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Julian O. Davidson’s 1884 USS Constitution Escaping the British, July 1812
The Constitution escaped from several British warships in slow, anxiety-filled motion, as in a nightmare. Repeatedly the frigate’s cutters rowed ahead and dropped anchor; then men on board the ship pulled her ahead. Paintings that have captured the drama include Julian O. Davidson’s 1884 USS Constitution Escaping the British, July 1812.
USS Constitution Museum

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The Constitution's Great Escape

Through her captain and crew’s creativity and determination, the big frigate demonstrated U.S. seamanship early in the ‘Second War for Independence.’
By Louis Arthur Norton
May 2012
Naval History Magazine
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The 44-gun frigate Constitution would become the most famous American warship of the Age of Sail. But she would never have survived to achieve that distinction had she not escaped from seven Royal Navy ships in the War of 1812­—during three all-but-windless summer days off New Jersey, north of the Delaware Bay. 

In July 1812, Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton had asked the Constitution’s commander, Captain Isaac Hull, to use the utmost dispatch to reach New York, where the frigate would join Commodore John Rodgers’ squadron of six warships. But unknown to Hull, Rodgers was already far from that destination, well offshore hunting British merchant ships that were crossing the Atlantic. Under Hull’s command, the Constitution sailed on 5 July from Annapolis down the Chesapeake. Her first lieutenant, Charles Morris, had joined her only two weeks before she sailed, and approximately 100 newly assigned crewmen had come aboard. 

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Sources: 

Gardner W. Allen, ed., Papers of Isaac Hull: Commodore United States Navy (Boston: Boston Athenæum, 1929). 

Harry L. Coles, The War of 1812 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).

James Fenimore Cooper, The History of the Navy of the United States of America (Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwaite, 1845). 

William S. Dudley, ed., The Naval War of 1812: Documentary History, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 1985 and 1992). 

David S. and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004).

Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).

Ira N. Hollis, The Frigate Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901).

Isaac Hull to Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton, 21 July 1812, National Archives, Record Group 45, Captain’s Letters, 1812, vol. 2, no. 127.

Tyrone G. Martin, A Most Fortunate Ship: A Narrative History of “Old Ironsides” (Chester, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1980). 

Charles Morris, The Autobiography of Commodore Charles Morris, United States Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002).

Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1882).

Headshot of Louis Arthur Norton

Louis Arthur Norton

Louis Arthur Norton, University of Connecticut professor emeritus, has published extensively on maritime history. His books include Joshua Barney: Hero of the Revolutionary War and 1812 (Naval Institute Press, 2000) and Captains Contentious: The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine (University of South Carolina Press, 2009). Two of his articles earned  the Gerald E. Morris Prize for maritime historiography and appeared in The Log of Mystic Seaport. 

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