The United States declared war on Great Britain in June 1812 as the Napoleonic Wars raged in Europe. Galled by British arrogance and insults to their country, Americans had had enough. Britain, however, fielded a veteran army and powerful navy of some 700 ships-of-the-line, frigates, sloops, and minor war vessels. The U.S. Navy had only 18 frigates and smaller ships plus 165 tiny coastal and harbor-defense gunboats to potentially fight the enemy.
One of the U.S. Navy's major ships was the frigate Constellation, rated at 36 guns—one of six frigates authorized by Congress in 1794 for national maritime defense. With a crew of 340 the ship displaced some 1,265 tons and was 164 feet long on the gundeck. Under full sail with a strong wind she was capable of 15 knots. Her construction began in 1795 near Fells Point in Baltimore. Launched in 1797, she entered service in 1798.
The Constellation was a fine ship with a good fighting record and arguably the Navy's best-known ship at the start of 1812. Under the command of Captain Thomas Truxtun in the Quasi-War with France, she had fought two French frigates a year apart. Her crew captured one and badly damaged the other, which barely avoided capture. During the Barbary Wars, the ship served on the blockade of Tripoli in 1802 and again from 1804-5. After the first Barbary conflict ended, she was laid up in late 1805, inactive, at the Washington Navy Yard.
As relations with Britain deteriorated early in 1812, the Constellation was ordered to be readied for active service. When the United States declared war in June, she was in the midst of major repairs. Her hull down to the waterline had been taken apart, and worn-out frames, beams, decks, and side planking were being replaced. By late that year, new masts and yards had been installed and the ship rigged. Her new armament was 24 18-pounder guns, 2 32-pounder guns, and 18 32-pounder carronades, totaling 44 pieces. While she was rated a 36-gun ship, she clearly could carry a few more. By autumn, the Constellation was ready, and she was recommissioned on 11 October under the command of Captain Charles Stewart, an experienced officer of long service.
At the war's start, Navy leaders had decided their big ships would act aggressively at sea, raiding British commerce and attacking small warships, and not engage in coastal or harbor defense. The early victories of the USS Constitution and other ships showed that the Navy was ready and willing to fight. The Constellation would surely do her part, but Captain Stewart was in no hurry. His ship finally left the Navy Yard in mid-November and then anchored in the Potomac River close to Washington. Evidently Stewart believed that Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton needed him in the capital to advise on naval policy and strategy.
Not until the end of December did the Constellation finally sail down the Potomac into Chesapeake Bay and then north to anchor off Annapolis, the Maryland state capital. Stewart hoped to complete preparations there for an eventual Atlantic commerce-raiding cruise. Winter ice, however, forced the ship south on 1 February 1813, and she moved to Hampton Roads and anchored.
British Ships Enter the Chesapeake
The Constellation was there on 4 February when news came of a strong British naval force entering the bay. Stewart reported it as two ships-of-the-line, three frigates, and two smaller ships. The true enemy strength was four frigates. In any event, the Constellation was in grave danger. The frigate got under way but grounded in shallows. Soon refloated, she moved safely into the Elizabeth River and anchored off Norfolk.
The British ships that caused the Constellation's retreat were the vanguard of a large force due to arrive soon for major operations in the bay. Early in the war the British squadrons in U.S. waters began escorting convoys against American commerce raiders and patrolling off Boston and New York to intercept U.S. warships and privateers. By late 1812, some 100 warships were thinly spread to perform these tasks. The British also soon ordered a commercial and naval blockade of Chesapeake Bay. On its shores lay the major ports of Baltimore, Annapolis, and Norfolk, which also had a navy yard nearby at Gosport. Up the Potomac River lay the national capital, Washington. The British believed that enough military pressure on the bay region might break the Americans' will to continue the war and also divert U.S. resources from the attempt to take Canada.
Since the bay blockade would take months to organize, the Constellation could easily have gone to sea anytime between October 1812 and January 1813. But there was no sense of urgency. By the start of February it was too late. Behind the four British frigates arriving on 4 February was a force under Admiral Sir George Cockburn that appeared in early March. By month's end the main body of ships under Admiral Sir John Warren had also joined the force. On 1 April four 74-gun ships-of-the-line, five frigates, and seven smaller vessels were in Hampton Roads, and the British launched scouting and raiding expeditions around the area. The British located the Constellation off Norfolk, but getting at her up the narrow, shallow, well-defended Elizabeth River would be difficult.
From February to June the two sides eyed each other warily. The Constellation was made almost into a floating fort
draped with netting to hinder enemy boarders, with the upper-deck carronades always kept loaded and ready. The Navy's Norfolk gunboat flotilla deployed near the ship in support. Captain Stewart reported to the Navy Department in mid-March: "I am getting out of the ship all the stores, sails, spars, etc. . . . as it is now reduced to a certainty that this ship will not have an opportunity of getting to sea."Defending Norfolk
As summer neared, British raids in the lower bay continued against minimal resistance, but the Americans were working hard to improve Norfolk's defenses. By the end of May, Admiral Warren had prepared a major effort to take Norfolk. A British army force was then available, and 8 ships-of-the-line, 12 frigates, and 8 minor warships were ready for action.
