Navy ‘Stuff’…

I know I said I was going to do Destroyers this week, but I’m waiting on pictures from a couple of folks to add to the post, so instead, you get an old boat…

U.S. Navy bureau of Ships – Official U.S. Navy photo NH 55913 from the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command

She was in the ‘Quasi-War’, the first Barbary War, the battle for Tripoli,

U.S. Navy bureau of Ships – Official U.S. Navy photo NH 48472-KN from the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command

Did ya get it yet??? Sure you did…

USS CONSTITUTION, 44 gun frigate, built in 1794, nicknamed “Old Ironsides” after a battle with HMS Guerriere on  10 August 1812. She remained on active service until 1881, before being turned into a museum ship in 1907.

She was also used as a barrack ship for Officers awaiting courts martial in the early 1900s.

Library of Congress photograph LC-DIG-det-4a15771

Still in commission after 223 years, she’s been under sail twice in the last twenty years, on the 200th anniversary of her commissioning in 1997, and again in 2012, the 200th anniversary of her victory over Guerriere. This photo is from 1997 and yes, that is the Blues overflying them! 🙂

U.S. Navy Photo by Journalist 2nd Class Todd Stevens (Released)

101021-N-7642M-164
BOSTON (Oct. 21, 2010) USS Constitution fires a 21-gun salute toward Fort Independence on Castle Island during an underway to celebrate the 213th launching day anniversary of the ship. Constitution is the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kathryn E. Macdonald/Released)

Hard to believe this little 207ft frigate routinely carried 450 personnel including 55 Marines and 30 ship’s boys. If you ever get a chance to take the tour, you can see how CROWDED that ship really was.

Comments

Navy ‘Stuff’… — 28 Comments

  1. The phrase “wooden ships and iron men” wasn’t just talk.

  2. A cousin’s son is a Navy Chief. Last year he and several Chiefs were aboard her for several days as a place for some advanced training. My understanding this is quite an honor.

  3. My 1944-edition tin can was 365 ft long, with a crew complement which varied from 290 to 360-ish. And I thought that was crowded.

  4. RS- No it wasn’t!

    WSF- Probably Senior Enlisted Academy. They give them a broader look at the ‘history’ of the Navy. 🙂

    Rev- Yep… Navy’s NEVER been known for ‘luxurious’ quarters, unlike the USAF…

  5. I toured the USS Constellation, which had tour guides dressed in period costume. I learned quite a bit, including what the phrase ‘shivered timbers’ meant. I also learned about the medical facilities aboard ship. Two things you did not want to do was get sick or get injured. In the first case you’d be accused of malingering, in the second you were generally better off dead.

    When I toured the USS Constitution I got there just in time for the afternoon cannon shot. They probably use about a quarter pound of black powder and torch one off with all ceremony. It was fun, but if I were in charge we’d load her up with shrapnel and let fly at a target.

    While the quarters were spartan, it’s because they are measured against modern day accommodations. For instance, all the sailors slept in hammocks, but during WWII my father and the other men with him also slept in hammocks, and didn’t find it uncomfortable.

    Having to work those ships during foul weather would have been a real chore, and would make a land lubber out of anyone. Going out on a yard arm to wrestle a giant canvas sail around during fair weather would be bad enough, but during a storm? It’s time for mutiny.

    Discipline was enforced with the lash, AKA the cat ‘o nine tails. Again, by today’s standards it was barbaric, but back then people accepted it as a fact of life.

    While experienced sailors could steer a course, setting one required the secret knowledge of higher math and using a sextant. I’ve tried a sextant, and it’s an acquired skill. I remember my father watching the skipper trying to teach a handful of junior officers how to navigate along the Aleutian Islands, and half the time the ship was a few miles inland; the other half, lost at sea. What a group of officers!

    I expect that if you had to serve in the Navy, the only way to go was to be an officer.

  6. Not only crowded with 450 stinking souls, but every other space had supplies of water and food, shot and powder… not to mention hot-racks (or hammocks as it were). The Senior Enlisted Academy is a very intense few days. The chiefs have to learn every nook and cranny of her. They have to know where each rope (cable) leads to on the mast, as well as the name they are called, etc. They are true old time sailors when the course is finished.

  7. A niggling point; your text says she has been under sail only twice in the last 20 years, 1997 and 2012. But the last picture shows her under was in 2010.

    So, the only way I can reconcile the two is that ‘under way’ does not assume a literal ‘under sail’. However, under sail does imply underway.

    On another note, I cannot believe that red oak was used in a minor restoration in the 1970s. That species of oak has long been known as verboten on vessels. It’s shyte for boat building. I have to wonder what bonehead(s) decided that. It sounds like the work of a naval officer.

    The major restoration in the 1990s at first revealed an unexpected structural repair, that of correcting the hogging (longitudinal twist along the keel) of the ship. Some reputable marine historians and naval architects suspected that hogging existed since the original build although to a lesser degree than found in the 1990s.

    The USS Constitution remains to this day as a commissioned USN vessel.

  8. Correction: should be ‘under way’ in 1st para, 2nd sentence.

  9. Mad Jack, I recall a scene in the 1935 edition of the movie, Mutiny on the Bounty, with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton. While trying to make Cape Horn a man falls out of the rigging and onto the deck. Capt Bligh has the man flogged to ‘teach my topmen not to fall from the yards’. I have long suspected such treatment of the men was not the stuff of Hollywood. ‘Grog and sailor’s rights’ was not just a quaint saying.

