This morning, precisely at 9 o’clock at the navy yard of Major Stodder, the builder, was launched the United States Frigate Constellation.” So chronicles a newspaper of the day.
This morning, the seventh of September, 1797, saw the successful launch of a fine new ship.
Great crowds of the people of Baltimore, men and women, young and old, swarmed over the hills east of the Navy Yard. The surface of the Patapsco River was covered with innumerable boats. Even the yard itself probably had more people in it than ever before. There were the two hundred workmen and the dozens of volunteers in uniform who were sent on board the skip to handle the lines and man the capstan; there was another crowd of volunteers in uniform that kept the bigger crowds out of the Navy Yard.
This was David Stodder’s day. Captain Thomas Truxtun, who would command the ship during the first brilliant years of her long and proud career, was present when his ship was launched; but he willingly stood aside to let the world look at Stodder, the constructor of the frigate. Stodder had been thinking about this launch for a long time. He had laid the keel for the ship two years before. He had lived with the ship as she took form; of course he was proud to be able to report that the launch had been successful.
The first three ships of the United States Navy were launched in that year of 1797, just 150 years ago. Two of those ships still live: Constellation and Constitution. The frigate Constitution lies secure in her dock at Charlestown, in the Boston Naval Shipyard. She has been through a long period of overhaul (1927-1931); it is not likely that she will be removed from the rolls of the Navy so long as we have a Navy.
The Constellation is not so fortunate. Not many people outside the Navy know that our oldest naval vessel is the Constellation. Her history has been told, but not yet with the enthusiasm it demands. Many men have enjoyed the privilege of the windward side of her quarterdeck. None was a better officer than her first commander, Captain Thomas Truxtun. It was he who set the standards of command for the new Navy. It was his perfect discipline and exaggerated coolness when all about him were excited that made possible the great victories of the Constellation and Truxtun. They would have been less if he had not been proud of his ship. The first victory was over the French frigate L’Insurgente; the second was a decisive night action, five hours long, with the larger Frenchman La Vengeance. In 1800, toasts were being drunk and songs were being sung extolling “the Brilliant Constellation” and her captain, “Truxtun, brave Truxtun.”
Perhaps the Constellation will be repaired and refitted; she lies dismasted today. The arguments for keeping her afloat should never be based on age alone: the Constellation is a proud ship. Her launch was a propitious one.
The frigate United States was launched in Philadelphia four months before the Constellation was launched in Baltimore. The Constitution, at Boston, finally arrived in the water about six weeks later.
The ships of the new Navy had been authorized in 1794 for the express purpose of bringing the Dey of Algiers to better terms in the treaty of peace and amity, which he was then considering, than our diplomats had been able to make. Three years later, along with the United States ships of war there would be a 38-gun frigate launched in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the Navy Yard of builder Hackett. Its name was Crescent. It was a present to be added to the Navy of the very same Dey of Algiers! It was a part of the tribute exacted by the arrogant old Dey for making peace with the United States. A present of a war ship? How could it be? Let the Secretary of State, writing while the Crescent was still on the stocks, give the hint: “Nothing is to be done to hazard the good opinion of the Dey, or to excite the most distant idea of trespassing on his distinguished benevolence towards the United States.”
President Washington had decided that a 36-gun frigate should be built at Baltimore. He insisted that the work of building a Navy be spread up and down the coast. Virginia was a larger state; then Norfolk must build a 44. It was Washington also who picked the names for the first frigates from a list submitted by Timothy Pickering, his Secretary of War in 1795.
For each ship a Naval Constructor was appointed. The pay was two thousand dollars a year. David Stodder was the man in Baltimore whose experience—and shipyard— fitted in with the program. A Captain in the Navy was assigned to each ship as superintendent. Thomas Truxtun was sent to Baltimore. (He was actually ship superintendent and prospective commanding officer combined.) The responsibilities of constructor and superintendent could not be too sharply defined. It was inevitable that Stodder and Truxtun would disagree on many points. On one thing they were agreed: they were in Baltimore for one purpose only, and that was to build a good ship.
James McHenry was the Secretary of War in 1797, and until the Navy Department was formed the following year he was nominally in charge of the naval building program. This willing but incompetent man complained to David Stodder, the naval constructor at Baltimore, that he was displeased at the poor progress being made in his yard. This gave Stodder the chance to make his position clear. His launching date was still several months away when on April 20, 1797, he answered the Secretary’s letter. He had lost a summer’s work, he complained in turn, because the materials had been furnished by the Government, and had not been furnished on time. He had not been able to plan his work. He could have procured the timber himself, he said, for half the cost to Government, and in doing that he could have had the ship in the water during the fall of 1796. (That argument has been revived several times since 1797.)
Joshua Humphreys was Naval Constructor in Philadelphia. He built the United States there, and at the same time tried to keep an eye on the progress of the ships in Boston and Baltimore. He had launched his ship May 10, and she had gotten away from him and launched herself before he had knocked all of the keel blocks loose and before all of his workmen had gotten out from under the hull. One of the rudder braces and a section of the false keel were damaged as the ship plunged into the Delaware. He had plenty of advice for Stodder.
