USS Columbus (1819)

USS Columbus was a 92-gun ship of the line in the United States Navy. Although construction of the warship was authorized by Congress on 2 January 1813, the burning of the Washington Navy Yard by the Americans in 1814 just prior to the British occupation of Washington, intended to keep US military stores out of enemy hands, led to the destruction of any initial framing. Days after Congress re-authorized the vessel on 29 April 1816, a keel was laid and construction resumed.

Columbus was launched on 1 March 1819 into the Anacostia River at the Washington Navy Yard; her dimensions were "191 feet 10 inches, between perpendiculars; breadth of beam from outside to outside, 53 feet 6 inches". The warship was commissioned on 29 November 1819, Master Commandant John H. Elton, commanding. Her original armament comprised "92 guns: 68 long 32-pounders and twenty-four 42-pounder carronades"; this was greater than the Naval artillery equipping most of the nine ships-of-the-line authorized by Congress in the 1816 legislation, which specified that these warships "rate not less than seventy-four guns each".

Enslaved laborer and diarist, Michael Shiner, documented the launching thus, "The United States Ship Columbus 74, constructed and built by Colonel William Doughty and launch on 4 March 1819 on Monday at Washington Navy Yard the United States Ship Columbus 74."