Old Ironsides is taking a birthday tour of Boston Harbor to celebrate her 212th.
From Wikipedia:
Constitution is most famous for her actions during the War of 1812 against Great Britain, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane and Levant. The battle with Guerriere earned her the nickname of “Old Ironsides” and public adoration that has repeatedly saved her from scrapping.
A “majestic cruise” according to the Boston Herald, where they’re putting a brave face on it. Stump masts, no yards slung and only her lower rigging. A tow boat alongside. Looking more like a prison barge than the “meteor of the ocean air.”
Sure, she’s a national treasure, and yes she got to hear the great guns bark again.
But it sure would be nice to see her fully dressed again.
“But it sure would be nice to see her fully dressed again.”
Now *that’s* something you don’t often hear a sailor say!
Marianne
P.S. One of the great sights I ever saw was the square-rigger race which ran from Europe to the Great Lakes, and ended on our shores, with several of the ships entering our Milwaukee harbor under sail after the race was over. Gorgeous! I got to tour the winner ship and see the winner’s award of a beautiful wooden case of several drawers full of Portuguese maps of the Atlantic. This was back in the 1960s, dears, before a lot of you were born. You shoulda been there. Really.
The reason for her present material condition is that she is being refurbished in time to be ready for the celebration commemorating the 200th anniversary of her action in the War of 1812. That should be a show.
Cheers, Mitch (proud dad of one of the sailors assigned to USS Constitution)
Patrick O’Brian’s “Fortune of War” contains a fictionalized account of Constitution’s victory over HMS Java. The whole series starting from “Master and Commander” is highly recommended.
Also Excellent: “Six Frigates”: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy by Ian Toll. The Constitution is an amazing piece of history. Something so valuable should receive the same care as any of the national monuments on the mall which, sad to say, it has not.
Fully dressed again, aye. That and another capital ship named Constellation to maintain the pairing.
Constellation – that’s the one that was in Baltimore Inner Harbor, right? Whatever happened to her? She was in pretty sad shape the last time I saw her in the mid-90s.
USS Constellation in Baltimore is NOT the original ship by that name and NOT 1790′s vintage. The Original was scrapped due to decay. The Constellation there is a newer ship built in the mid to late 1800′s.
One of the highlights of my Naval Service was being a member of the USS Constitution’s crew for the Undersail operation in 1997. They had an opportunity for 6 reservists to augment the regular crew and I was lucky enough to be chosen having volunteered there on weekends and getting on the COB’s good side.
She is an amazing vessel and we took her undersail to Marblehead harbor, a site of one of her most famous engagement where the citizen of Marblehead assisted the ship in escaping the British fleet.
As we sailed into Marblehead harbor, I was on the rigging, approximately 90 feet off the deck in a maneuver called ” Dress Ship” where the crew rides the rigging in Dress Whites. The estimate that day was there were almost 1 million people in Marblehead (no small feat for such a small town) Being 37 at the time, I turned to the young sailor next to me on the rigging and said, You best remember this as you are never going to see anything like this again in your life..”
She is a grand old dame, and we in Boston have been taking care of here for 230 years…Long may she live, long may she sail.
Many can say they have moments to remember in the service, but I am one of about 65 or so who can say they have sailed the Oldest Commissioned War Vessel in the World….as she sails so sweetly.
‘You Lucky Bastard’ comes to mind, but not sure how appropriate that would be in polite company…
Being the great grandson of a Dutch Captain who sailed the first square rigger up the Amazon, and whose cousin captained the Europa, it fires my blood to see any tall ship under sail. Such magnificence is nigh unto impossible to put into words, although Holmes made a stand up attempt. Pray God that we see Constitution again, one day soon, with all the laundry upon the yardarm.
I echo Mongo – lucky bastard is right. She is a magnificent vessel and it honors this country that she still remains seaworthy thru the efforts of countless people over the course of her history.
May that continue for decades to come.
I have to say that being there to serve on those storied decks was an honor…I most enjoyed going down to the lowest point in the ship, the Orlop and being able to reach out an touch some of the original portions of the keel….She is still approximately 20% original – mainly in her keel and lower framework…the shipwrights who care for her showed me the pieces that still bear the marks of the how they were cut out of trees with handsaws…..
