One Scotsman's contributions to the construction of fighting ships in the War of 1812 and through the next decade were so substantial that today the North Ayrshire town council proudly identifies him as "the father of the U.S. Navy," obviously a controversial claim in this country.

Henry Eckford was born at Kilwinning, near Irvine, Scotland, in March 1775, another of the remarkable Scots who emerged from their craggy homeland to illuminate the 18th and early 19th centuries. According to a local historian, Eckford's family eventually moved into town, to a home on Irvine's High Street between the tollbooth and Templeton's Bookstore, reportedly then a favorite haunt of the poet Robert Burns, today—less glamorously—near a Kwik Save supermarket.

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