The bottoms of the-frigates were coppered. Stodder wanted to copper his ship after it was in the water. He could then put the copper on in safety—if anything could be done with safety on a ship hove down to the wharf, listing some seventy degrees from the vertical. Between Humphreys and Truxtun, the builder was persuaded to put on the copper while the hull still lay in the stocks. Apparently Humphreys had to visit the Navy Yard in Baltimore before the argument was settled.
Near the end of July, 1797, Joshua Humphreys made a flying trip to Baltimore. On Tuesday he got his orders from the Secretary of War in Philadelphia “to proceed forthwith to the Navy Yard at Baltimore in Maryland, and in conjunction with Captn. Truxtun, and Mr. David Stodder the Constructor, consult on the best method to be pursued in Launching the Frigate Constellation into the Water (so as to float) . . .On Thursday he was in Baltimore, out where Harris’s Creek flowed into the north side of the Patapsco.
The Navy Yard was rented from Stodder for about five hundred dollars a year. It was less than a mile from Stodder’s home in Philpot Street on Fell’s Point; it had been for several years his shipyard. Towering over all was the hull of the frigate. From the ground up to the deck the workmen walked on a brow over 100 feet long and wide enough to hold 4 men abreast. There were half-a-dozen buildings in the yard. Like every well-regulated Navy Yard, this one had a guard house and an office (12-by-12 and 12-by-16 feet respectively). Then there was the shop area: blacksmith shop, joiner shop, mast shed, and boat builder’s shed—- about 7,000 square feet of roofed-over buildings. Somewhere within the yard was the equivalent of the present-day commandant’s car and messenger’s bicycle: “1 horse, saddle & bridle.” Just north of the yard was a rope walk, but there is no record of where the ropes for the ship came from. As near as can be judged from the maps, the building ways were laid down at the present intersection of Luzerne Avenue and Hudson Street, a few blocks south of Patterson Park, and now a cable length from the river.
The United States, when launched, had drawn about 19 feet of water aft and less than 14 feet forward. With this in mind, Humphreys had soundings made off the end of the ways here in Baltimore. Sixty feet out from shore he had 16 feet of water and 8 feet or more of soft mud. At 180 feet from shore a pole was run down over 30 feet without reaching solid ground. Humphreys made a note that the common tides would add 3 feet to his soundings, and of course the launching would be at the flood.
The three men—Humphreys, Stodder, and Truxtun—got together and discussed the results; they looked over the ship, checked the angle of descent of the ways; and finally they agreed that the hull could be coppered at least up as far as the light water line without any danger. And, barring accident, they would not have to heave her down after she was launched.
Early Saturday morning Humphreys started back to Philadelphia in the fast coach. Setting out from the Fountain Inn in Baltimore at 4 a.m. he rode into Philadelphia at 10 o’clock the following morning. On the journey up he had been thinking about Stodder’s plans for the launch, and it occurred to him that one detail he had overlooked might lead to disaster. On Monday he sat down and wrote Stodder a long letter, saying in a half dozen ways the one thing that was on his mind.
The bilge or sliding ways, riding down on the fixed ways, would carry the weight of the ship. Stodder had proposed relieving the keel blocks of their burden by driving wedges between bilge ways and ship; so far so good, but he was going to drive the wedges from the inside outwards. It occurred to Humphreys that unless he could counteract the outward thrust on the bilge ways they might easily spread, with results ranging from embarrassing to disastrous. Humphreys’ suggestion could just as easily have caused trouble; his idea was simply to drive the wedges from the outside inwards. Wedges inside or outside, driven against Constellation’s bottom—for she had a sharp bottom— could spread the sliding ways. That detail, small though it is, points up the magnitude of the undertaking one hundred and fifty years ago when a man built a ship of a thousand tons. It was not the age of design based on theory, nor was any empirical data available. Each operation must be cut and tried. We can only imperfectly judge the ability of those builders; it is all too easy to apply the yardstick with the atomic scale on it.
The month of August wore on as the copper was put on the bottom of the hull. Truxtun was busy working up his quarter bill and writing down instructions to his first lieutenant (i.e., executive officer), setting forth his standards of discipline and subordination. His would be a taut ship, but his discipline would be fair and just. He made one more trip up to Philadelphia during the month, probably to talk with the Secretary of War about officer appointments for his ship.
Finally the day of the launch was set. It would be on Thursday morning, September 7, 1797. The tallow for the ways was purchased —$119.88 worth—and it was applied to the launching ways. Undoubtedly the tallow was spread and the bilge ways hauled up into place on Wednesday. That would leave for Thursday only the wedging up and the final launch.
