| Benjamin Homans | |
| Office: | Chief Clerk of the US Navy Department |
| Term Start: | March 9, 1813 |
| Term End: | December 1, 1823 |
| Predecessor: | Charles W. Goldsborough |
| Successor: | Charles Hay |
| Appointed: | James Monroe |
| Office2: | 4th Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts |
| Term Start2: | 1810 |
| Term End2: | 1812 |
| Successor2: | Alden Bradford |
| Birth Place: | Massachusetts |
| Death Date: | December 1823 |
| Death Place: | Georgetown, D.C. |
| Children: | I. Smith Homans |
Benjamin Homans (– December 1823) was an American merchant captain, and politician who served as the 4th Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth and who served from as the Chief Clerk of the Navy Department, which was at the time the second highest civilian position in the US Navy.
Born in Massachusetts,[1] Homans had been a merchant captain during the 1780s and 1790s. During the Quasi war with France, because of the Sedition Act and because he was an ardent Jeffersonian, Homans went into exile in Bordeaux.
Prior to the 1814 British attack, and Burning of Washington during the War of 1812, it was Homans, along with Dolley Madison who removed two wagon loads of the White House and Navy Department's archives; including saving Charles Willson Peale's classic portrait of George Washington. The trunks were transferred onto a canal boat and taken upstream on the Potomac River, where they were stored in a barn near Cabin John, Maryland until the danger had passed.[2]
Homans resigned as chief clerk of the Navy Department to become naval storekeeper in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but died in Georgetown[3] in December 1823 before he could leave Washington to take up the new post.[4] [5]