Robert Bennet Forbes (September 18, 1804 – November 23, 1889), was an American sea captain, China merchant and ship owner.
In 1834, he married Rose Greene Smith and they had three children: Robert Bennet Forbes (1837-1891), Edith Forbes who married Charles Eliot Perkins, and James Murray Forbes (1845-1885).
He died on November 23, 1889, aged 85, in Milton, Massachusetts.
Ships
Forbes owned or was involved in the construction of approximately seventy vessels.
His first ship was Lintin, a 390-ton bark built by Sprague and James in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1830. Forbes owned Lintin from 1830–1832, after which time she sailed in Chinese waters. Forbes also owned , which took the first cargo of ice to China. "During the Civil War he was employed as a volunteer by the government to inspect the building of nine gunboats and at the same time built for himself and others the Meteor, of 1500 tons."
Forbes rig
The Forbes rig was also well received on Mermaid, as this 1852 excerpt from the "Boston Atlas" transcribed by Bruzelius shows:
The Forbes rig was publicly rejected, however, by the captain of in 1855, in favor of the Howe rig.
Legacy
He built a Greek Revival mansion for his mother in Milton, Massachusetts, designed by Isaiah Rogers (1833), that is now the Captain Robert Bennet Forbes House Museum.