The greater honor was that my daughter was baptized on the ship in the Captain’s cabin. This is something reserved for Captains & crew – They used the ship’s bell as a baptismal font…It makes her part of the ship’s history and binds our family to her.
I love that Grand Old Lady and she will be here showing us the way…She is Boston’s Undefeated Team – 42 Victories and No losses….
I make it a point to visit her every time I get to Boston. I was there last month and she looked pretty bad and in dire need of overhaul. I was fortunate enough to have a Navy Petty Officer give me and another Army type a personal tour of the ship after hours and areas of the ship that the public doesn’t get to see. If you have never visited her, highly recommend it.
My father-in law a Mr P. R. Evans ll of National City, CA crewed on her on her last cruise, a goodwill tour. He is 94 years young and was invited back for recognition in ’97 I think.
He had a glorious time. The Capt. presented him with a plane load of scrapbooks, photos, etc.
The sea stories of his time at sea in the twenties and on the grand old lady are stuff of legend. Sorry Lex, not one story about aviation. But as members of the Navy League, SD, we did get VIP at Blue Angel shows and went on a couple of shake downs. [ Living in Hanford now and listening to the boys coming home after five months out].
Her deck is being restored to the proper angle for drainage, and her bulwarks are being reconfigured to how they looked in 1812. We’d all be doing well if we looked as good as she does at that age.
But be advised…
If you visit her and ever hear a ghostly voice ask you, “How goes the nation?” (as Johnny Cash recalled on an Independence Day long ago), your answer should be “Steady as she goes!” Otherwise she will unfurl her sails again in defense of the United States.
God preserve USS Constitution, the Constitution, and the nation!
I see the options of ‘membership’ at the website and wonder how much of what one contributes goes to her actual upkeep. Pray thee, speak of it.
PS Pray Sarah knows in 2012 what’s best for such a ship!
I’m not aware of a membership link at the Navy website for the ship. However, the museum is a non-profit organization and has memberships. The majority of the funds go to museum exhibits, some of which travel the country. We taxpayers pay for the ship’s upkeep.
http://www.history.navy.mil/USSconstitution/index.html
http://www.ussconstitutionmuseum.org/
Otherwise she will unfurl her sails again in defense of the United States.
So – given the current state of things in this great nation and what that portends for our future…
How do we get the great lady to unfurl those sails – quickly.
PS Pray Sarah knows in 2012 what’s best for such a ship!
She will, oh yes she certainly will!
You see, young men and women like her study American History at colleges in Idaho and Alaska, and how America has stood for freedom for over 200 years.
At Harvard, where our current President “studied”, they study how America has enslaved the world by preventing the spread of communism.
And, in 2012 if Obama is reelected, this fine old warship may indeed be used as a prison hulk, or at least converted into affordable housing, or scrapped as no longer a combat asset for the Navy which he could shrink to under 100 ships.
Gentlemen, let us speak no longer of the POTUS or CiC or the War Department or the Joint Chiefs or the Department of Navy, not to mention those lesser entities like whatever historical society might be involved.
USS Constitution is a warship of the US Navy, she is named in the young-nation tradition of the documents and ideals most important to us, let us not sully her honor nor those of the men who served aboard her by comparing the history she and her crews made to the present day.
Constitution carries a lot of ghosts, but she still floats and flies her colors. We can speak ill of the living, we can speak ill of the dead afterwords, in Constitution and her dead there is no ill to speak of.
– Max (beholden to tradition, it appears)
How sad that she is an IX, when she deserves to be FF-1 more than any other ship. I know that she was considered a large frigate, so maybe FB would be better, as ALASKA and GUAM were ‘Large Cruisers’, and so were designated CB, for Cruiser,Large. Every one realised that it was really, Cruiser, Battle, as the ALASKAs were Battle Cruisers in all but name, and CONSTITUTION was most assuredly a Battle Frigate.
Hats off Gentlemen and Ladies, to USS CONSTITUTION, FB-1! BRAVO ZULU!
