If James Hackett’s life was about anything, it was about America. Born to a family of Massachusetts shipwrights in 1739, Hackett apprenticed in crafting the most sophisticated products made in Britain’s American colonies: merchant sailing ships. He was about 15 when longstanding European tensions erupted into the worldwide conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, and was quick to enlist in the most celebrated American unit to emerge from that bloody conflict—Rogers’ Rangers, the spiritual forebears of today’s U.S. special-operations forces.
James saw more brutal combat before the age of 21 than many career soldiers saw in a lifetime. In a small corps where promotion came hard, he earned the silver lace of a sergeant while still a teenager and fought at the head of the British army as it pushed its way up Lake Champlain toward Canada. In 1758 he was one of two survivors of an 11-man patrol ambushed by an enemy war party numbering more than 50. The other survivor was taken prisoner after having a compatriot’s heart stuffed in his mouth. A year later, Hackett himself was taken prisoner while reconnoitering about 70 miles north of his lines. Half of his patrol was wiped out, and he spent several months in captivity in Montreal before being released in a prisoner exchange.
Hackett’s shipbuilding skills came in handy to the army as it fought to gain control of the critical Champlain corridor. In addition to participating in the Rangers’ “light infantry” operations, he spent a portion of 1760 repairing scuttled French ships for British lake service. That experience set the stage for far greater accomplishments during the war for American independence.1
First in Arms
Hackett took up arms for the American Revolutionary cause four months before the world had ever heard of Lexington and Concord. In December 1774, while Hackett was living in Exeter, New Hampshire, Paul Revere brought word to the colony that troops of the British army might soon arrive to seize Portsmouth Harbor’s arsenal, Fort William and Mary. On the 14th, one of Hackett’s shipbuilding clients, John Langdon, led a raid on the lightly manned fort, hauling off about 100 barrels of gunpowder. By the 15th, when Continental Congressman John Sullivan led a second raid, Loyalist opposition was expected, and armed reinforcements were summoned. Hackett responded by leading an extralegal 50-man company of rebel infantry into the provincial capital, where he stood watch as cannon stripped from the fort were floated up the Piscataqua River for safekeeping. In British eyes, there was no question that James’ actions constituted high treason.2
The December incidents marked the opening of New Hampshire’s armed rebellion. On 19 April 1775, when American blood was shed at Lexington, Massachusetts, New Hampshire’s uprising became part of the wider American Revolution. Hackett, who one contemporary recalled was “as brave & laconac as a Sparton [sic],” was again among the first to respond, leading a company of volunteers to support his Massachusetts brethren. When the British government abandoned New Hampshire in the summer of 1775, he became a major in the Patriot forces guarding Portsmouth Harbor, and later may have led a company to the American lines investing Boston.3 His cohort, John Langdon, was by then serving in the Continental Congress and became James’ connection to the broad sweep of American affairs. The rebellion soon found ample use for Hackett’s talents.
The Shipbuilder-Patriot
When Congress established a Continental Navy in December 1775, Langdon, a former sea captain, persuaded his colleagues to appoint him agent for construction of the 32-gun frigate that New Hampshire was tasked to produce. Langdon eventually gave up his seat in Congress to become congressional agent of marine on the Piscataqua. James Hackett was his lead builder.
