Starting September 2025, as our contribution to the celebration of the semiquincentennial, the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership (LRWP) Boat Build Team will “launch” a new year-long project: crafting a facsimile of the historic American Star four-oared gig. The original American Star was presented as a gift to General Lafayette on his last visit to the United States in 1825 and remains to this day a part of Lafayette’s museum collections within his family estate some 30 miles south of Paris, France. The vessel is the only known surviving example of “lightly built American small craft” of its period, which Lafayette referred to as an example of the “ingenuity of American mechanics.”

Note the four-oared gig depicted in the center foreground of J. Pringle’s painting “Arrival of the British Queen at the Battery in New York” (1839):

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. (1840). Arrival of the British Queen at New York, 28 July 1839. Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/c53aa8a0-c5ed-012f-59da-58d385a7bc34

The original American Star was built as a racing boat in Brooklyn, NY by brothers John and William Chambers shortly before 1820. It’s design was a modification of the common “Whitehall” rowboats that aided transport and communication, and which were integral to the growth of New York City. These boats “gathered in greatest numbers in a basin under the Battery wall at the foot of Whitehall Street” and thus acquired their name. The American Star, however, was designed for a different purpose: “The lines of the American Star show a hull slimmed and lengthened for speed, with flat sheer and scant freeboard — the evolution from workboat to race boat well advanced.”

When the Captain of the British frigate Hussar challenged New York City’s Whitehallers to a “sham-fight” against the British vessel Dart, which was purported to have won in the Thames and in the West Indies, the American Star was chosen for the event. On December 9, 1824, with “50,000 spectators lining the wharves and the Battery,” the American Star and the Dart raced between the Battery and Hoboken Point, a distance of some four miles. The American Star was victorious, finishing some “300 to 400 yards ahead of the Dart. Time: 22 minutes.” Both crews were cheered by the audience, and it was reported that “victors and vanquished strove to outdo each other in exchange of compliments and amenities.” Never did a contest of this sort end more happily and with more good feeling on either side, an accurate reflection of the state of the political and economic climate.

LRWP’s replica boat, to be named Raritan Star, will be built from a pattern shared by Mystic Seaport Museum. We invite the public to join us in the build as we work at our 101 Raritan Avenue Boat Shop on Wednesday evenings 6-8pm and Saturday mornings 9-11am. Pre-registration required. It is our hope that in autumn 2026 our Raritan Star will be deployed in Raritan Bay in a friendly reenactment of the 1824 race vs. a Whitehall racing vessel built by NYC’s Village Community Boat House.