…I got aboard Constellation this last August and was highly impressed with how well kept up she is – she was almost completely rebuilt a few years ago and was given a special preservative treatment that should hold her up to her 200th birthday in the 2050s. She is indeed not the original 1787 frigate (parts of that ship are and until recently were inside her, though) – what happened is that the 1787 ship was slowly rotting and she was beyond repair. The USN built a new Constellation at Norfolk and used quite a bit of material from the old ship to save money. There was apparently never any effort on the part of the Navy to represent her as the original ship – that particular misconception came from a certain Assistant Secretary Of The Navy named Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since no one at the time wanted to annoy the Assistant Secretary, the idea that this was simply the 1787 ship with a facelift kept growing until it caused quite a ruckus in the 60s.
BTW, sadly Constellation will never sail again – the rebuild was intended to make sure she floats sound and dry. But wouldn’t her and Old Ironsides within sight of each other be something….
I toured the Constitution a few years ago. I was told at the time that she had been getting hog-backed and no one understood why until someone worked out that the mysterious notches in the joists and ribs were there to accomodate some diagonal bracing that had been removed and then unaccountably not replaced in a previous refurbishment. In the last major overhaul they were replaced (pictures of the process were shown) and the result was that her seaworthiness was restored.
The young seaman giving the tour had us on the gun deck. He was asked why the guns had what looked like arrowheads cast in them. He asked if any Marines were present. No one so identified themselves. He said that there were two reasons. One was that the British Navy had such cast in guns that were sold for export. If your ship was captured and the guns were a) British and b) had no arrowhead, then you had stolen them.
The other reason was so that if the gun crews were killed and the Marines had to man the guns, the arrowheads would give the Marines direction on which end of the gun to point at the enemy.
None too sure on the arrowheads: my understanding is that damn near everything as far as metallic Crown assets of that era, especially arms of all kinds, bears the arrowhead “Tower” mark. IIRC, it’s been found on anchors, as well as the to-be-expected cutlasses, cannon, and muskets.
Again IIRC, but certain WWII vintage Lee Enfields bear the same mark.
The shop and visitor center was selling small blocks of wood. It turns out that in the last overhaul some wood was removed. Those portions that were still sound were cut up and put on sale. They were not represented as original components, but they were once part of the ship. A friend of mine is a model ship builder and was working on a model of the Constitution at the time. I bought a piece for him. I gave it to him in two gifts. First, after some ceremony from me, he opened up the block of wood. He gave me a quizzical look. Then I handed him a wrapped envelope. That contained the certificate of identity and authenticity. I suggested that this way his model of the Constitution could have part of the Constitution in it. He cut it up and made the deck planks out of it.
Cap’n – winter is on the horizon. She’s a’ getting buttoned up for the chill.
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The correct term is the “broad arrow”.
It’s meaning is “military/naval property of the British Crown”. The guns are lawful prizes of war, captured in battle.
I believe the practice was to remove items from the defeated vessel to replace similar items damaged in battle on the victorious one. I would assume that as ships were “laid up in ordinary” (mothballed, sort of) guns would be removed and placed in storage and were available for issue to any vessel with a valid need.
HMS Bounty’s wreck site was located by the broad arrow on items found on the bottom at a wreck (more of a ballast midden) off Pitcairn’s Island. If memory serves there was a nice picture in the Natl Geographic at the time.
Slightly OT. The HMS Victory is held in similar esteem by the Brits. Does anyone know if she’s still in commission or been sailed since she was laid up as a memorial? I haven’t seen anything about it and wonder.
I’ve also had the pleasure to tour Constitution, and have attended both a commisioning ceremony and a retirement ceremony aboard her. Even peir side, the sight of that grand old lady, a fighting ship of the line, with her huge battle ensign snapping in the breeze is quite someting to behold.
I remember being onboard the USS Bunker Hill when she was departing Boston Harbor after it’s commissioning. The Constitution had gotten underway a few hours earlier with the CNO embarked. Somewhere in the middle of the harbor the two ships exchanged gun salutes. After it was over and the echos had died down, it seemed as if every car alarm in downtown Boston was going off. Good times.
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