Last of the Sailing Corvettes

By 1852, the 38-gun sail frigate Constellation, launched in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1797, lay old and rotting in the Gosport (Norfolk, Virginia) Navy Yard. She had been laid up there since 1845, after nearly 50 years' outstanding service in peace and war. As part of its shipbuilding plan for 1853, the U.S. Navy had decided to construct a new sail sloop-of-war (or corvette—to use the French designation adopted by the world's navies) rated at 22 guns and to perpetuate the name Constellation in her.¹ The Navy's history with its steamers had been mixed. A few were excellent ships with reliable machinery; other ships were very poor, and most were considered just adequate.²

William A. Graham, Secretary of the Navy from August 1850 to June 1852, did not believe the Navy needed a large number of new ships. By summer 1852, of four steamers authorized in 1847, three were finished and one nearly was completed; two more new ships also were completing. Graham was not a steam enthusiast and he felt sailing warships still were viable. He recommended in 1851 that the Navy build one steamer and one sailing ship yearly and by doing so keep abreast of developments in shipbuilding.³ Graham's successor was John P. Kennedy, who served until the end of President Millard Fillmore's term in March 1853. He advocated some steamers, but nothing was done. Instead, it seems, Graham's plan was implemented because in 1853 and 1854 work began on a new sail corvette (Constellation) and a new steam frigate (Franklin). When James C. Dobbin became Secretary of the Navy in March 1853 under newly elected President Franklin Pierce, he let the Constellation's building proceed while he prepared his proposal to Congress requesting large steam frigates.⁴

For bureaucratic reasons, the Navy considered the Constellation and the Franklin to be "rebuilds" of their older predecessors so that money allocated already for ship-repair purposes could be used rather than having additional new-construction funds appropriated. Ship timber already in storage was also available for use. In reality, what "rebuilding" meant was that the old ship was broken up for scrap and a new one built to a new design, using both new and prestored materials. Accordingly, the old frigate Constellation was scrapped in early 1853. The keel of the new corvette of the same name was laid at the Gosport Navy Yard on 25 June 1853, and she was launched on 26 August 1854. After fitting out, she was commissioned for service on 28 July 1855.⁵

Frigates and a few sloops-of-war and brigs had made up the War of 1812 Navy, and near the war's close, four ships-of-the-line had even been authorized and built. Later in the 1820s and '30s three more "liners" were completed and saw active service. In the years after 1815, ships-of-the-line and frigates made up most of the Navy's strength. But the need for economy soon prevailed. The big ships were expensive to operate and maintain and required large crews, which were difficult to amass in peacetime. A fleet of more and smaller ships would give better value for money, and so the Navy turned to the smaller sloop-of-war/corvette type, ordering 12 such ships built in the 1820s. Fifteen more followed through 1855, plus smaller numbers of frigates, brigs, schooners, and steamers. In the period 1825 to 1855 the three-masted, square-rigged sail corvette of 18 to 22 guns, slightly smaller than a frigate and with a crew of about 250, became the predominant warship type in the U.S. Navy. In those years the number of ships-of-the-line and frigates in commission at any one time never exceeded three or four and eight to ten respectively and the high number of frigates (in the years 1846 to '49) was exceptional. Even three large frigates, the Macedonian, the Cumberland, and the Savannah, were rearmed and reclassified as corvettes in the 1850s.

When she was completed in 1855 the Constellation was the last sail corvette built and also the last sail warship designed for the Navy. Construction of two new steam frigates, the Colorado and the Roanoke of the Merrimack class, already was under way at the Gosport Navy Yard as the Constellation lay fitting out after her launch. She was the biggest sail corvette built for the Navy. Her displacement was 1,280 tons, her hull length between perpendiculars 176 feet, and she had a beam of 42 feet. Her original armament comprised 2 10-inch and 16 8-inch shell guns plus 4 32-pounders. Before sailing for Africa in 1859, the 10-inch guns were removed. Almost 300 men formed her crew.⁶

Her first captain was Charles H. Bell, who commanded the U.S. Pacific Squadron during the Civil War. The Constellation embarked in the summer of 1855 to join the U.S. Mediterranean Squadron under Commodore Samuel L. Breese. During the years 1855 to 1858 the squadron's ships—the new sail frigate Congress, sail corvette Constellation, and the steam paddle sloop Saranac (replaced later by the steam paddle frigate Susquehanna)—operated in the Mediterranean. Finally, after a quiet 2 1/2 years, the Constellation came home.⁷ Upon her return she became, for a short time, part of a U.S. naval force off Cuba acting to protect U.S. shipping from what was felt to be unreasonable searches by British anti-slave-trading patrols.⁸

After a brief lay-up she was recommissioned in mid-1859 under Captain John S. Nicholas for service as flagship of the U.S. African Squadron. With Flag Officer William Inman embarked, she sailed for the west coast of Africa. The Constellation patrolled until August 1861 with the five or six other ships in the squadron to enforce the Federal law, which, since the start of 1808, had made the involvement of U.S. ships and citizens in the trans-Atlantic international slave trade illegal.⁹