Hackett had previously submitted plans for construction of a “row galley” to the New Hampshire legislature, but could boast no military shipbuilding experience save for his efforts on Lake Champlain more than a decade before. Constructing a seagoing warship was an entirely different matter, one made difficult by Congress’s delay in providing drawings from which to work. Langdon, Hackett, fellow builders James Hill and Stephen Paul, and construction supervisor Thomas Thompson were nonetheless intent on getting New Hampshire’s ship into the fight. In February 1776 Langdon reported that his men were building a ship “of our own Drawing,” adding good-naturedly “[d]on’t Cramp my Genius and the ship will be Launched soon.”4
Remarkably, it was. On 21 May 1776, about two months after Hackett laid her keel, the 32-gun frigate Raleigh slid down the ways. Every detail down to the decoration was immediately finished off, and she would have been ready to sail in June if cannon, provisions, and enlistment papers had been on hand. The British later marveled at the ship’s construction. She is remembered today as one of the first warships completed for the Continental Navy and is the centerpiece of the seal and flag of the state of New Hampshire.5
Crews working on the Raleigh were required to participate in regular military training, no doubt under Major Hackett’s instruction, and Langdon soon recommended James for a Continental officer’s billet, either as captain of the Raleigh’s marines, or as colonel of an Army regiment being raised for service in New Hampshire. “[I]f he’s appointed [captain of marines] and will go,” said Langdon, “he’s the smartest Man in the Colony.” Hackett expressed the “warmest Inclination” for service as a local Continental colonel, but there was considerable political bickering about command of the regiment. Other candidates trumpeted their virtues, but (despite Langdon’s opinion that James was the “Compleatest Officer we have to comm[an]’d”) Hackett downplayed his own military experience. Indeed, he modestly offered to step aside, adding that although he would not fail in promoting “the good of my Country” if chosen, he had seen “all the hardships of a Soldier” but was “without the experience of a General.” He received the nomination, but he was a man who went were his country needed him most, and he resigned almost immediately after his regiment was reassigned to the Canadian front. In late 1776, America needed him on the Piscataqua.6
Revolutionary Service and a Legendary Ship
Hackett was working on the stately 20-gun privateer brigantine Portsmouth when he was presented with a new job for the Continental Navy. In January 1777, he, Hill, and Paul began constructing a three-masted sloop-of-war. Design molds and other items from the Portsmouth were used to construct her, and Hackett himself supplied some of the timbers and planking. On 10 May, four months after work began, the hull of a warship provisionally named the Hampshire slipped into the Piscataqua from Langdon’s Island.7 Congress appointed an annoying little Scotsman captain of the new ship. John Paul Jones’ glory days were still ahead of him when he arrived in Portsmouth, and he and Langdon quickly developed a mutual loathing. Hackett managed to deal with both men’s healthy egos without alienating either. Both would have known that the name finally assigned to the ship he built, the Ranger, was a tribute to the frontier fighting corps in which the unassuming shipwright had served. Jones did the name honor, applying at sea the type of guerrilla tactics that had made Hackett’s old outfit famous. The Ranger’s attacks on the British home islands became the stuff of legend.
Hackett laid the keel of a 74-gun Continental ship-of- the-line even before the Ranger set sail. No warship of that size had ever been produced in America. Unfortunately, Congress could barely scrape up enough money to sustain an army, let alone support an expanded navy. Funding dwindled and in early 1778, Hackett’s work on the ship came to a halt. For several years, the vessel’s unfinished hull languished at the shipyard.8
Despite heavy construction responsibilities in 1777 and 1778, Hackett also performed military service as a member of Langdon’s Independent Company of Light Infantry. Modeled on Rogers’ Rangers and composed of handpicked men, many of whom were officers in their own local militia regiments, the small unit was called for short-term duty at Saratoga, New York, and Rhode Island. In 1778 Hackett became its second in command, holding the rank of lieutenant colonel in the state service. Among those serving under him was Hopley Yeaton, a former lieutenant on board the Raleigh who would later become the first seafaring officer commissioned under the U.S. Constitution.9
By the time of the British defeat at Yorktown, Hackett was sufficiently wealthy to carry a portion of the hefty bond on at least one privateer.10 He nonetheless had continued building ships and in 1781 was asked to resume construction of his long-delayed 74-gunner. Command of the largest American warship ever built went to the heroic Jones, who was in Portsmouth for Hackett’s final work on the behemoth America. The captain involved himself in whatever matters he desired. In 1782 he worked with Hackett and Hill to obtain decking timbers, made inquiries about paint, cannon, and other materials and, to Agent Langdon’s chagrin, ran up bills that Congress could ill afford to pay.
