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Old Ironsides

The U.S.S. Constitution, a frigate which was launched in 1797, came to glory during the War of 1812, and for fifty years remained the symbolic flagship of American maritime power. The Constitution, lovingly restored, lies permanently berthed in Boston. In the three years of the War of 1812, the Constitution, under various commanders, roundly defeated four major British vessels — an accomplishment dear to the heart of the upstart American Republic. When the Navy Department decided to scrap the ship in 1828, the public outcry was remarkable, and Congress appropriated enough money to refit “Old Ironsides,” as she was known by then. Four more times — in 1871, 1905, 1927, and 1972 - the Constitution was rebuilt, and today, nearly as old as the nation itself, she is a living reminder of our maritime past.

A London newspaper declared on June 10, 1812. “America certainly can not pretend to wage war with us. She has no navy to do it with.” Such was the disdain for American sea power on the eve of the War of 1812 that the British politician George Canning dismissed the infant U.S. Navy as “a few firbuilt frigates with hits of hunting at the top.”

Yet within a year the British Admiralty would order its captains to avoid individual contact with the enemy’s formidable new vessels and to attack only when in squadron strength. In reporting the loss of HMS Guerrière to “a new enemy, an enemy unaccustomed to such triumphs and likely to be rendered insolent and confident by them,” the Times of London concluded that, “never before in the history of the world did an English frigate strike [its colors] to an American.”

The progression of the United States from a country with an odd assortment of warships in 1783 and with no navy at all in 1794 to a world sea power in 1815 constitutes one of the most impressive examples of strategic power growth in history. At the focal point of this accomplishment was the creation of a handful of warships that put a distinct American stamp on naval warfare around the world. Their influence is still being felt. One of these ships —the USS Constitution—survives as the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel, maintained by the Navy at the decommissioned Charlestown Navy Yard not far from the site on the old Boston waterfront where she was launched almost two centuries ago on October 21, 1797.

Today we take for granted the United States’ role as the pre-eminent world power. But two hundred years ago in post-Revolutionary America, debate about the new nation’s place in the world was wide open. During the war for American independence, the Continental Navy, despite several well-publicized triumphs, had not contributed substantially to the final victory. A varied collection of vessels that were either bought or hurriedly built, it was never a match for the Royal Navy and usually resorted to raiding Britain’s merchantmen rather than taking on her capital ships. The naval balance of power did not tip in America’s favor until the French navy entered the conflict following the Franco-American Alliance of 1778.

Josiah Fox, who had become a War Department employee and submitted a frigate design of his own, to comment on the Joshua Humphreys’s design. Fox met Humphreys, and the two men entered into a collaboration that largely remains a mystery to this day. Historians differ somewhat about the extent of Fox’s contribution to the final design. But if the fruit of their combined labors—the Constitution-class frigates—is any indication of the success of their partnership, it was a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Their accomplishment in creating some of the most successful sailing warships that ever went to sea is all the more ironic since both these men were Quakers.

The final design they achieved delivered on every promise Humphreys had made in his original proposal. At 175 feet on the water line, and capable of setting almost an acre of sail, the superfrigate had the speed to outrun any other man-of-war in the world, up to thirteen knots. With a main battery of long twenty-four-pound guns that could fire broadsides more than seven hundred pounds to distances of up to 800 yards, it could easily overpower other frigates, which customarily carried only eighteen-pounders.

What made this all possible, what gave the design both speed and firepower, was the brilliant way Humphreys overcame shipbuilding’s most intractable dilemma of the eighteenth century. He solved the hogging problem with an innovative system of internal structural supports that significantly reduced hull distortion by effectively transferring the weight of the guns on the upper decks down to the ship’s keel.

Once The War Department accepted the design, contracts were awarded to construct the six frigates. Rather than build them all at the same yard, which might have better assured quality control and kept the price down by eliminating unnecessary duplication, the government chose the politically expedient alternative. To benefit as many local communities as possible from public spending, and to encourage popular support for the Navy as well, the work was spread among six port cities along the East Coast.

The Constitution was to be built in Boston; the Constellation, in Baltimore. New York got the President; Norfolk, Virginia, the Chesapeake; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the Congress. Joshua Humphreys himself was chosen to build the United States in Philadelphia. (The ships were named as they neared completion. At the start they were designated with the letters A through F.)