By the mid-19th century, the vast majority of Africans taken as slaves across the Atlantic were going to Brazil and especially Cuba, most of them in U.S.-registered ships. Comparatively few came to the United States by this time. But many U.S. ship captains and mates engaged in this horrible but lucrative trade.¹⁰ In her time off Africa, the Constellation captured 3 of the 13 U.S. slave ships in the trade taken by the squadron. Two, the Delicia and the Triton, had no slaves on board but were equipped as slavers and thus were valid prizes. The third ship, the Cora, had been loaded originally with 705 people intended for servitude in Cuba. When the Constellation stopped her off the coast, 694 were still alive to be freed by the corvette's crew.¹¹ The Triton, taken in May 1861, was registered in a southern port and so became the first enemy ship captured by the U.S. Navy overseas in the Civil War.

When the Civil War began in April 1861, the Constellation was still with the African Squadron. But the needs at home prompted the recall of most of the ships in foreign waters. The Constellation returned home in late 1861, underwent repairs, and then was ordered to the Mediterranean again. Her mission was again to "show the flag" and protect U.S. commercial interests and shipping against possible attack by the new Confederate Navy.¹² In November 1861, Commander Henry K. Thatcher (later promoted directly to Commodore) assumed command as the ship was prepared for war service at the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Navy Yard. Two rifled Parrott pivot cannon as well as two smaller guns were mounted to augment her 20-gun armament.

She sailed in March 1862 for the Mediterranean. On the way, her men kept a sharp lookout for the CSS Sumter, a Confederate ship that, since July 1861, had captured 18 U.S. merchant vessels. The Sumter's raiding cruise had ended permanently at Gibraltar in January 1862, however, when she put in there for repairs.¹³ No one in the United States knew this at the time the Constellation sailed and not until her arrival in European waters did her crew learn of it.

From 1862 to 1864, the Constellation, the sole permanent representative of the U.S. Navy in that part of the world, cruised the length and breadth of the Mediterranean. In mid-1863 Captain Henry S. Stellwagen took over from Thatcher as commander. As it turned out, the Confederacy's commerce raiders never menaced U.S. shipping in the Mediterranean. In mid- to late 1863 she was put on alert because of a strong rumor that a steamer named the Southerner was headed for the Mediterranean to be used as a raider. But this turned out, eventually, to be a false alarm.¹⁴ In early 1864 the Constellation stood by with other European warships off the city of Tunis during riots there but her intervention was not needed.

Finally, in September 1864, she sailed for home. Unsuited for further planned service on the blockade of Confederate ports, she ended the war quietly as a receiving ship at the Norfolk Navy Yard.¹⁵

The warships of the post-Civil War Navy were all to be steamers, and the Constellation's days as a first-line ship were done. But she still could serve. She became a seagoing training ship in 1871 for U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen, and they came to know her well through the 1870s, '80s, and early '90s, as she gave them a taste of life at sea during summer cruises.¹⁶ Also, as needed, she was used for special duties. She carried food to Ireland in 1880 to help relieve famine and voyaged to and from Europe in 1878 and 1892/93 with exhibits and art treasures for international fairs.¹⁷

As of 1893, more modern Naval Academy training ships replaced her, and so she was moved to the Newport, Rhode Island, Naval Station to be a pierside training ship for enlisted recruits.¹⁸ There she served as training ship and historic relic into the 20th Century. As world tensions increased, she was ordered recommissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 as a means of inspiration for the Navy and the country to be vigilant against German aggression.

By this time, for reasons unclear to this day, the Navy had since 1909 been classifying the Constellation as the frigate of 1797 and not the corvette of 1854.¹⁹ This caused confusion over her origins and true history and would haunt her in the future.

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941 the Constellation became the flagship (non seagoing of course) of Atlantic Fleet commander Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll at Newport. From his office on board came orders and directives in the first six months of 1942, concerning the Navy's fight in the Battle of the Atlantic against the German submarine offensive.²⁰ In June 1942 Admiral Ingersoll shifted his flag to a more modern seagoing ship, and the Constellation became the relief fleet flagship, serving in that capacity until the end of the war.

After victory in 1945, peacetime financial austerity set in, and the Navy was forced to reduce its small fleet of old historic ships to just one—the frigate Constitution.²¹ During the late 1940s, patriotic Marylanders and Baltimoreans pressed to have the Constellation brought to Baltimore for preservation as a historic museum ship. They based this on the belief, fostered by the Navy and their own research, that the ship was still the Baltimore-built frigate of 1797, one of the original six of the Federal Navy authorized in 1794. They contended that she had merely been modified to be a corvette from 1853 to '55. Even though this was an incorrect interpretation of the historical record, the ship was decommissioned and transferred to Baltimore in 1955 to be exhibited as the frigate.²²

Noted maritime historian Howard I. Chapelle questioned the validity of classifying the ship as the original frigate, but he met adamant opposition from the controlling Constellation Foundation.²³ During the years 1958 to 1975 the Foundation gradually altered the ship's outward appearance to resemble the old 38-gun frigate.

