Felix Hathaway, an experienced ship's carpenter and former employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, designed the Star of Oregon with input from Joseph Gale, an American fur trapper with deep water sailing experience.

The Star was a small Baltimore clipper schooner, a highly maneuverable vessel with a shallow draft that Gale would have been familiar with as a boy living on the Chesapeake Bay.

[3]Construction of the Star of Oregon began in the autumn of 1840 with Felix Hathaway supervising, and John Canan, Ralph Kilbourne, Pleasant Armstrong, Henry Woods, Josiah Lamberson Parrish, George Davis, and Jacob Green providing less skilled labor.

In the spring of 1841, the project was jeopardized when Hathaway quit because of the group's inability to pay him, the advent of other more promising business opportunities, and his frustration over the lack of needed building materials.

At this time, John Canan and Ralph Kilbourne went back to Joseph Gale and reminded him of his promise to assist on the project and serve as captain once they got further along in the building.

[3] Although wood was plentiful in Oregon, construction of a ship required cordage, cloth for sails, and a range of other materials that were available only from the Hudson's Bay Company store at Fort Vancouver.

As a result, the project "purchased an ample supply of all the necessities that we needed, such as cordage, canvas, paints, oils, etc., etc., for which we paid the company in wheat and furs of different kinds."

[3] On reaching Yerba Buena, today's San Francisco, Gale and company found a man in need of a ship, Joseph Yves Limantour.

"[5] In late 1842, Limantour loaded the Jóven Fanita with "the remainder of his goods and effects and sailed down the coast, stopping at the ports of Monterrey, Santa Barbara and San Pedro."