"Princeton" was laid down on October 20, 1842, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard as a corvette. The designer of the ship and main supervisor of construction was the Swedish inventor John Ericsson, who later designed . The construction was partly supervised by Captain Stockton, who had secured the political support for the construction of the ship. The ship was named after Princeton, New Jersey, site of an American victory in the Revolutionary War and hometown of the prominent Stockton family. The ship was launched on September 5, 1843, and commissioned on September 9, 1843, with Captain Stockton commanding.