At Norfolk the defenders were alert. Tiny Craney Island was the key point. If it fell to the British, they would control the Elizabeth River's entrance, attack Norfolk, and easily take the Gosport Navy Yard as well. U.S. Army troops and Virginia militiamen defended the island and surrounding area, and on 21 June, as an enemy attack seemed imminent, 150 officers, Sailors, and Marines from the
Constellation reinforced Craney's defenders.The British attacked the next day. An army force tried to get across the shallow channel to the island but failed. A navy-marine force in small boats tried a direct assault but also failed. All the British attempts were repulsed
with losses. The Constellation's men were prominent in the defense. One U.S. naval officer's report said: "The men of the Constellation fired their 18-pdr. [cannon] more like riflemen than artillerists. I never saw such shooting and seriously believe they saved the island yesterday."For the rest of 1813, the Constellation remained off Norfolk with many of her crew being used in the Norfolk gunboat flotilla and fortifications ashore. The defense of Norfolk had priority, and little thought was given to getting the Constellation to sea. In September most British ships left the bay and only a ship-of-the-line, two frigates, and five small vessels remained to continue the blockade and engage the Constellation if she sailed.
Captain Charles Gordon assumed command of the ship in September, and the next months were spent repairing the frigate and retraining her crew. In January 1814, Gordon finally received orders from the Navy Department authorizing a raiding cruise, and on 10 February the Constellation sailed into Hampton Roads en route to the Atlantic. But Gordon later wrote Secretary of the Navy William Jones:
I have . . . to inform you of my having been compelled (very reluctantly and with extreme mortification) to return to my moorings after a most flattering prospect of getting to sea. Yesterday with the wind at S.S.W. thick weather, and only one frigate at the capes, we at 1 pm slipped our moorings and stood down under easy sail . . . and anchored in Hampton Roads to wait the return of our reconnoitering tender and prepare for a final move. At 5 pm . . . with squalls of rain and the wind unsettled and veering from South to S.E. I was restrained from proceeding immediately.
Gordon waited all that stormy night in vain for a favorable wind to develop. "[In] the morning it [the storm] broke away with the wind at West and exposed us to the full view of the enemy [a ship of the line and two frigates]," he wrote. "At noon . . . I was reluctantly compelled to weigh and returned to my moorings at 3 pm."
Blocking Up a Yankee Frigate'
The blockade continued. In March 1814 British Captain Robert Barrie at Hampton Roads wrote to a relative: "We are here, three sail of the line—Marlborough, Victorious, and Dragon—literally doing nothing but blocking up a Yankee frigate and almost 20 gunboats. I do not think we can get at her." On 15 April Secretary Jones ordered Captain Gordon to keep the Constellation at Norfolk for the time being:
In the present state . . . of the blockade the prospect of your getting to sea is not only hopeless but it would be temerity to make the attempt, and therefore your attention will be exclusively directed to the efficient employment of the whole naval force on the Norfolk station, for which purpose you are invested with the entire command of that force.
By summer 1814 the entire U.S. East and Gulf coasts had British warships patrolling offshore. In Europe, the Napoleonic Wars had ended, and a major British effort was expected in Chesapeake Bay. Captain Gordon was willing to try again to break out into the Atlantic, but Navy Secretary Jones still thought the risk was too great and that the Constellation was better off as part of the Norfolk defenses.
During July and August, large numbers of British warships, plus an infantry brigade capable of limited combat operations ashore, arrived in the bay and temporarily captured the nation's capital and Alexandria, Virginia. In September the British tried to take Baltimore but were stymied by its strong defenses and ultimately withdrew.
Sailing Orders Refused
With most enemy ships in the upper bay and only one ship-of-the-line in Hampton Roads, Secretary Jones' negative response on 10 September to yet another request for sailing orders read:
The Constellation cannot proceed to sea until special orders for that purpose shall be issued. . . . The powerful force of the enemy being now exclusively directed against our territory particularly against the harbors and cities on . . . the Chesapeake, there is no comparison between any service the Constellation could possibly render at sea and the importance of her force for the defense of Norfolk.
So the frigate remained anchored as a floating gun battery with her crew also helping man gunboats and land fortifications.
Late in 1814 most British ships left the bay for operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The Constellation was ready for sea at this time but was never allowed to sail. When the War of 1812 finally ended in February 1815, she was still at Norfolk. Soon ordered to join Commodore Stephen Decatur's squadron at New York City, bound for the Mediterranean Sea to deal decisively with the ever-troublesome Barbary States, the Constellation finally sailed from Norfolk on 22 March.
For the ship's officers and men it had been a frustrating three years. Although the Navy had intended to use her, of all operational American frigates, only the Constellation had not made a war cruise. (Another frigate, the John Adams, was used in the war only as a diplomatic courier ship by special arrangement. She consequently never cruised as a combatant ship.) Instead, as the War of 1812 proceeded, Navy leaders gradually decided she was more valuable as part of the Norfolk defense system with her heavy guns and trained crew. The Constellation also consistently tied down two or three major British warships in Hampton Roads to keep watch on the American frigate and pursue and fight her if she got to sea. These British ships would have been very useful elsewhere on the thinly stretched blockade line, but they could not move while the Constellation remained a threat.
After 1815, the ship served with distinction in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Pacific, and Far East. In 1853, old and obsolete, she was scrapped at the Gosport Navy Yard—ironically a place she had helped defend 40 years before. A number of salvageable items were kept, however, and used to build what was, in effect, a new 22-gun sloop-of-war. Launched at Gosport in 1854, the new ship would carry on the frigate Constellation's proud name and legacy.
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