Launching the First USS New Hampshire in 1864

Three ships have carried the name USS New Hampshire. The latest is a Virginia-class, nuclear-powered, attack submarine. This modern namesake (SSN-778) was commissioned in 2008. I was there. It is a powerhouse traveling the globe on active duty. 

Before that, the second USS New Hampshire (BB-25) was launched at New York in 1905 and headed to Panama. The metal battleship became part of President “Teddy” Roosevelt’s national push for American naval domination with his “Great White Fleet.” After serving around the globe, the battleship was sold for scrap in 1923. Construction of another battleship New Hampshire was canceled in 1942.

Scroll down to see an 1864 poem

Launched after 50 years

The first New Hampshire tells a very different story.  A ship-of-the-line, it began life as the USS Alabama in 1816, named for the newest state to enter the Union. It was constructed soon after the second war with England, known as “The Era of Good Feelings.” Alabama was laid down at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in 1819 and finished by 1825. The ship sat in the stocks another 40 years. It was brought out in desperation as a supply ship during the Civil War. The original name, by then a Confederate state, no longer worked. 

Renamed USS New Hampshire, it looked like a floating storage closet. After serving as a supply ship off the South Carolina coast through the close of the war, it was adapted into a training vessel. With its capped or “cabbed” roof and dozens of dormitory windows, the refitted warship appears similar to photos of the USS Constitution during is years in Portsmouth Harbor before its rebirth as a tourist attraction in Boston Harbor.

The original New Hampshire, however, was no Old Ironsides. It survived by being a useful craft for more than a century. Amazing for a ship built just after the British War of 1812, New Hampshire became a training ship for officers of the Spanish-American War and a reserve ship during World War I. 

In 1905, the old sailing ship was renamed USS Granite State. The change freed up the name for the battleship USS New Hampshire. In 1921, just two years before Teddy Roosevelt’s costly metal battleship, it was sold for scrap. The original, wooden, Portsmouth-built USS New Hampshire was being towed to the Bay of Fundy for salvage when it caught fire and sank in Massachusetts Bay — not far from its Portsmouth “berthplace.”

Eyewitness Report on Launch Day 1864

By late January 1864, the South and the North were in a stalemate in the Civil War.  Despite winning battles at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, Union forces were not making headway into the South due, in part, to a lack of supplies. In need of resources, the now ancient ship in Kittery, half a century old, was seen as a possible supply ship.

While researching his history book about the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (Do Your Job!, 2008), researcher Richard Winslow discovered a newspaper report about the launch of the first New Hampshire in 1864. Despite its advanced age and low status, the ship got a typically enthusiastic  Piscataqua send-off. The Portsmouth Journal reported:

 “It was a beautiful sight and an entirely successful launch; and crowds of men and women were present from far and near to witness it.”

 The launching was followed by a celebration in a hall fitted up with decorations. There was a band and dancing hosted by the shipyard commander at the Navy Yard. In fact, the anonymous writer found the event “not wholly a prose matter” and was moved to append a poem to the newspaper article. 

© 2026 J. Dennis Robinson.

THE LAUNCH OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE
Anonymous Poem
Portsmouth Journal, 1864

Troops of women and troops of men,
  And troops of children, like clusters of pink,

Were gathered together in sunlight again,
  Close down by the beautiful river’s bank.

The water rose, in its liquid blue,
  As clear as an Indian summer’s day,
And a ship with its colors unfurled anew,
  On the opposite side of the river lay.

The tinkling of music and bells swept by,
  As the sleighs flew over the melting snow,
And a shout from the crowd rose loud and high,
  As they watched the brave ship proudly go.

With a stately plunge in the foamy deep,
  It touched the waves with a roll and a dip,

And then with a bound and an onward sweep,
  Gracefully launched the noble ship.

This ship, that has just been launched on the deep,
  Whose timbers were laid in the peace gone by,
Now o’er water and land the war notes sweep.
  Is a noble response to a noble cry.

Hark! The cry of a nation! Oh, answer it well;
  Let every new battle be violently fought,
Till the armies on land and on sea we shall quell
  And welcome in peace with our victories bought.

The other USS New Hampshire