Sloop-of-War BOSTON
October 1825 - November 1846


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The Above Painting: The sloop-of-war BOSTON is getting underway from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania around 1831. A shore boat is about to cast off from the starboard side. The ship is still moving very slowly (no problem for the small boat yet) and she is close hauled and tacking, as she has to clear the anchored boat in the foreground. The wind is on the BOSTON's port bow now, and it's a fine morning. She will gradually turn away from the wind and finally end up on a broad reach as she heads downstream.


Built: Boston Navy Yard, Boston, Massachusetts
15 October 1825 - June 1826

Length: 127'
Beam: 33' 9"
Displacement: 700 tons

Complement: 125 men

Power: Two masts; sail

Speed: 8.0 knots

Armament: 20-24 pound cannon

The fourth BOSTON, an 18-gun sloop-of-war, was launched 15 October 1825 by Boston Navy Yard and commissioned the following year, with Master Commandant B. V. Hoffman in command.

BOSTON served on the Brazil Station through 1829, and Mediterranean Station through 1832. She was then laid up at Boston Navy Yard until joining the West Indies Squadron in 1836. Except for two short periods in ordinary at New York Navy Yard, she served continuously for the next ten years. BOSTON cruised on the West Indies, East Indies, and Brazil Stations, returning to the United States in 1846. She was then ordered to join Commodore D. Conner's Home Squadron, blockading the Mexican east coast. While enroute to her new station BOSTON was wrecked on Eleuthera Island, Bahamas, during a squall in November 1846.

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