This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
All who love venerable old warships, now hear this: A great one is standing into shoal water.
Attention, sailors of the U.S. Navy, past and present: Part of your naval heritage is threatened.
Naval historians—especially those associated with the Naval Sea Systems Command and the Maryland Constellation Commission—you are steering, without malice, a priceless, historic ship on a course of destruction.
Citizens of Maryland—especially those of Baltimore—who accepted a challenge 40 years ago to maintain this priceless icon of our nation’s heritage, your charge is in peril.
The object of these warnings is the Constellation, formerly a sailing warship in the U.S. Navy, presently moored in the inner harbor of Baltimore, Maryland. Unfortunately, this wonderful ship has become the center of frantic, uncalled-for controversy. Scholars, who spend as much time flailing at each other as they do interpreting the often confusing history of the ship, have degraded her story even further. The time has come to invoke the time-honored admonition of the bos'n mate: “Knock it off, sailor!”
Of all the claims made for this ship, two are irrefutable:
► She is one of two U.S. Navy warships from the age of sail still afloat. The USS Constitution, moored in Boston, is the other.
> The ship is in poor material condition and is in danger either of burning to the waterline or sinking.
In 1794, with the threat of the Barbary Pirates and at the behest of President George Washington. Congress authorized construction of six frigates, three of 44 guns, three with 36. One of the 36-gun frigates was named the Constellation. Joshua Humphreys of Philedelphia designed her. and she was one of the first so-called Humphreys frigates launched. (The launching of the USS Constitution followed by several weeks, beginning a two-century rivalry over funding and national affection.) The Constellation participated in the naval war with France and captured the frigate L'Insurgente and two French privateers. During the years 1802 to 1804 she was in action against the Barbary Pirates. She saw no significant action in the War of 1812. Between 1801 and 1839 the ship underwent repairs at least six times. Following a routine peacetime career, she was laid up in ordinary at Virginia’s Gosport Navy Yard in 1845. In 1853 she entered a modernization-overhaul period in Gosport, and from 1855 she served in various other capacities. For many years she was a school ship in Newport, Rhode Island, and was a celebrant in the 1814 centenary in Baltimore and Annapolis. In 1926 she participated in the national sesquicentennial celebration. She was recommissioned in 1940 and used as a “shore-based relief flagship” for the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet from 1941 until 1943. In 1955 the ship was stricken from Navy roles and transferred to the Constellation Commission of Maryland.
The squabble that haunts the ship to this day stems from that Gosport overhaul in the early 1850s. In 1853 the Navy determined that the Constellation was in poor condition, of antiquated design, and should be either stricken or overhauled and modernized. The configuration of the ship when she entered overhaul in Gosport and what the Navy subsequently did to the ship in this “refit” forms the basis of the controversy of provenance taken by historians that today still surrounds the ship.
Three positions regarding the history of the ship are now at the fore:
>• In 1853 the ship was dismantled, and an entirely new one was built. No materials of the old were incorporated in the new. The new ship was commissioned on 26 July 1855. bearing the name Constellation, and was the last warship powered by sail designed and built by the U.S. Navy.
► In 1853 the Constellation was dismantled and rebuilt to a modern design. Extensive use of materials from the original ship were incorporated into the new. Thus, the Constellation of today contains material from the ship of 1797.
► The ship of today is the extensively modified frigate Constellation of 1797.
A significant impediment to restoring the ship has been the argument of provenance, which has centered around
the question of whether or not she is the Constellation of 1797 or at least contains material from that ship. Several fundraising efforts have foundered on the failure to resolve this issue. Naval historians have not reached a consensus. Historical records concerning the ship’s pedigree apparently are lost in antiquity, controversy, and myth. The time is upon us for people who care, including naval historians and the U.S. Navy, to recognize that the Constellation is a priceless relie of our national heritage, that she belongs to the people, and that she must be saved.
In theory, through contract with the Navy, responsibility lies with the Constellation Committee, the state of Maryland, and the city of Baltimore. Unfortunately this coalition has been unable to bring to bear sufficient resources—human, monetary, or material—to stem the course of the ship toward ruin.
The immediate task is to develop a plan to save the ship. Logically this duty falls upon the Constellation Commission. At the core of such a plan should be the notion of a national program. The USS Constitution was saved through a national outpouring of affection. Where is today’s equivalent of Oliver Wendell Holmes? A poem, or perhaps its modern-day equivalent, the ubiquitous video, would be appropriate vehicles to launch such a drive. Surely in this great nation there must be a person of the arts who cares.
If the commission cannot do this, it should pursue some other group, such as the Navy League of the United States, the Smithsonian Institution, or the U.S. Navy itself. Perhaps the commission should emulate a group of Boston citizens, who have formed a foundation to assist the Navy in commemorating the Bicentennial of the USS Constitution. To do nothing is not an option.
Vice Admiral Metcalf is a long-time member of the U.S. Naval Institute, a frequent contributor to Proceedings, and an active supporter of historic preservation, particularly as it relates to naval history. He will serve as moderator for a panel discussion regarding the future of the Constellation on 28th of April as part of the Naval Institute’s 119th Annual Meeting (see ad on pages 8-9).
40
Proceedings / April 1993