An old timer: U.S.S. Jamestown

Named for the first permanent settlement by Englishmen in North America, the Jamestown was built in the Navy Yard at Gosport, Virginia, and launched in 1844. Measured at 1,150 tons and 163½ feet in length, she mounted 22 guns - mostly 32pdrs. - and enjoyed an exceptionally long life and career. Her first employment was on anti-slavery patrols off West Africa and apart from a brief interlude taking food to Ireland during the great famine of 1847, she returned to African waters on several further commissions as well as to South America. Initially part of the Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the [American] Civil War in 1861-62, she then went to the Pacific to protect U.S. commerce from Confederate privateers until decommissioned as a warship in 1865. Thereafter converted to a transport but occasionally used as a store and sometimes a hospital ship, she was last at sea as an apprentice training ship from 1882-92. Finally employed as a quarantine ship in Hampton Roads after 1892, she was accidentally destroyed by fire whilst refitting in the Norfolk Navy Yard in 1913.