George Claghorn was an American soldier and shipwright. He served during the American Revolutionary War and was awarded the rank of colonel in the Massachusetts militia.
Background
George Claghorn was born on July 06, 1748 in Chilmark, Massachusetts, United States. He was a descendant of James Claghorn, a Scotchman who settled in or near Barnstable in the seventeenth century. His father was Shubael Claghorn, a soldier in the Louisburg expedition of 1743 and his mother was Experience Hawes.
Career
Claghorn served in the Revolutionary War as first lieutenant and then captain in the second Bristol regiment, and was wounded at Bunker Hill. Subsequently he became major and then colonel; and Colonel Claghorn he remained after he became a well-known ship-builder at New Bedford. There, in 1785, he built and launched the Rebecca, said to have been the first American whaler to double Cape Horn and obtain cargo oil in the Pacific. She was a vessel of 175 tons and aroused much interest because of her size.
In 1794 he was appointed naval constructor of the Constitution, one of the four 44- gun frigates authorized by Congress to protect commerce against the Algerine corsairs. The design was drawn by Joshua Humphreys of Philadelphia, and the keel was laid at Hartt’s naval yard in Boston. The frigate was nearing completion when a treaty was signed with Algiers in November 1795, and work was then suspended. The threatened rupture with France, however, moved Congress to provide for completion of three frigates—the Constitution, the United States, and the Constellation. Wednesday, Sepember 20, 1797, was the day set for the launching of the Constitution, when the president, the governor, and other notables were to attend. Solicitous that no accident should mar the launching, Claghorn issued a circular, September 18, 1797, warning his fellow citizens not to allow their curiosity to carry them too near the frigate or the water’s edge. “The loss of life of a single citizen, ” he declared, “would mar the satisfaction and pleasure that the constructor would otherwise enjoy of building and constructing for the ocean a powerful agent of national justice which hope dictates may become the pride and ornament of the American race”.
To the chagrin of the builder, the vessel moved only a few feet, when the props were knocked away, and refused to budge farther. Two days later a second attempt was made to launch her and again she stuck on the ways. Finally, on October 21, “she descended into the bosom of the ocean with an ease and dignity” gratifying to thousands of spectators. No blame was attached to Claghorn for these failures. On the contrary he was commended for his skill, intelligence, and circumspection. He had erred, if at all, from excessive caution. Desiring to avoid a repetition of the accident to the United States, which had been damaged at the launching by a premature and too rapid descent, he had given a smaller declivity to the ways of the Constitution. The excessive pressure on her keel amidships, however, gave the Constitution a permanent hog or sag.
Achievements
Connections
Claghorn married Deborah Brownell, who bore him four sons and four daughters.