By early 1796 work on the six frigates was stymied by political events. Word had been received of a peace agreement with the Barbary States in North Africa. According to law, this meant that all work on the vessels should cease. And it did, for a time. But the momentum of the new Navy had already built up too far for it to end so abruptly. President George Washington appealed to Congress to let the vessels’ construction continue, and eventually a compromise was reached: Work would continue, but only on the three frigates nearest completion.

The U.S. Navy was finally launched in 1797. The first of the three frigates to slide down the ways was the United States in Philadelphia on May 10. The Constellation, somewhat smaller than the others, came next in Baltimore on September 7. Then finally came the Constitution on October 21 in Boston.

Initially the men of the new Navy were not up to its ships. Starting from scratch in 1794, the service was fast becoming just another Federalist bureaucracy by the time tangible evidence of its purpose finally arrived: the superfrigates. Without any professional traditions, it lacked focus. Its highest offices had been filled by either political appointees or experienced captains from the old Continental Navy, each of whom had his own ideas about how it should be run.

Embarrassments were more often the norm than achievements. The first captain appointed to command a U.S. Navy vessel abruptly went on furlough so he could sail a merchant ship to China. The first captain of the Constitution, a political appointee, had to be relieved of command after several errors of judgment during the vessel’s inaugural voyages. And the Constellation drifted aground while anchored in the Delaware River, then rolled over on her side when the tide went out.

But in time the new Navy finally shook down into a professional fighting armed service worthy of its ships. It ordered more frigates and completed the three left unfinished in 1797. It responded to the crises that initially had led to its creation. It took the fight and the flag to the doorstep of the tormentors of American merchant ships, first in the Caribbean during the Quasi-War with France, then to the Mediterranean against the Barbary pirates.

Command of one of the squadrons sent to accomplish this first major projection of American power overseas went to a captain far down on the seniority list, Edward Preble of Maine. In the same way that the Constitution is now symbolically viewed as the flagship of the entire U.S. Navy, Edward Preble is revered as the founding father of the naval officer corps. It was around him that all of the modern Navy’s traditions of service, duty, and professionalism coalesced shortly after the turn of the nineteenth century, as he commanded the Constitution off the Barbary Coast.

Preble had a reputation as a disciplinarian with a short temper. He demanded perfection from his crews, which at first led to a fair degree of dislike for him. But opinion started to change after an incident aboard the Constitution while en route to Gibraltar one night in September 1803. Threatening to open fire, Preble faced down a menacing British warship that in the dark claimed to be a more powerful ship of the line, but which was actually much lighter. Recognizing his courage and spirit during that confrontation, the young officers he had been assigned —whom he initially called “nothing but a pack of boys”—started to show him more respect.

During the year that followed, the Mediterranean squadron labored under harsh conditions at sea, political pressure from home, and the decline of Treble’s health in the effort to force the Barbary States to cease attacking American merchant ships. The squadron suffered some ignominious defeats but also enjoyed some spectacular successes, like the boarding and burning of a captured American frigate right under the enemy’s guns, which Britain’s Lord Nelson later called “the most bold and daring act of the age.”

Through it all Preble set an example of leadership for his cadre of young officers, who solidified into the nucleus of the Navy’s future professional career officer corps. Known as Preble’s Boys, these officers—almost to a man—went on to great achievements in the next decade during the War of 1812. Stephen Decatur, the best-known hero of the Barbary campaign, commanded three of the Navy’s first six superfrigates, the Congress, United States, and President. The Constitution was commanded in her three major battle encounters of the War of 1812, all victorious, by three alumni of the Treble’s Boys fraternity: Isaac Hull, William Bainbridge, and Charles Stewart.

En route back home in late 1804 after his squadron had been relieved, Preble called at Gibraltar before heading out across the Atlantic. Witnessing the Constitution’s arrival from the quarterdeck of HMS Victory, flagship of the Royal Navy, Lord Nelson is said to have remarked, “In the handling of those trans-Atlantic ships there is a nucleus of trouble for the Navy of Great Britain.”

That trouble was less than ten years in coming. The Constitution first proved her worth during the War of 1812 not by defeating a British warship but by masterfully evading five of them that had trapped her off the New Jersey coast during a calm. A month later, however, when she encountered one of her pursuers alone en route to Nova Scotia for repairs, Capt. Isaac Hull’s only desire was to demonstrate his vessel’s superior armament.

Approaching from the advantageous windward side, he held fire until within “half a pistol’s shot,” then let loose a double-shotted broadside from which the HMS Guerrière never recovered. Within fifteen minutes her mizzen mast had toppled, and the other two masts soon followed.

