*Reprinted from New York Times of July 26, 1925, by permission.
OLD IRONSIDES, the gallant frigate Constitution, is in imminent danger of falling to pieces. But, rescue from ruin is at hand, for Congress has given to the children the privilege of volunteering for its preservation. Patriotic societies under the leadership of the Daughters of 1812 called attention to the deterioration in the ship’s timbers. The Secretary of the Navy, himself a graduate of the Naval Academy in the days when the Constellation, sister ship of the Constitution, took the cadets on their annual cruises, made a personal visit to the Constitution in July, 1924. The board of inspection appointed by him reported at that time that the Constitution’s timbers and planking below the water line were honeycombed with dry rot, and that the cost of rebuilding her would be $500,000. Above the water she is apparently in sound condition. She is like a house built on sand.
An appeal was at once made to Congress, which, in the closing days of the last session, incorporated a resolution in the omnibus bill authorizing the reconstruction of the old ship, but appropriating no money for the purpose. To carry on the work of rebuilding, the Secretary of the Navy is authorized by Congress to receive voluntary contributions from the people of the United States. Accordingly, Secretary Wilbur has started the “Save the Constitution Fund.” As an inspiration and an object lesson of the glorious days of 1812 to the boys and girls of today, the invitation to contribute to Old Ironsides’ restoration is addressed first and foremost to the children of America—that the privilege and honor shall be theirs.
In the last year of Washington’s administration the Constitution, better known as Old Ironsides, was launched. With more fights to her credit than any two of our other historic men-of-war, after 128 years of service she still floats, and the purpose is to prolong her inspiring existence.
She was Preble’s flagship at Tripoli when Decatur and his midshipmen in daredevil fashion set fire to the frigate Philadelphia and singed the Bashaw of Tripoli’s beard. In the War of 1812 she destroyed after memorable duels two of the finest frigates in the British Navy, the Guerriere and the Java. Thus she helped to win the “second war of independence,” and before its end she had also captured single-handed the two British ships Cyane and Levant.
After the close of hostilities the Constitution was the innocent cause of spilling almost more ink than she had seen of blood in battle. After bitter political controversy she was repaired and rehabilitated, and thenceforth wore at her prow a carved wooden image of President Jackson—who had been anything but wooden or a figurehead in life. During many years the Constitution continued cruising in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with a lookout for blackbirders. Two of her fighting commanders, then growing old, Isaac Hull and Charles Stewart, watched with sentimental interest her later career.
After her last cruise as a man-of-war, in connection with the breaking up of the African slave trade, the Constitution undertook preparedness duty, serving as training ship for midshipmen, her valiant traditions, which recalled all that was most glorious in the days of sail, inspiring their young devotion. In 1897 in Boston, where she still rests—the same port from which she set forth so often on her cruises and to which she returned after triumphing over the Guerriere and the Java—Old Ironsides is still stanch enough to be the stimulating figure in the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of her own launching. When the school children of America have succeeded in the campaign to preserve this historic frigate against the ravages of time there will be another festival in her honor.
During the Tripolitan War the Constitution was the flagship of Commodore Preble. His men, called his “schoolboys,” had learned their profession under one of the most rigid and efficient commanders of the navy of that day, also under the inspiration of such deeds in the fleet as that of the ketch Intrepid, in which a lot of the “boys” blew up the corsairs’ gunboats, along with themselves. That was the deed that the British Admiral, Nelson, himself most strikingly fearless, called the most daring act of the age. Of Commodore Preble’s schoolboys, three, Isaac Hull, William Bainbridge, and Charles Stewart, were destined a few years later to command the Constitution in her memorable battles in the course of the War of 1812.
Under command of Isaac Hull at the outbreak of this war, the Constitution escaped from a British squadron of five frigates. By drenching her canvas with water, by warping her ahead during spells of calm with a kedge anchor fastened to a mile of hawsers, and finally by shortening sail in apparently panicky haste at the approach of a squall, Hull outwitted his pursuers. At the instant the squall covered him from the enemy’s sight, he again unfurled all sail. Hull’s resourceful seamanship won the day, and his crew took their first rest after a race that had lasted sixty hours.
Soon afterward Hull fell in with the British frigate Guerriere. They fought like two duelists. Hull’s quick movements gave the Constitution the advantage. She raked with deadly fire the Guerriere’s decks, yet by swift maneuvering skillfully avoided being raked by the British ship. On the first of these occasions, when one of the Guerriere’s masts crashed overboard, a seaman on the Constitution shouted to another: “Damn it, Jack, we have made a brig of her.” Another sailor, who had noticed that the British shot bounded harmlessly from the Constitution’s sides, gave her the name she has borne ever since—“Huzza, her sides are made of iron!”
When Captain Dacres of the British ship came up the gangway of the Constitution, Captain Hull greeted him with the words, “Dacres, I know you are hurt; give me your hand.” Thus began in the heat of battle a friendship that lasted till Hull’s death in 1843.
Toward the end of 1812 the unluckiest of officers, William Bainbridge, who had spent years in dungeons in Guadaloupe and Tripoli, took command of the lucky ship of the navy, Old Ironsides. In her, off the Brazilian coast after a fight as brilliant in seamanship and gunnery as Hull’s, he captured another British frigate, the Java, When the latter’s brave skipper, mortally wounded, was about to be taken ashore, Captain Bainbridge, himself suffering from severe wounds and supported by two sailors, came on deck to bid Captain Lambert goodbye and to return his sword. Once more the Constitution carried to Boston the news of victory. It electrified maritime New England and changed the spirit of apathy to intense patriotism. In this sense Old Ironsides won the war.