During this time, Chapelle and other historians, such as John R. Lyman and William A. Baker, wrote books, letters, and short magazine articles to present their side of the argument.²⁴ Lyman's article, "The Constellation and Her Rebuilding," in the July 1975 issue of Sea History magazine was especially good in detailing the corvette's construction.²⁵ Senior Constellation Foundation staff, namely, Leon Polland and Donald Stewart, presented fierce counter arguments that the ship was still, in spite of everything, the frigate. And so the controversy over the ship increased in bitterness.²⁶ Regardless of all this, the Constellation was a popular attraction in Baltimore harbor with thousands of people touring her yearly. In the late 1970s and the 1980s, with the redevelopment of the city's Inner Harbor area, her value as a historic attraction increased enormously.

In 1989 Dana Wegner, the naval ship model curator at the David Taylor Research Center, which did work for the Navy, was moved to begin a detailed study of the Constellation's history.²⁷ A protracted and careful effort by Wegner and some of his colleagues resulted in the 1991 book, Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered. This told the story of the ship's preservation in detail and laid bare the sometimes devious efforts of some Constellation Foundation staff members. Of the documents they always produced to prove that the ship was the original frigate, many definitely had been forged and the authenticity of the rest was highly dubious.²⁸ Wegner was convinced that he had proved, to anyone with an open mind, the ship's true heritage as the corvette of 1854.²⁹ He followed up Fouled Anchors with a superb article in the Spring 1992 issue of The American Neptune, titled "An Apple and an Orange: Two Constellations at Gosport 1853-1855," again detailing the frigates scrapping and the new corvette's construction. Opposing articles followed in The American Neptune, and the Constellation Foundation accepted neither Wegner's book or his article.³⁰

By the early 1990s the ship needed another round of major and costly repairs. The Foundation had little money for this, however, and a Navy survey of the ship in 1993 found very serious material decay in her hull. Her condition proved so serious that in 1994 her masts, yards, and rigging were removed, and soon thereafter she was closed to visitors. Wegner's findings on the Constellation's history had become generally accepted by then, and a new Constellation Foundation formed in 1995, committed to restoring her to her correct appearance as the newly built corvette of 1854.
 
The thoroughly debated plan for the restoration called for spending $9 million. The gun deck and side hull planking were to be replaced by layers of wood glued and fastened together in a "cold-molded" process that needed no heat to make the glue set. The hull planking just below the waterline, in good condition still, did not need to be so treated. Many of the original frame sections could be retained, and the ship's interior timbers from the berth deck down to the keel, original to when she was built in 1853 to '55, could be left intact. The cold-molded upper hull and gun deck would thus form a protective shell around the original parts of the ship.³¹

In November 1996 the Constellation was finally moved to a small drydock near Fort McHenry in Baltimore. The following month, work began. The first major item was to straighten the badly deformed, upward-bent—or hogged—keel. The successful process took three-and-a-half months, using heavy jacks, assisted by the hull's great weight, pressing down on the keel on its blocks in the drydock. After this, most of the outer hull planking was removed, and the spar (main) deck was demolished. New frame sections then were installed where needed.³²

New evidence to support the Constellation's correct origin was announced on 29 July 1997. A laser beam survey of the hull's shape had been done soon after drydocking, comparing it with the 1853 ship's plans. The survey showed a perfect match, indicating the existing ship was built new and was not a mere modification of the old frigate.³³

Work on fitting the cold-molded hull planking began in autumn 1997 and went well. A small ceremony in April 1998 attended by "plankowners" and Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke essentially marked its completion, as work progressed on dismantling the gun deck.

Finally, on 21 August 1998 the Constellation was floated safely out of the drydock. Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening and hundreds of people attended the event. The ship was later moved to a pier close by so that the restoration could continue.³⁴ In September 1998 the Constellation Foundation approved the ship's transfer to the Living Classrooms Foundation upon completion of the restoration, a controversial decision to some critics.³⁵

From September 1998 to March 1999 workers finished the new gun deck and spar deck. By June, the bowsprit will have been put in, all three masts stepped and set up, and rigging and yards installed. Mounting replicas of the full armament will have to wait, however, until more funding is available.

The Constellation Foundation has set 2 July 1999 as the date for the ship's return to Baltimore's Inner Harbor. She will have been restored to her correct appearance as a 22-gun corvette (or sloop-of-war) at the start of the Civil War. She will regain her place as one of the most historic U.S. ships, the last sailing warship designed for the U.S. Navy.