government interests, demonstrating that there was no political bias on the part of New York shipbuilders—money talked. Regulus put to sea for Havana at about the same time as the other two corvettes departed New York. She was also required to post a bond of $140,000, said to be twice the value of the vessel. New York shipbuilders would continue to take new contracts from foreign governments and build warships into the 1860s, but as one of the first attempts to build vessels in 1817 the story of the three corvettes is a study in diplomacy mixed with Yankee shipbuilding skills. The late James G. Brown (1946–2018) was a lifelong sailor, having grown up racing boats on the waters of Lake Michigan, Long Island Sound, and Casco Bay in Maine. He spent forty-seven years working in investment banking, but he was also an active amateur maritime historian and genealogist; he recently served as a trustee of the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum/USS Slater in Albany. In the course of his genealogy research, Jim discovered he was a first cousin, six times removed, of shipbuilder William Henry
Brown, builder of the original 1851 schooner yacht America and nephew of the famous New York shipbuilders Adam and Noah Brown. His article “William Henry Brown and the Building of the Schooner America” was published in the summer 2013 issue of Sea History. After we had accepted this article for publication in Sea History, his wife, Alison, informed us of his passing. Fair Winds Jim, and thank you for sharing your work with us.
NOTES <?> Letter from A. & N. Brown to Secretary Jones, 29 June 1813. Letter requests a contract for the sloop of war and states “she has already been started.” National Archives, Misc. Letters, 4:121. <?> Letter from Secretary Jones to John Bullis, 24 August 1813, National Archives, Washington, DC, Private letters 1 Feb. 1813–20 Jan. 1814, p. 62. <?> Letter from Secretary of the Navy Jones to Commodore Chauncey, 19 September 1813, National Archives, Washington, DC, Private letters 1 Feb. 1813–20 Jan. 1814, pp. 69–70. <?> Letter from Secretary of the Navy Jones to A. & N. Brown, 16 December 1813, National Archives, Washington, DC, Misc. Letters, 7:98. <?> Letter from Secretary of the Navy Jones to A. & N. Brown, 12 January 1814, National Archives, Washington, DC, General Letters, 12:72. <?> The National Advocate, New York, NY, 21 March 1814, “A man of war brig pierced for 22 guns will be launched from the shipyard of Adam and Noah Brown about half past 8 o’clock this morning.” <?> Letter from A. & N. Brown, 8 March 1814, National Archives, Washington, DC, Misc. Letters, 2:85. <?> Letter from Secretary of the Navy Jones to A. & N. Brown, 15 March 1814, National Archives, Washington, DC, General Letters, 12:136-37. <?> Albion, Robert G., The Rise of New York Port, Charles Scribner & Sons, New York, NY, 1939, p. 307. <?> Farmer’s Register, Troy, NY, 23 January 1816. <?> Bemis, Samuel Flagg, Early Diplomatic
Missions From Buenos Aires to the United States 1811–1824, American Antiquarian Society, April 1939, pp. 49–55. <?> Chapelle, Howard I., The Search for Speed Under Sail, p. 256. <?> The Executive Documents printed by order of The House of Representatives during the Second Session of the Forty-Second Congress, 1871–72, in Eighteen Volumes, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1872, p. 212. <?> New York Columbian, New York, NY, 24 November 1817. <?> New York Daily Advertiser, New York, NY, 26 February 1819. <?> Executive Documents, pp. 57–60. <?> New York Columbian, 24 November 1817. <?> Holdcamper, Forest R., List of American-Flag Merchant Vessels That Received Certificates of Enrollment at the Port of New York, 1789–1867, Washington, DC: US National Archives, 1968 REF HE565. U5A43, p. 156, 329. <?> Selig, Steven M., Draughts, The Henry Eckford Story, Agreka History Preserved, www.historypreserved.com, Scottsdale, AZ, 2008, p. 109. <?> Daily Advertiser, New York, 5 January 1818. <?> Early Diplomatic Missions From Buenos Aires to the United States 1811–1824, p. 71. <?> Ibid, pp. 71–72. <?> Ibid, p. 73. <?> National Advocate, New York, NY, 2 September 1818. <?> Long Island Star, Brooklyn, NY, 9 September 1818. <?> Dutch Newspaper Zieirkzeesche Courant, 19 February 1819, cited in a blog posting 30 December 2011, http://warshipsresearch.blogspot.com/. <?> Early Diplomatic Missions From Buenos Aires to the United States 1811–1824, p. 73. <?> Ibid. <?> New York Columbian, New York, 26 December 1817. <?> Selig, Steven M., Draughts, The Henry Eckford Story, Agreka History Preserved, www.historypreserved.com, Scottsdale, AZ, 2008, p. 109. <?> National Advocate, New York, 2 September 1818.
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