Isaac Hull was born in Derby, Connecticut, in 1773 into a maritime family. After his father died, he was raised by his uncle William Hull, a Revolutionary War veteran, and as a merchant captain during the Quasi-War he lost ships to French privateers. Commissioned a lieutenant in the new U.S. Navy in 1798, he served as first lieutenant of the frigate Constitution under Captain Silas Talbot, who taught him to look after his crew’s training and health. Hull shackled new recruits in port so they could not desert with their advance pay, but at sea he capped the punishment for missing muster at three light strokes over the shirt and drilled his gun crews two hours a day.
Commanding the Constitution when the War of 1812 began, he escaped a five-ship British squadron in a dead calm by towing and kedging for 64 hours. In August 1812 he held fire against HMS Guerriere until the ships were less than a pistol shot apart, wrecked her with double-shotted guns in about 15 minutes, refused her captain’s sword and burned the hulk; the story of cannonballs bouncing off the oak sides gave the ship the name Old Ironsides. Ashore he was less successful. On the Board of Navy Commissioners he condemned the Washington Navy Yard for nepotism and reliance on enslaved labor, then was sent to run it in 1829. In 1835 his strict lunch and gate rules sparked a strike by 175 white mechanics that turned into the Snow Riot, and after a forced compromise he took leave and never returned.
- Congress awarded Hull a gold medal for the Guerriere victory.
- At the Portsmouth Navy Yard he built a permanent ship house so timber stayed dry and carpenters could work through winter.
- He bought an enslaved man, John Ambler, when he moved to Washington and freed him when he left the yard.
- The diarist Michael Shiner recorded that Hull helped him rescue his wife and children from a slave dealer.
- The Snow Riot began with a false rumor that Beverly Snow, a free Black restaurant owner, had insulted the strikers’ wives.
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