It’s hard to picture today, as pleasure craft unhurriedly glide down the Potomac River, but by the 1790s, Alexandria, Virginia, reigned as one of the nation’s largest port cities. There, tall ships from the Iberian Peninsula, Great Britain, and the West Indies brought precious cargo, like molasses and rum, to the fledgling republic and loaded up in return wheat, rye, flour, and corn. To support its busy wharf, Alexandria became a center for wooden shipbuilding, an industry that thrived for the next hundred years. Today