Aboard the United States, Capt. Steven Decatur achieved a similarly brilliant victory when he engaged HMS Macedonian off the Azores in October 1812. Taking advantage of the superior range of his twenty-four-pound guns over the enemy’s eighteen-pounders, he managed to cripple his opponent’s rigging before his vessel was in effective range of their guns.

Even when stalemated, the superfrigates still managed to play a role in the war. Despite being bottled up in Norfolk for the entire duration by an effective British blockade, the Constellation nevertheless managed to take up station in Hampton Roads and prevented the British from destroying harbor fortifications defending the port.

But credit for the greatest tactical victory of the War of 1812 must go to the Constitution, which in the closing days of the conflict managed to defeat two attacking vessels, HMS Cyane and HMS Levant, simultaneously. When the Cyane attempted to maneuver behind Constitution and expose her to deadly raking fire (a broadside fired the length of an opponent’s deck), Capt. Charles Stewart put his sails aback and threw the Constitution into reverse —no small feat for a 3,000-ton sailing vessel—and cut the Cyane off. She had no option but to break away, exposing herself to the Constitution’s own raking fire.

Time rather than any enemy was what eventually destroyed most of the Navy’s first six frigates. The Chesapeake and the President were captured by the British, taken to England, and broken up (scrapped) between 1817 and 1820. On the basis of the lines taken off the latter—a common practice—the British constructed HMS President. In 1820 the Congress became the first American warship to visit China, the highlight of a career that was otherwise singularly uneventful. She was broken up at Norfolk in 1836.

The Constellation was once thought to have been preserved. A sloop of war of that name that has been on display since 1955 on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor was formerly believed to have been converted from the 1797 superfrigate. However, research revealed that this present Constellation, currently undergoing restoration, is actually the last full-fledged sailing warship built for the Navy. She was launched in 1855 at Norfolk, two years after the original Constellation was broken up there.

The United States lasted until the Civil War. Falling into Confederate hands with the loss of Norfolk in 1861, the by-then relic was dubbed the Confederate States and outfitted as a floating gun platform for harbor defense. A year later, when Union forces were again threatening, the Confederates ordered her sunk in a river channel to obstruct enemy vessels. The story goes that her live oak timbers were still so sound that workers ruined a boxful of axes in their attempt to scuttle her. They finally had to bore a hole from the inside to get her to sink. Refloated by Union forces, she was broken up in 1866.

The Constitution alone survives intact. The success of the restoration comes in no small part from an exhaustive research effort that was mounted in advance of any actual work on the ship. It reached as far afield as the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, and as far back in time as the era of the vessel’s construction. Researchers had to rediscover the diagonal riders, which had been removed from the Constitution sometime between 1820 and 1850 and never replaced. Since no original records remained of this revolutionary innovation, researchers had to turn first to the plans the English had taken from the captured President, which included short diagonal riders of iron (a British variation on the original design due to the shortage in England of timber of suitable size). Close examination of the Constitution’s hull once out of water revealed the pattern of where the original timbers had once been installed. Tests on a laboratory model proved their utility, and the Navy decided to reinstall them aboard the ship, where they have now successfully reversed the fourteen inches of hog that had developed in the vessel’s keel since her last major restoration.

As a result, plans were set in motion to put the ship under sail once again. This happened in July 1997 in Massachusetts Bay off Boston. Before then, the Constitution had last sailed in 1881. Cmdr. Michael Beck, The Constitution’s sixty-fourth commanding officer, leads the way below from the vessel’s topside, down to the gun deck, then the berth deck, and finally the bilge. Here at a point about twelve feet below the water line he steps over a massive timber that rests atop the planks—one of the diagonal riders. “This is the technological key that unlocked America’s access to the world,” he says. At the vertex where two of the beams meet above the keel, he continues. “We went from an isolationist country composed of disparate states to an assertive union of people determined to take a leadership role in the world. Diagonal riders provided the technological breakthrough to achieve that. These ships enabled the United States to gain a reputation in the world as a power to be reckoned with. And that allowed American interests to eventually become global in scope.”

It is perhaps no coincidence that at the same time as Lewis and Clark were taking the American flag westward across the continent to reach the sea beyond, the Constitution and Capt. Edward Preble were carrying the American flag across the Atlantic to be seen on those continents beyond. In the same way that Lewis and Clark opened the frontier to the onslaught of American civilization, the Constitution and the other superfrigates of the early U.S. Navy opened the ports of the Old World to American commerce. “It was manifest destiny to the east,” says Michael Beck. “A manifest destiny for world trade.”

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