The steamship FALCON was built for a group of New York and Boston businessmen by William H. Brown, New York, in 1848. 891 17/95 tons; 244 feet 2 inches x 30 feet 2 inches x 21 feet 5 inches (length x breadth x depth of hold); 1 deck, 3 masts, round stern, sharp tuck, billethead; wooden construction; side-wheel propulsion, 2 inclined engines built in 1846 by Hogg and Delamater, New York, for John Ericsson's ill-fated Hudson River steamboat IRON WITCH, and transferred to the FALCON; diameter of cylinders 5 feet, length of stroke 5 feet; diameter of paddle wheels 32 feet; 360 hp.

10 September 1848, maiden voyage, New York - Savannah - Havana - New Orleans. Purchased by the United States Mail Steamship Co, and sailed from New York for Chagres on 1 December 1848. Remained in the New York - New Orleans - Chagres service until 1852. 1857, converted into a towboat. By 1859, her engines had been removed, and she was serving as a quarantine hulk at Hoffman's Island, New York, where in April 1866 she was used to remove the passengers who had arrived sick with Asiatic cholera on the National Line steamship VIRGINIA.

Source: John Haskell Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848-1869, University of California Publications in History, 29 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943), p. 225.

The U.S. ship FALCON was built at Bath, Maine, by John Patten, in 1849. 813 tons; 157 ft 6 in x 33 ft 6 1/2 in x 16 ft 9 1/4 in (length x beam x depth of hold). I have no further information on this vessel, which should not be confused with the well-known tea clipper of the same name, which was built by Robert Steele & Co, Greenock, Scotland, in 1859, or with the steamship of the same name, 891 tons, built in New York City in 1848.

Source: William Armstrong Fairburn, Merchant Sail (Center Lovell, Maine: Fairburn Marine Educational Foundation, [1945-1955]), V.3196.