Creaking and moaning as the water rose around her, the historic 1854 sloop-of-war Constellation floated off her blocks, and hand-held radios all around the Fort McHenry Shipyard crackled to life, squawking in unison: "All stations. Dockmaster. Ship's afloat!"
After 19 months in drydock, the Constellation felt the breeze and tugged at her lines again. She rode high in the water, but her keel was straight, and her hull was sound. Even without her rigging, she gleamed in the August sunshine, sporting a fresh coat of black paint, with green, red, and gold trim.
The Constellation—lone survivor of the Civil War Navy and the 1859 antislavery African Squadron—is docked now at the Maryland Port Administration's Pier 8 in Locust Point. Carpenters there have rebuilt her gun deck and are working to complete her new, watertight spar deck. They expect to have her fitted with new masts and rigging in time for a triumphant return to Baltimore's Inner Harbor in July 1999.
The ship was saved from ruin in part by shipbuilder Peter Boudreau. Under his direction, shipyard workers cut away tons of rotted wood from her old decks and many weakened futtocks. They pulled off all the old hull planking to within ten feet of her keel. Remaining is half her original fabric, as they say, including her 1854 keel, stem, sternpost, rudder, trailboards, orlop and berth decks, and many other details.
Boudreau built the ship's hull using a latticework of glued and laminated Douglas fir to replace her five-inch-thick planks. The rigid design and high-tech epoxy coatings should be able to carry the ship's weight and hold out the harbor's waters well into the next century.
It was a compromise with history and traditional shipbuilding but one that proved vital, both to preserving as much of the warship's weakened 1854 timbers as possible, and to making the repair financially feasible.
Now, yet another break with history is looming in the ship's future, one that worries some of the Constellation's closest friends in the preservation community. On 16 September 1998, the executive board of the Constellation Foundation voted to give up the ship after her repairs are finished and to entrust her future to the Living Classrooms Foundation.
Living Classrooms is a 13-year-old, Baltimore-based, nonprofit educational organization that operates a small flotilla of historic ships. Some are run primarily as tourist attractions, including the Baltimore Maritime Museum's World War II-vintage submarine Torsk and the Lightship Chesapeake. Under Living Classrooms' leadership, they are to be linked with Fort McHenry, the harbor water taxi system, and other harbor attractions into a jointly promoted "National Historic Seaport of Baltimore."
The Foundation's other ships, such as the schooner Lady Maryland and the skipjacks Minnie V and Sigsbee, are operated and maintained as open-air sites for Living Classrooms' many experiential education and training programs. The efforts are aimed chiefly at Maryland's school children and at-risk young people.
Living Classrooms attracts grants and revenues of $4.5 million a year, a windfall from wealthy and willing donors that the Constellation Foundation never has enjoyed.
"I wish we could keep going," said Boudreau, referring to the current Constellation Foundation—successor to the chronically underfinanced volunteer groups that first brought the decommissioned warship to Baltimore in 1954 and have been her stewards ever since. To survive, he said, the ship "needs to have the education-based organization that can get hold of big givers and make it seem worthwhile."
Gail Shawe, chairman of the Constellation Foundation, said her board—high-profile corporate executives and financially connected civic leaders shanghaied for the job in 1994 by Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke—simply was not willing to stay on, once they had saved the ship from penury and the desperate decay that Navy inspectors revealed in 1993. "It was clear to me that all of us, as a group, came together because there was a crisis. I was sure when this project was finished, this board of directors was not interested in staying, nor were they the right people," she said.
But some people who care about the Constellation and the preservation of historic vessels doubt that Living Classrooms will make the continuing restoration of the ship and her long-term preservation the foundation's top priority. Others—usually off the record—question its capacity to design, manage, finance, and execute a first-class program of preservation and interpretation.
"Preserving the ship in perpetuity is not what that organization exists to do," said Walter Rybka. Captain of the replica 1812 brig Niagara in Erie, Pennsylvania, Rybka was a technical advisor to Louis F. Linden, the former executive director of the Constellation Foundation. Linden resigned in July over what others say were differences with his board over the proposed transfer. Neither Linden nor Shawe would speak for the record on the matter.
To Living Classrooms, Rybka said, the Constellation is "a means to an end. The ship is not an expendable artifact, but it's just not the highest priority."
Living Classrooms' managing director, Scott Raymond, offered assurances that the ship's restoration will continue as an integral part of his organization's educational mission. And her long-term care will be a focus of Living Classrooms' experienced, "dynamic," and well-connected fund raising team.
"It's extremely important that we . . . not allow the vessel to deteriorate as it did in the past," he said. He sees the ship as the "crown jewel" of the historic harbor flotilla, with a wealth of lessons to teach Maryland's young people—lessons in history, engineering, physics, mathematics, navigation, sail theory, and much more. Living Classrooms' planned Frederick Douglass/Isaac Myers Shipyard at Baltimore's Fells Point could provide the Constellation with badly needed shipyard and storage space.
