an old and celebrated ship-building family of Scituate, their great-grandfather having been a shipbuilder of note in colonial times, while their grandfather, James Briggs, was the builder of the famous Columbia, in 1773. After his death the yard was continued by his sons, Henry and Gushing, who built some of the finest ships sailing out of Boston, besides many of the New Bedford and Nantucket whalers, during the first half of the last century. The brothers E. & H. O. Briggs, who established their yard at South Boston in 1848, were the sons of Gushing Briggs, and they possessed the skill in design and thorough knowledge of construction for which the family had long been famous among the merchants and underwriters of Boston.
At Medford, on the Mystic, Thatcher Magoun established his shipyard in 1802, and there built the brig Mt. Etna, of 187 tons, in 1803, followed by other merchant vessels as well as privateers for the War of 1812. The Avon, the most famous of these privateers, was launched in twenty-six days after her keel was laid. In 1822, Mr. Magoun built the Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, and Topaz, ships of about 350 tons, for the Boston and Liverpool Packet Company, which ran for a few years between Boston, Charleston, S. C., and Liverpool, and home direct to Boston. One of the novel features of this line was the arrangement as to agents, their office being at the end of India Wharf, but in Liverpool each ship had a separate agent, as it was imagined that four agents would attract so many times the more business. It is evident that the promoters of this line had something to learn