Although both British and American commanders in distant waters had a suspicion that peace had been made, news traveled slowly, and Captain Charles Stewart, who commanded the Constition in 1815, was anxious to add one more laurel to her record. Toward the close of February, off the Madeiras, he fell in with two smaller enemy ships, the Cyane and the Levant, and today the latter’s flags hang in the halls of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Those two ships were beaten by what a midshipman has called the “three great ships” of the War of 1812—seamanship, marksmanship, and leadership. England, in the midst of her triumphs on the sea against Napoleon, with a thousand sails to America’s twenty-one, felt terribly the losses inflicted during this war by “Yankee trickery.” Despite our unpreparedness in 1812, this conflict with England marks a brilliant page in our naval history.
After the war Old Ironsides underwent a long overhauling. In the thirties the discussion of her first restoration made the Secretary of the Navy decide to scrap her on the ground that her repairs would amount to more than her first cost. It was then that a young law student in Boston, Oliver Wendell Holmes, dashed off his indignant protest:
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
His poem brought immediate response. Under her former commander, Isaac Hull, despite all opposition, the Constitution was restored. Her live oak timbers, still sound, had needed little replacing, but with glistening bright-work and a new set of sails and rigging she once more looked like her clever old self.
Andrew Jackson being at this time, 1834, President, Captain Jesse D. Elliott of the Boston Navy Yard conceived the idea of interesting the West in the traditions of the sea by replacing Old Ironsides’ billet-head, which she had worn on her prow throughout the War of 1812, by an effigy of “Old Hickory” Jackson.
Instantly there arose in New England violent anti-Jacksonian cries against it, for Jackson was cordially disliked by Whiggish New Englanders. Elliott barely escaped a coat of tar and feathers (and was finally persecuted out of the Boston Navy Yard), yet despite opposition he put the Jackson figurehead in place. Then a young merchantman captain, Samuel Dewey, on a bet, quietly rowed out one squally black night to the Constitution, which was moored between two ships-of-the-line, to maim the image of Jackson. During the thunder storm Dewey sawed and chipped away, finally cutting the head off. For months afterward those who were in the secret met in a club, dined, and drank toasts, while the wooden head of Jackson adorned the center of the banquet table. When the club members met on the streets they stroked their chins in token of recognition. Only after much effort was young Dewey dissuaded from presenting the head to President Jackson himself.
On a promise of immunity for his partisan vandalism he was induced to surrender it to the Secretary of Navy. In some Washington circles there was much secret jubilation over the insult to Jackson. Of course, some old sea dog might have made a more appropriate adornment for a man-of-war than a soldier, but ships had been known to bear the effigies of Presidents. Besides, “Old Hickory,” like Old Ironsides, had come out of the War of 1812 with untarnished record, which was more than some soldiers and ships of this period could boast of themselves.
Captain Elliott covered the mutilated figure of Jackson with a canvas bag, painted on it five stripes in allusion to New England’s indifference during the first part of the war, sailed the Constitution to Philadelphia and there fitted on a new Jacksonian head. That she wore for forty years; today it is preserved, a curious reminder of partisan intolerance, on the grounds of the Naval Academy.
Just before the Civil War Old Ironsides was relegated from warship to training ship for the Naval Academy. On the occasion of the embarkation of the midshipmen for their first cruise on the famous old frigate, some of them wrote to Commodore Charles Stewart, still hale and hearty and commandant of the Philadelphia Navy Yard at the age of eighty-two, to invite him to Annapolis to dedicate the Constitution to her new duties. In his reply the Commodore says: “I have received your very flattering and kind invitation to visit you in your new School Ship (Old Ironsides). . . . . You do me the honor to remind me that I was one of the many who trod her deck on one occasion of her distinguished service. It would afford me great pleasure to meet your wishes, but my short remaining time is so pressed upon by my public and domestic duties that I am obliged to forego the honor of your distinguished invitation.”
Noteworthy as have been Old Ironsides’ sea fights, they are not as great as her spiritual victories. In 1812 after her returns from the Guerriere and the Java duels she aroused the patriotism of America as nothing else could. During the latter part of the last century thousands of navy officers gained new inspiration for their chosen profession when they put foot on her decks. Even in the recent World War there were some older officers, who as midshipmen had made their initial cruises on this frigate, which in age and historic significance is for America what Nelson’s flagship, the Victory, is to Britain.
Let the school children of America enshrine Old Ironsides. For similar reasons, as symbol of American progress, she is as worthy of veneration, as, let us say, Faneuil Hall or Independence Hall. What though not a timber nor a spike of her old self remains in her frame, her spirit is immortal, a continuing national inspiration.
The “Save the Constitution” movement now under way is sponsored by various patriotic societies in their respective states. Rear Admiral Louis R. de Steiguer, commandant of the First Naval District, Navy Yard, Boston, Massachusetts, in whose bailiwick the Constitution lies, has been designated by the Secretary of the Navy to be chairman of the “Save the Constitution Fund.” Those cooperating with him are Mrs. Samuel Preston Davis, national president of the Daughters of 1812, and A. C. Ratshesky, president of the United States Trust Company, Boston, who is treasurer of the fund. W. D. Towner, who, like Mr. Ratshesky, has been actively connected with Red Cross and other philanthropic movements, has also volunteered his services as secretary of the fund, with headquarters at the Navy Yard, Boston.