Jones utterly destroyed his relationship with Langdon (who would soon sign the Constitution, serve as the first president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, and later decline the positions of secretary of the Navy under Thomas Jefferson and vice president of the United States under James Madison) by accusing him of theft, malfeasance, and corruption. Surprisingly, Hackett avoided being similarly tarred. In fact, Jones went out of his way to acknowledge the shipbuilder’s integrity, referring to him as “honest Hackett,” and ultimately declaring his work “a piece of perfection” that did “infinite honor” to both Hackett and America as a whole. When British saboteurs threatened the ship, Jones shared with Hackett the command of a private night guard.11
In late 1782, Congress made up for the loss of the French ship-of-the-line Le Magnifique in Boston Harbor by giving the America to France, thus avoiding the cost of maintaining the already expensive ship. Deprived of his coveted command, Jones left Portsmouth in a huff two days after Hackett launched the America. The mighty ship finally sailed out of the harbor, ready for war, on 24 June 1783—two months after the cessation of hostilities with Britain.12
Prolific for the New Republic
During the Revolution, Hackett, a man of limited writing skills but no want of intellect, had risen from the ranks of ordinary craftsmen to become a person of stature. Toward the end of the conflict, he resumed civilian shipbuilding in Exeter, where his neighbors chose him to serve on a committee assigned to assess the pros and cons of a proposed state constitution. A year later, they spontaneously elected him to the New Hampshire legislature. James was always ready to perform hands-on service for his state and nation, but he was never a politician. He declined his election to the House for unrecorded “good reasons.”13
Hackett was commissioned lieutenant colonel of the state’s only regiment of artillery in 1785, when Langdon was president (governor) of New Hampshire. The shipbuilder was called to active duty by State President John Sullivan in 1786 and assisted in dispersing an armed mob that surrounded the legislature demanding the issuance of paper money. Hackett later served on the court-martial of militia officers involved in the affair. By late 1793, he had married his third wife and rented the old Continental shipyard on Langdon’s Island.14 It was a troubling new era for the young nation, one in which Hackett’s talents would prove indispensable.
The United States sold off the last remnants of its Continental Navy in 1785. As of 1790, the government’s only seagoing vessels were coasters of the Revenue Cutter Service, a forerunner of the present-day Coast Guard. American merchantmen were harassed with impunity by European powers, while corsairs of the Barbary states attacked shipping and demanded monetary tribute. Congress responded by paving the way for a new navy. Secretary of War Henry Knox began work on six frigates, seeking guidance from experienced builders, including Hackett.15 Not surprisingly, he became the federal government’s naval constructor on the Piscataqua.
In 1794, Hackett began work on one of the six new frigates, the 36-gun Congress, a smaller sister of the famed Constitution. He was in the midst of construction when the U.S. government negotiated a humiliating peace with Algiers and ordered suspension of his work. The United States was required to pay tribute including a 32-gun frigate, a brig, and two schooners, all of the best quality. Whatever one thought of the agreement, the fulfillment of the country’s international obligations rested in part on the skill of its shipbuilders. It was a testament to Hackett’s reputation that he was chosen to construct the most important of the ships, the 600-ton Crescent. When the frigate sailed out of Portsmouth Harbor in January 1798, she was “one of the finest specimens of elegant naval architecture, which was ever borne on Piscataqua’s waters.”16 Hackett’s service to the young United States was just beginning.
America’s 1794 Jay Treaty with Britain sparked an undeclared naval conflict with France, the Quasi-War, leaving the country little choice but to strengthen its presence at sea. The Department of the Navy, established in 1798, ordered Hackett to return to work on the Congress. Meanwhile, patriotic New Hampshiremen raised funds for construction of an additional 24-gun frigate, the Portsmouth.17
Hackett was working on the two Navy ships when the nation’s revenue cutters began to wear out. He soon found himself building for both of America’s sea services. In consultation with Hopley Yeaton, Hackett swiftly constructed a cutter to replace Yeaton’s Scammel, as well as a second revenue vessel, the Governor Gilman. The Scammel II was launched in August 1798 after 36 days’ work, and Hackett probably completed the second cutter around the same time. In October the Portsmouth slid down the ways, and in January she and the Scammel II put to sea “in the cause of an injured and insulted country.”18
When the Congress was finally launched on 15 August 1799, the New Hampshire Gazette declared her “one of the most beautifully modelled and elegantly finished ships in the service of the Union.” Ever unpretentious, Hackett thanked his workmen, stating in a published acknowledgment that
there is a mode of executing work with that distinguished fidelity and attention which exceeds any given quantum of money; and in this ship it may be said that every workman has merited more than the allotted wages. Indeed, there was an animating love of country and generous feeling for the insulted honor of America, which actually exceeded the usual love of reward, and operated as a continual incentive to industry, temperance and unremitting toil.19
The Gazette was not exaggerating when it suggested that those involved in the ship’s construction were “able to perform prodigies” and that no naval constructor could boast a list of vessels comparable to Hackett’s. In 34 months or less he had built an extraordinary tribute vessel, one of the original frigates of the U.S. Navy, two cutters of the Revenue Cutter Service, and a 24-gun warship. Earlier, he had built one of the first ships of the Continental Navy, America’s only 74 of the Revolution, the famed Ranger, and a host of privateers and merchant vessels. That was to say nothing of his military service in two wars. Hackett undoubtedly deserved his country’s eternal remembrance and “constant employ.”20
He got neither.