As proof of his organization's ability to maintain its ships, Raymond offered a June 1998 letter from Navy inspectors. They concluded after an inspection of the Torsk that the "Baltimore Maritime Museum . . . along with numerous volunteers have done a tremendous job in improving and maintaining" the vessel. "Torsk is in very good condition."
Although Living Classrooms reported just more than $1 million in long-term debt in 1997, Raymond said $810,000 is capital debt from the 1980s, now in a low-interest loan from the city of Baltimore. Shawe said an audit of Living Classrooms' books prior to the agreement turned up nothing unsettling. "Their books are clean and they have money in the bank," she said.
The Constellation's transfer to Living Classrooms is not a "done deal." First, it must be endorsed by the City of Baltimore, which would hold the title, Shawe said. The Navy's Ship Donation Program in Washington, which retains final responsibility for the Constellation, also must authorize the transfer. Both have given Shawe informal assurances that the deal will be approved.
Under its transfer agreement with Living Classrooms, the Constellation Foundation first must complete the current repairs and deliver her to Constellation Dock at the Inner Harbor, which is scheduled for sometime in July 1999.
Between now and then, in order to complete the construction, the foundation needs to raise another $1.2 million from the Maryland state legislature. That is a tall order, and one that Shawe said may require the services of a professional lobbyist. The Maryland General Assembly never has appropriated more than $500,000 for the ship's restoration in any one year. The foundation also must raise $1 million more in matching dollars from the private sector.
And yet none of this addresses the need for cash to maintain the ship after her return, or to operate her as a tourist attraction. It does not provide for the development of interpretative displays, renovating the ship's dockside welcome center, or opening a souvenir shop.
That, of course, is where Living Classrooms comes in. When Raymond and Living Classrooms President James Piper Bond went before the Constellation Foundation's board of directors in spring 1998, they laid out a proposed business plan for the ship. The plan anticipates an annual budget for the Constellation of $955,000, supported almost entirely by ticket sales, averaging $5 each. An estimated 260,000 visitors are expected annually under the plan—somewhat more than the ship welcomed in the early 1990s before her troubles began.
More than half of the Constellation's revenues would pay salaries. Living Classrooms indicated it expects to hire a full-time staff of 15, including an executive director, marketing director, curator, six full-time maintenance workers, plus shop staff and docents. The organization would allocate $281,000 for annual maintenance in the first year, with $181,000 of that for shipyard wages.
Raymond called the preliminary plan "very realistic, and actually I believe it is quite conservative on the revenue estimates." The Constellation once attracted as many as 350,000 visitors a year. Boudreau noted that the Constellation "may be unique in that it is one of the few museum ships that has a position in the middle of a large American city, and they have a tremendous amount of walk-by, spontaneous visits."
Not everyone thinks such a plan can work for the Constellation. Inadequate revenues from ticket sales were at the heart of her long physical decline in Baltimore. "No ship can run entirely off its admissions," said the Niagara's Captain Rybka, who wrote a cautionary letter to the Constellation Foundation when the discussions with Living Classrooms began. Ticket sales provide just 15% of the Niagara's revenues. The brig is state-owned, and as much as $700,000 of her $1 million annual budget is funded by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Another $150,000 comes from corporate sponsorships or ticket sales during annual visits to other Great Lakes ports.
The USS Constitution in Boston is still a commissioned Navy vessel, and her $1.2 million in annual maintenance costs and multimillion-dollar periodic repairs are paid for entirely by the Department of Defense.
Living Classrooms expects to accomplish a portion of the ship's maintenance in the course of its experiential-learning and job-training programs. Dozens of young Living Classrooms job trainees already have been put to work, helping to restore some of the Constellation's spars. Raymond expects to realize many more similar opportunities, in sail-making, perhaps, or the construction of several wooden longboats that eventually could be hung from the Constellation's davits and used during a variety of Inner Harbor promotional activities. "There are literally limitless educational opportunities on the Constellation," Raymond said.
The ship's long-term preservation eventually will require periodic haul-outs and costly repairs. Living Classrooms' plans call for 25 cents to be set aside from each ticket sale for long-term repairs, or about $65,000 annually. In addition, Raymond has pledged that Living Classrooms' fundraisers will work "shoulder to shoulder" with the Constellation Foundation to complete its $9 million campaign and establish an endowment for the ship's long-term care.
For now, the size of that initial endowment remains in question. Shawe said her board originally had hoped that $2 million of the $9 million to be raised would be available to seed the endowment. That now seems unlikely, she said, and "until we have the $9 million in hand, I am not willing to say there will be anything left over."
Living Classrooms, with its educational focus, she said, promises the ship much greater access to major donors. "They are very successful at fundraising, largely because they wave the flag of curriculum and education that are of such concern to corporations," she said.
The Niagara's Rybka, nonetheless, has his doubts. "I think Living Classrooms does very valid work, and it has made a very positive contribution to the waterfront. And I don't wish to disparage them," he said. "But [restoring and preserving the Constellation] is a very large undertaking and somewhat off their basic mission. I'm not saying it's impossible, but this is a very tall order. Based on past experience, I'd say it is being underestimated by a large factor."
