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Construction
Lady Washington was born into an era on the brink of being turned upside-down. The colonies had spent many years in "Salutary neglect" (Bober 25) and had evolved nearly independent of any governance from Britain. Lady Washington was originally named Washington, and we have little way of tracing her early history. Vessels were often illegally built, named the same thing and each given duplicate papers. If care was taken that no more than one of the matching ships entered a particular port at a time, 'one' ship could be in many ports at the same time, thus evading duties. As a result, following the paper trail of the sloop Washington does not mean the physical vessel in question was the same one with whose history this site is concerned. Much of the paperwork in the colonial period was of questionable validity which creates grave difficulties for historians.
Lady Washington was most likely built in an area around Boston. There are some rumours that she was built on a river but that has not been confirmed. She was owned by Samuel Brown (Scofield 43) for a while, who later was a partner in the Northwest expedition. The Lady was based on the standard sloop proportions of the time with a few extra features. She had "a figurehead, head rails, and a raised poop deck with a t'gallant rail" (Miles 28). She has been described as "elegant" (Miles 28). Originally she was not fitted for guns, but later had some cut in and Kendrick added even more (Miles 30). When the Lady was built, there had been "few technical advances" (Miles 35) for hundreds of years. They were still built with traditional blocking methods. First a frame would be set up with the correct keel bolt arrangement. The vessel would then be planked and finished.
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 Photo of replica from San Diego Maritime Museum.
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