  10. MJ- Excellent points, and even being an officer was no picnic!

    CP- Agreed! Friend of mine went through that, changed his perspective on the ‘surface’ Navy! 🙂

    R- She has been towed out, as the 2010 picture indicated, but physically under sail power only 1997 and 2012. And the red oak DID come apart, as you noted. Concur on the hogging, considering she was never in a dry dock until the 1990s!!! She is still commissioned, just like the Pueblo is. No plans to strike either one of them, unlike USS ENTERPRISE, she’s going to be razor blades due to the damage incurred in removing her 8 reactors.

  11. I will see my son who is a sonar tech on wednesday. He is up from Norfolk with his wife and my grandaughter for a visit, before he goes on a 6 month tour of Scotland and Norway, I think. He is a 2nd class petty aboard the Leyte Gulf, a Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser. And I think that this is some kind of Navy recognition day. I am a ham radio operator, and I was able to participate once in an event aboard the USS Silversides, a submarine, here in my city. I operated a radio from the radio room of the sub to contact as many hams around the country as possible to let them compete in a contest. It was a highlight of my career as a ham, and a testament of the courage of those submariners. That sub is still operated as a maritime museum.

  12. Pigpen- That’s outstanding, tell him I said thanks for his service! I worked with Silversides a few times over the years… LOL

    Keads- You’re welcome.

  13. The only ship currently in commission with a ship to ship “kill”

    Curious that.

    THOTpolice

  14. Oldest commissioned warship still afloat I believe.
    Oldest commissioned warship of course being HMS Victory which currently resides at Portsmouth Naval Dockyard on public display alongside HMS Warrior, the Mary Rose and others.

  15. I’ve commented on this before but the canons on board are reproductions. They mistakenly copied British canon so they all have British markings on them.

    Took the tour last summer. She was undergoing a refit so the below decks were off limits.

    Not sure if they still do it, but the Navy used to take prospective chiefs on board for a week of team building. I’m sure it helped the chiefs to make connections across the Navy.

  16. THOT- Yes it is! 🙂

    Joni- Great point, HMS Victory and Warrior are, I believe, both older, but they are not floating.

    PE- LOL, yep one of the worst kept ‘secrets’… Friends of mine who went to SEA did do a week on her. Quite the experience according to them, and one added a few more scars to his nogging, forgetting to duck the first two days… 😉

    • HMS Warrior is still floating but not in commission. She is just a museum ship now. She isn’t older than the USS Constitution though.

      HMS Victory has been in dry dock for many years but is still officially on the rolls as a warship in her majesties service.
      She is a mere 12 years older than the USS Constitution.

  17. I toured her in 2006. At 6’6″ tall I am VERY glad we are an ARMY family.
    Back in 2009 some condo yuppies opposite Constitution filed a noise complaint with the city of Boston re. daily cannon fire.
    The crew may (MAY!) have increased the powder charge the following day. I can neither confirm or deny the report … but the chief seemed pleased.

  18. this is on my bucket list. they had a drawing for the 2012 anniversary to be able to ride on her when she went out. I didn’t get picked. Could you imagine how that would have been?

  19. Stretch- LOL, you’d have a few more scars… And say it ain’t so… Nobody would DO something like that, especially not a Chief…LOL

    Randy- That would have been truly special!

  20. Hey Old NFO;

    Didn’t you man the tiller on the Constitution during the Barbary Pirates days? I took my son when he was 8 to Boston and to the U.S.S Constitution to do a walk around, it was in 2012 an they were doing some work and I always though the ship was massive due to the reputation until I saw the ship the first time in Boston in 1986 when I was stationed at Fort Devons and would go into Boston to see all the cool stuff. I was amazed how small the ship was. I hated Massachusetts but loved Boston. It was a joy to take my son there, and I am planning another trip again to go to Fanual Hall and check out the Constitution again and walk a bit of the “Freedom Trail”.

    • Bob,
      My brother was on the USS Vogelgesang during the very early 70’s. As a “kid” I thought it was awesome to get to tour the ship. But even to a 10 year old she seemed awfully small compared to the ocean!

  21. Bob- 😛 That’s a trip I never got to make. Never got enough time to do more than the Constitution… sigh

  22. OldNFO,
    You mentioned the Enterprise, and yes, it’s a shame it can’t be made in to a museum. Seems like I remember reading somewhere the cost of making her “safe” for tourists was just too prohibitive.

    I’ve always thought it was a crying shame that her “mother” (sister?), CV-6 wasn’t saved from WW2. She carried the war to the Japanese when she was the only operational carrier in the Pacific and kept them guessing as to her location: The Gray Ghost, or The Galloping Ghost if you prefer. 🙂

    The USS Constitution is on my bucket list!!!

  23. Joni- Thanks! For some reason I thought Warrior was also still on the commissioned list.

    LCB- They had to ‘gut’ the BIg-E to get the reactors out, and as others have noted, trying to keep a carrier as a museum is $2-3 Million a year in upkeep. That would be in addition to getting her ready, which would be even more expensive. Concur on CV-6, but she was used up by the time the war was over.