The Forgotten Man
As the 19th century dawned, the Navy purchased its own shipyard on the Piscataqua. Rejecting Langdon’s offer to sell his island and its existing facilities, the government instead acquired Fernald’s Island, the nucleus of the present-day Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. By October 1801, the Navy had spent thousands more than Langdon’s asking price simply to clear the new property, move materials, and build a storage shed and wet dock for timber. Meanwhile, the election of Langdon’s friend Thomas Jefferson to the presidency brought the Quasi-War with France to an end and derailed plans for an expanded Navy. The new navy yard did not actually launch a ship until 1815.21
These developments, more than any Jeffersonian assessment of Hackett’s politics, likely account for the “polite” letter he received from the Navy in the fall of 1801, informing him that his services were no longer required.22 It appears to have come as a blow. Hackett moved to a gentlemanly 375-acre farm he owned in the little inland town of Brookfield, New Hampshire, but the old Ranger had never been a man of leisure. Although the Navy’s letter suggested that his country might one day need him again, there was no real hope that a new call to duty would ever come. Hackett’s political connection, Langdon, lost his seat in the Senate in 1801 and by September 1802 the new navy yard was selling off its equipment.
Hackett’s precise thoughts that fall are unknown, but he was almost 63 years old and had recently sold his Exeter home and written his will. He knew, from his review of the New Hampshire Constitution for the people of Exeter 13 years before, that the estate of a suicide was not forfeit to the government. His work was done, and he was ready to “put a period to his life.” The coroner’s jurors who arrived at his farm reached their conclusion quickly: Hackett “did on the seventeeth day of October . . . kill & murder himself—by hanging him self with a rope round his neck made fast to a pole in his barn.”23
Hackett is now little more than a recurrent (and often misidentified) name on a listing of his nation’s earliest warships. Two men who knew his dedication to his country and the ships he crafted first hand—John Paul Jones and Hopley Yeaton—are today entombed at American service academies, while James himself lies in a forgotten grave not so much as marked with his name. If ever the “volunteer toast” proposed by Hackett’s old Ranger captain, New Hampshire’s General John Stark, was due as the final salute to a patriot, it is due to James: “Live free or die,” Colonel Hackett. “Death is not the greatest of evils.”
1. Burt Loescher, History of Rogers’ Rangers (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 2000–2002), vol. 2, pp. 15–16, 52–53, 91, 209–10, 221; vol. 3, pp. 69–70. Vital Records of Amesbury, MA to 1849 (Topsfield, MA: Topsfield Historical Society, 1913), p. 119.
2. Governor John Wentworth Letter Book 3 (1774–1778), microfilm of New Hampshire State Archives copy, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH, pp. 54–55, 61, 113. Paul W. Wilderson, Governor John Wentworth & the American Revolution: The English Connection (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994), pp. 245–50. Charles H. Bell, History of the Town of Exeter (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1979, facsimile reprint of 1888 Exeter edition), pp. 240–41.
3. Bell, History of the Town of Exeter, pp. 242–44. Narrative attributed to Gideon Lamson (c. 1827), p. 14, Exeter Records, Miscellaneous Papers 1659–1918, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord, NH, Box 876161, Folder 8. Nathaniel Bouton, ed., “Records of the New Hampshire Committee of Safety,” Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society (Concord, NH: Parker Lyon), vol. 7 (1863), p. 54. William J. Morgan et al., eds., Naval Documents of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 1964–2005), vol. 2, p. 832.
4. Lawrence Shaw Mayo, John Langdon of New Hampshire (Concord, NH: Rumford Press, 1937), pp. 117–19. Nathaniel Bouton et al., eds., New Hampshire Provincial and State Papers (hereinafter NHPSP, published by the state, 1867–1943), vol. 8, p. 48.