Stodder planned his launch carefully. It is probable that Thursday’s dawn found the hull standing secure on the keel blocks, steadied by a double row of stanchions on each side. The cradle was fitted to the contour of the bottom; the wedges would lift the weight from off the keel blocks and then the blocks could be removed. The hull would be secured from moving by the dogshores— timbers on each side corresponding to the present day triggers. The last operation of the launch would be to knock the dogshores loose.
The workmen were divided and strung out along each side of the launching ways. David Stodder was in command. If only we could get the picture in clearer focus, and perhaps even hear the words of his commands. He had no need to shout: a drummer was there, and he passed along the orders by a ruffle on his drum. It was a precision performance, and it was carefully recorded by at least one spectator.
Knowing the principal facts, let us try reasonably to fill in the details. Let us take up a position under the port quarter of the hull. The hull rises above the ground more than 40 feet; it is 163 feet in length and 40 feet in beam, of 1,278 tons. The hull still rests on the keel blocks. The workmen all are in their places. Stodder speaks to the drummer. There is a tentative roll on the drum; and then as the mauls begin to rain down their blows on the wedges, the drummer accompanies them with a sustained ruffle. A nod from Stodder; the drum beat suddenly stops; and a rally at the wedges is complete. Stodder walks all around his hull, checking, inspecting. All the eyes of the crowd are on him. All of the people on the low hills to the eastward, across Harris’s Creek; all of the people in the boats: all eyes follow any movement in the yard. As the hull is raised and the strain comes off the stanchions, they are removed. When the keel is off the blocks they too are knocked aside.
Let the eye witness take over:
. . . and now description is beggared.
Everything being in the most complete preparation, all the blocks taken away, every man from under the vessel, and the hull standing on almost nothing but the slippery tallow, orders were given for knocking away the last stanchions. This being done, she moved gracefully and majestically down her ways, amidst the silent amazement of thousands of spectators, to her destined element, into which she plunged with such ease and safety, as to make the hills resound with reiterated bursts of joyful acclamations.
Her launch was perfect. She came to anchor within 100 yards of the shore. The professional opinions bear out the superlatives that appeared in the newspapers.
David Stodder, in his report to the Secretary of War, said “I launched the United States frigate Constellation, without the least appearance of the smallest accident happening.” He commended the carpenters for executing his orders “at the instant directed.”
Captain Truxtun, who did not always have a good word for the builder, was more eloquent:
The masterly manner [he wrote] in which the ways were laid by Mr. Stodder, and the other preparations he took to prevent the smallest accident, which had the desired effect, does him the highest honor as a master builder and professional man. In fact, Sir, I never witnessed in Europe, or any other country a performance of the kind better executed and more highly gratifying, and I am convinced a more sightly ship of the sort cannot be built.
The Constellation's draft when she was launched was 13 feet, 3 inches forward and 18 feet, 6 inches aft. Truxtun noted that the ship did not strain in the least, or straighten her sheer. In a day when hogging was accepted as normal in a large ship (Humphreys had heard of a British ship that had hogged two feet on launching), that was proof of a superior design.
The Captain expected to ship the lower masts on the Saturday following the launch. Of course, the masts were not hoisted in until after the ship was in the water. That part of the job was out of the hands of the builder— it was the Captain’s job to fit out his ship and get her ready for sea.
One more delay could not be reckoned with. Yellow fever struck Baltimore that very week. The epidemic in Philadelphia had held up the fitting out of the United Stales; the fever in Baltimore postponed operations on the Constellation until mid-October.
Truxtun was pleased with the launch; he was equally pleased with his ship when he had the chance to try her sailing. He reported, when he got to sea, “The Ship behaves well in all Sorts of Weather, and sails fast . . . .” He hesitated to compare her performance with that of the other frigates, because there was so much hearsay in the newspapers concerning John Barry’s ship, the United States, and “so much more bombastical Nonsense of that at Boston” (the Constitution). The Constellation had cost a little more to build than either of the larger ships, the Constitution and the United States; but the government had not been cheated.
If there had been trouble with the United States in her launch, it was minor compared to what happened in Boston when the time came to launch the Constitution. Naval Constructor Claghorne had the devil’s own time with his launch. He started out on September 20. He had removed all the shores and blocks; he expected the ship to move gently down the ways. Nothing happened. As any good shipbuilder would do, he tried to start the ship by giving her a shove with “screws and other machinery.” She moved then, but after going 27 feet she stopped again, dead. It was embarrassing, of course, but undoubtedly the troubles could be ironed out and the launch carried out within a day or two. The ship was raised two inches next day, and on the 22nd another attempt was made to launch her down. This time she moved 31 feet before stopping. Claghorne took longer to think this over; and he waited for the spring tides of October before making another trial. The Constitution, on the third attempt, was launched October 21, 1797.
Of the first three United States frigates, only the Constellation was launched without incident. Perhaps it was good fortune; perhaps it was David Stodder. But Stodder did build a fine ship. Not many people can have an epitaph as impressive: He built the Constellation.