Star of Oregon (ship)

History
Laid down:	1840
Launched:	1842, Willamette River, Oregon
Fate:	sold 1843 in California
Notes:	Details
General characteristics
Class and type:	schooner
Displacement:	tons
Length:	53 ft 8 in (16.36 m)
Beam:	10 ft 9 in (3.28 m)
Draught:	4 ft 6 in (1.37 m)
Propulsion:	sail

The Star of Oregon was a schooner sailing vessel of the mid-19th century used on the west coast of North America. It was the first American sailing ship built in what is now the U.S. state of Oregon. Pioneer settlers built the ship from 1840 to 1842 in order to sail it to California and exchange it for livestock. During World War II a Liberty ship was named the SS Star of Oregon in honor of the 19th century sailing vessel.

Felix Hathaway, an experienced ship's carpenter and former employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, designed the Star of Oregon with input from Joseph Gale, an American fur trapper with deep water sailing experience. The Star was a small Baltimore clipper schooner, a highly maneuverable vessel with a shallow draft that Gale would have been familiar with as a boy living on the Chesapeake Bay.

Gale provided a detailed description of the Star in a letter to James W. Nesmith:

Construction of the Star of Oregon began in the autumn of 1840 with Felix Hathaway supervising, and John Canan, Ralph Kilbourne, Pleasant Armstrong, Henry Woods, Josiah Lamberson Parrish, George Davis, and Jacob Green providing less skilled labor. The crew began construction of the schooner on the east side of Swan Island (part of today's Portland, Oregon). In the spring of 1841, the project was jeopardized when Hathaway quit because of the group's inability to pay him, the advent of other more promising business opportunities, and his frustration over the lack of needed building materials. At the time of Hathaway's resignation, the keel of the schooner had been finished to just above the water line.

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