5. Mayo, John Langdon of New Hampshire, pp. 119–21. William G. Saltonstall, Ports of Piscataqua (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1987, facsimile reprint of 1941 Harvard University Press edition), p. 98.
6. NHPSP, vol. 8, pp. 73–74, 137–42, 148, 155–56; vol. 14, p. 479. Naval Documents of the American Revolution, vol. 5, pp. 159–60, 355–56.
7. Joseph G. Sawtelle, ed., John Paul Jones and the Ranger (Portsmouth, NH: Portsmouth Marine Society, 1994), pp. 1–3, 217.
8. Mayo, John Langdon of New Hampshire, pp. 175–76. Charles H. Lincoln, ed., Naval Records of the American Revolution, 1775–1788 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1906), p. 68.
9. NHPSP, vol. 8, p. 164; vol. 15, pp. 416–17, 577–78.
10. Naval Records of the American Revolution, p. 449.
11. Samuel E. Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1959), pp. 315, 318–25. George H. Preble, History of the United States Navy Yard, Portsmouth, New Hampshire (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1892), pp. 15–16. The Papers of John Paul Jones, 1747–1792 (microfilm ed., 10 reels) Reel 7, Items 1397, 1412.
12. Morison, John Paul Jones, pp. 326–30. Naval History and Heritage Command, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, entry for the America I, www.history.navy.mil/DANFS/index.html.
13. Exeter Town Record Book, 1740–1797 (on file at the Town of Exeter, NH), pp. 379–80, 387.
14. John Langdon/Langdon-Elwyn Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH, Box 2, folder 18, item 8. NHPSP, vol. 20, pp. 551, 554. Bell, History of the Town of Exeter, pp. 97–98 and genealogocial section, p. 80. Otis Hammond, ed., Letters and Papers of Major-General John Sullivan (Concord, NH: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1939), vol. 3, pp. 483–84.
15. Howard Chapelle, The History of the American Sailing Navy (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1949), pp. 116–19; Letter of Timothy Pickering to Hackett regarding comments on ship construction, 19 May 1795, National Archives and Records Administration, Sec. Navy Requisitions on Sec. Treas., RG45, “Papers of the War Department,” http://wardepartmentpapers.org.
16. Chapelle, The History of the American Sailing Navy, pp. 128–29, 135–36. New Hampshire Gazette, 24 January 1798, p. 3, col. 3.
17. Chapelle, History of the American Sailing Navy, pp. 144–45. New Hampshire Gazette, 31 July 1798, p. 3, col. 4.
18. New Hampshire Gazette, 14 August 1798, p. 3, col. 5; 16 October 1798, p. 3, col. 3; 30 January 1799, p. 3, col. 4. Barbara DiFrancesco, His Window on the World: The Piscataqua and the Days of Hopley Yeaton (Tularosa, NM: privately printed, 1997), pp. 162–63. Walter E. H. Fentress, Centennial History of the United States Navy Yard at Portsmouth, NH (Portsmouth, NH: O. M. Knight, 1876), p. 32. Irving H. King, The Coast Guard Under Sail: The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, 1789–1865 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), pp. 22–25.
19. New Hampshire Gazette, 20 August 1799, p. 3, cols. 1, 4.
20. Ibid., p. 3, col. 3; 31 July 1798, p. 3, col. 4.
21. Raymond A. Brighton, They Came to Fish, revised ed. (Dover, NH: Randall/Winebaum Enterprises, 1979), vol. 2, pp. 138–39, note 43. Fentress, Centennial History, pp. 33–37, 41.
22. US Oracle and Portsmouth Advertiser, 21 November 1801, p. 3, col. 2.
23. James Hackett Will, 24 April 1802, Strafford County, NH, Probate Registry, Book 7, Page 495. Deed of Fouraignan to Hackett, 16 October 1797, Strafford County, NH, Registry of Deeds, Book 27, Page 179. Deed of Hackett to Wiggin, 13 July 1802, Rockingham County, NH, Registry of Deeds, Book 161, Page 246. Courier of New Hampshire, 11 November 1802, p. 3, col. 4. Coroner’s inquest regarding the body of James Hackett, Strafford County Superior Court Records, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord, NH, Bin 21, Box 7, Folder 4.