Old Ironsides sails again:USS Constitution goes to sea

Mail Online ^ | 8/19/12 | Associated Press

[mdittmar]

The U.S. Navy's oldest commissioned warship sailed under its own power for just the second time in more than a century to commemorate the battle that won it the nickname 'Old Ironsides.'

The USS Constitution, which was first launched in 1797, was tugged from its berth in Boston Harbor on Sunday to the main deepwater pathway into the harbor. It then set out to open seas for a 10-minute cruise.

The short trip marked the day two centuries ago when the Constitution bested the British frigate HMS Guerriere in a fierce battle during the War of 1812. It follows a three-year restoration project and is the first time the Constitution has been to sea on its own since its 200th birthday in 1997.

[Da Coyote]

“A leaky rowboat deserves a better commander in chief than we have.”

We don’t have a commander in chief, we have a cretin-in-chief.

[ExGeeEye]

TTIWWP.

[Admin Moderator]

Yes, especially in this case.

[Charles Martel]

I wonder how many years it has been since she's been under full sail.

I've always thought these heavy frigates were the most handsome square-riggers ever built.

[moonshot925]

[davetex]

Of course, The Constellation. Thank you for remembering for me!! It has been many years, and my memory ain’t what it used to be.

[Gay State Conservative]

Damn,I wish I had known.Old Ironsides is within easy reach of my house and I certainly would have gotten on the T to see the event.

[Eye of Unk]

I have built many a model of this ship when I was younger, I have on my to “get” list a museum grade wooden model of one around 4 foot long.

I have seen pics of the powder room, completely sheathed in copper so no sparks can ignite the magazine.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks mdittmar. Navy's oldest commissioned warship to sail again Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[brivette]

Old Ironsides was parked across from where I worked s
Stone & Webster in Boston.

[Admin Moderator]

See # 14

And no, moving them to your photobucket page doesn’t change things.

Just a friendly FYI.

[Jacquerie]

Modern warships are better, but still not kind to the tall.

[Jacquerie]

Modern warships are better, but still not kind to the tall.

[wally_bert]

A Spruance certainly wasn’t.

[SES1066]

215 years old and still ready for duty.

Almost not if not for a father who is somewhat overshadowed by a more famous son. In 1830, the US Navy was discussing sending this ship to the breakers, until a failing Harvard Law student published a poem in protest.

Old Ironsides

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;--
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

[davetex]

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I just couldn’t remember.

[Segovia]

When the ship was restored and refitted last in 1997, it was only outfitted with about 12,000 square feet of sails, (six main sails) in her day she wore 42,000 sq ft of sail on 36 sails. I would give my eye teeth to have sailed on her under all that canvas. She must have been one impressive lady.

[exit82]

Thanks—I did not realize Sr. was the author.

What a treasure we would have lost if not for one man’s quill pen.

[SES1066]

The American sailors went out in spite of incredible odds, just in sheer numbers alone, against the Royal Navy, and performed admirably.

The intelligent thing that the US Navy did was to concentrate on the Frigate class as their heaviest ships rather than trying to match the Royal Navy in a "Line of Battle" heavy. Frigates were faster, more maneuverable and needed fewer crew due to fewer guns. These were ships that could sail on their own or join into task groups, thus retaining greater flexibility in use. Thus the USS Constitution could fight ships slightly larger and down and outrun the ships that could really kill it.

[tanknetter]

The last Civil War vessel afloat, the USS Constellation, was built in 1854 and is the last all-sail warship built by the US Navy. After years of restoration, she was ...

This probably bears a little more explanation.

The first Constellation was a Humpreys frigate, a smaller and slightly older half-sister to Constitution (36 or 38 gun rating to Constitution's 44 gun rating) and actually the very first of the "original six" Frigates of the USN built in the mid/late 1790s. She gained initial fame by defeating the French L'Insurgente during the "Quasi-War" and was nicknamed the "Baltimore Racehorse".

By the early 1850s the Constellation was in serious disrepair and the USN wanted to scrap her and build a replacement. The problem was that the USN was prohibited from building new ships at that time.

So the USN used a slight-of-hand to get their "new" ship. There were no restrictions on refitting existing ships, so had Constellation undergo a major overhaul/repair. One in which she was broken apart (scrapped) and some of her materials (no one really knows how much) were used to build a brand new "Constellation" a couple hundred feet away.

That "new" Constellation, the second one, was/is the Sloop-of-War/Corvette that now graces Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The hull is of a very different shape, with completely different framing, than the Humphrey's Frigates were.

However, due to the need to preserve the appearance/political fiction that she was really just a seriously-overhauled original Constellation (and thus built "legally"), many of the Navy's records reflected her AS the original Constellation. These records built upon themselves over the years, leading to the eventual recognition - earlier, but certainly by the time she was decommissioned and moved to Baltimore - that she WAS the original Constellation and the first Frigate of the USN.

During the fight to overhaul her in the 1990s the folks up in Baltimore finally had to concede that she really is a second, newer ship; a Sloop-of-War and not a Frigate*. But the longstanding perception, dating back through the decades, that she's the original persists.

(*one additional comment. When she came to Baltimore at the end of her USN service she was viz-modded to look like a Frigate. This actually involved cutting through her upper deck, which on a Sloop-of-War is the strength deck - which seriously compromised her hull integrity. If you look at pictures of her before her 1990s restoration you'll see that her hull is suffering from severe "hog" - a distortion that bends the ship along the keel into a bow with the bow and stern bending downwards from the center. This almost destroyed her, and was something that was corrected in the restoration of her to a Sloop-of-War configuration.)