Henry B. Joshlin

Henry was the son of a farmer, born in Albany, New York. The last 20 years of his life, from 1844 to 1864, were spent at the U.S. Naval Asylum in Philadelphia, shown here, a home for elderly sailors and Marines. Some of the men, including Henry, were interviewed about their service, saving their stories on the written page. The interviewer wrote his last name as Joslin but almost all his documentation confirms it was Joshlin.

His name is first mentioned in an order book kept by General James Wilkinson, senior officer of the U.S. Army, where he was enlisted June 12, 1805 and assigned to Captain Lockwood’s company. They were ordered to New Orleans where Spanish forces disputed the boundaries after the Louisiana Purchase was made in 1803.

After his discharge in 1810 he immediately joined the Marines as hostilities were brewing between England and the United States. British forces were backing Native American tribes in the Great Lakes region who opposed U.S. expansion into their territory. They also tried to enforce restrictions on American trade with France, so the U.S. declared war on June 18, 1812.

Henry first served in New Orleans in 1811 and 1812. He was a member of the Marine Guard on board the USS Constitution from late 1813 to early 1815. The end of the war came on Christmas Eve, 1814 when the Treaty of Ghent was signed, but it wasn’t ratified for another two months.

The Constitution continued to troll the Atlantic near Bermuda, as other frigates were doing, to disrupt British trade by capturing merchant ships and plundering their freight. Navy ships acted like pirates without orders, but that’s also what the British ships were doing.

The Constitution captured a British naval ship, the Levant in March, and Henry was part of the crew that took over the vessel. Unfortunately a British squadron caught up and recaptured the Levant, so Henry became a prisoner of war. Meanwhile, the Constitution escaped, preserving its undefeated record. This took place about a month after the peace treaty was ratified but news didn’t reach many of the ships until late April.

Henry was returned to his homeland by July and spent the rest of 1815 at Charlestown Naval Yard in Boston. That’s where the Constitution, known as “Old Ironsides,” remains to this day, the oldest ship still afloat, and still commissioned by the Navy with a crew of 75.

He remained in Boston after his reenlistment that November. While at the New York Navy Yard he was promoted to corporal, then to sergeant in 1819 at Gosport Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. That site is the Navy’s oldest and largest facility, established in 1767. It was recaptured from the Confederates and given its present name, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, in 1862.

Henry had another tour with the Constitution from 1821-24, but was reduced in rank twice. He returned as a private to New York, then back to Gosport in 1827. After serving at Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C. in the years before and after 1840. After 34 years, he was discharged June 13, 1844 due to disability and retired to the Naval Asylum in Philadelphia

He entered the Naval Hospital there in 1862, with the reason for admission being “old age.” He died there two years later from adynamia, meaning a lack of strength due to a series of illnesses, at age 82.