Dennis Zembala, executive director of the Baltimore Museum of Industry, which owns and maintains the steam tug Baltimore, said, "There is not a lot of money around for preservation. We've been hard-pressed to keep the tug Baltimore floating." Living Classrooms will need to find ways to broaden the appeal of its ships—the Constellation included—beyond maritime buffs and preservationists, and that will require a professional curator and a "properly trained historian." Zembala said, "I think they could do it, but I don't think that currently they have the people on staff."
Dennis Fiore, director of the Maryland Historical Society, and Rodney Little, director of the Maryland Historical Trust, expressed concern, but chose their words carefully. "I am always concerned when there is a change in role and status that, on the surface, may be interpreted as not commensurate with respect for [the] artifact," said Fiore. Said Little: "We are watching current developments with a great deal of interest."
Privately, others whisper that Living Classrooms has grown too quickly, or that its vessels have not been maintained as well as is claimed, or that the interpretation on board its ships is weak.
Whatever the truth, Walter Rybka says that Living Classrooms will have its work cut out for it on board the Constellation. "What has been done so far is to restore the ship as a floating billboard for the waterfront. It's a long way short of what is going to be required," he said.
First and foremost, the ship has a fresh story she needs to tell. The Constellation's true history has been clouded for decades in Baltimore by well-meant efforts to portray her—and to some extent over the years to reconstruct her—as the famed 1797 frigate Constellation, which she replaced.
The Constellation Foundation since 1994 has endeavored to clear away the lingering confusion by steadfastly describing her as the 1854 sloop-of-war she is. Boudreau also has steered his restoration as closely as possible to her Civil War-era appearance—including, among other significant details, enclosing her head and restoring 19 air ports to each side of her berth deck.
The Constellation Foundation has formed a "Vision Committee" to map out the historical interpretation that will be needed once the ship returns to Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The committee is to become an advisory group to Living Classrooms after the transition in summer 1999.
Committee Chairman Dave Beck wants visitors to the Constellation to learn of Baltimore's role in the Civil War and the advent of steam-powered warships that quickly rendered the Constellation—the Navy's last all-sail fighting ship—obsolete. He wants to tell Baltimoreans about the African Americans who in large numbers helped to man ships like the Constellation. His committee wants to be able to portray daily life on board the ship.
"That's a plateful," Beck said. It will require museum consultants and focus groups to develop displays and lay out museum exhibits that visitors will encounter on the ship or inside the welcome center. "You could really put together a powerful story, but we don't have the budget. It will have to evolve over time," he said.
In its preliminary business plan, Living Classrooms has allocated $40,000 for the development of interpretive displays and materials in its first year. The job seems likely to demand far more. The cost of developing the Niagara exhibit in the impressive new Erie Maritime Museum was $1.5 million, Rybka said. "Interpretation is a bigger job than putting up a few plaques. That is what gathers the ship support, and it's a separate job from taking care of the ship."
Burt Logan, executive director of the USS Constitution Museum Foundation in Boston, said visitors to "Old Ironsides" actually spend more time in the museum than on the ship. Now 26 years old, his museum operates on an annual budget of just more than $2 million. More than half of its revenues come from the museum store, the rest from memberships and foundation support.
The Constellation's Boudreau said the custodians of historic wooden ships in the United States must learn as they go how to balance the physical needs of a ship with educational and interpretive demands. Some struggle. Others, like Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, have learned to do it well. "Their primary focus is on education and they don't make any bones about how they interpret their stuff to that end," Boudreau said. "They do a good job of maintaining their ships technically, but they have prioritized."
Boudreau has his own priorities for the Constellation. "I think somebody in my position has to be concerned about what is going to happen to all the hard work that goes into the ship," he said. "If I had a million dollars, I would take $800,000 and put it into parts that the ship had historically," he said. "The ship should have running rigging, lifeboats and davits, bronze fittings, and cannons. . . ."
He does not want to see the ship itself cluttered with displays. "I really have a very difficult time with this, the idea that the ship gets modified into a building by a designer who knows how to make a museum."
The Constellation seems poised to become the focus of an ongoing tug-of-war between the demands of an educational mission and the ship's continuing restoration. But Living Classrooms' Bond does not think so. "We see a wonderful marriage of the two, being able to involve future maintenance projects and completion projects in connection with experienced experts like Peter Boudreau, and involving students and volunteers wherever possible. We see it as an opportunity to work together."
The Constellation Foundation's Shawe, too, feels good about the ship's future with Living Classrooms. "I feel we can make this work and be a good thing," she said. "It's not perfect, but not much is. They would make a good steward for the ship. They want her very badly. They want to take care of the ship and have her be a star. I don't know what else you can ask from another organization."
The Constellation: 'Living Classroom?'
Some historic preservationists are concerned that the Constellation—here, in the water again after extensive restoration work—is about to fall into the hands of a well-intentioned but ill-equipped educational foundation.
By Frank D. Roylance