Shipbuilder for John Paul Jones and the newborn United States, the veteran of Rogers’ Rangers epitomized the seaworthy spirit of New England and early America—yet he is all but forgotten today.
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.
