USS Constellation (1854)

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USS Constellation
Constellation at Baltimore's Inner Harbor
History
United States
Laid down: 25 June 1853
Launched: 26 August 1854
Commissioned: 28 July 1855 – 1933
Recommissioned: 1940
Decommissioned: 4 February 1955
Struck: 15 August 1955
Status: Museum ship
General characteristics
Type: Sloop-of-war/Corvette
Displacement: 1,400 long tons (1,400 t)
Length:
  • 181 ft (55 m) (waterline)
  • 199 ft (61 m) (overall)
Beam:
  • 41 ft (12 m) (waterline)
  • 43 ft (13 m) extreme
Draft: 21 ft (6.4 m)
Propulsion: Sail
Complement: 20 officers, 220 sailors, 45 marines
Armament:
  • 16 × 8 in (200 mm) chambered shell guns
  • 4 × 32-pounder (15 kg) long guns
  • 1 × 20-pounder (9 kg) Parrott rifle
  • 1 × 30-pounder (14 kg) Parrott rifle
  • 3 × 12-pounder (5 kg) bronze boat howitzers
USS Constellation
Location Baltimore, Maryland
Coordinates Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Built 1854
NRHP Reference # 66000918[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP 15 October 1966
Designated NHL 23 May 1963[2]

USS Constellation, constructed in 1854, is a sloop-of-war/corvette and the second United States Navy ship to carry the name. According to the U.S. Naval Registry the original frigate was disassembled on 25 June 1853 in Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia, and the sloop-of-war/corvette was constructed in the same yard using material salvaged from the earlier ship. Constellation is the last sail-only warship designed and built by the Navy. Despite being a single-gundeck "sloop," she is actually larger than her frigate namesake, and more powerfully armed with fewer but much more potent shell-firing guns.

The sloop was launched on 26 August 1854 and commissioned on 28 July 1855 with Captain Charles H. Bell in command.

Civil War

From 1855–1858 Constellation performed largely diplomatic duties as part of the U.S. Mediterranean Squadron.

She was flagship of the African Squadron from 1859–1861. In this period she took part in African Slave Trade Patrol operations to disrupt the Atlantic slave trade. The ship interdicted three slave ships and released the imprisoned Africans:

  • On 21 December 1859, she captured the brig Delicia which was "without colors or papers to show her nationality completely fitted in all respects for the immediate embarcation [sic] of slaves..."
  • On 26 September 1860, Constellation captured the "fast little bark" Cora with 705 slaves, who were set free in Monrovia, Liberia.
  • On 21 May 1861, Constellation overpowered the slaver brig Triton in African coastal waters. It held no slaves, although "every preparation for their reception had been made."[3]

Constellation spent much of the war as a deterrent to Confederate cruisers and commerce raiders in the Mediterranean Sea.

Pre-World War I

After the Civil War, Constellation saw various duties such as carrying exhibits to the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris and famine relief stores in the 1879 Irish famine.[4] She also spent a number of years as a receiving ship (floating naval barracks).

World War I

Naval drill, Nov. 1900

After being used as a practice ship for Naval Academy midshipmen, Constellation became a training ship in 1894 for the Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, where she helped train more than 60,000 recruits during World War I.

World War II

Decommissioned in 1933, Constellation was recommissioned as a national symbol in 1940 by President Franklin Roosevelt; by this time the ship had become widely confused with her famous predecessor of 1797. She spent much of the Second World War as relief (i.e. reserve) flagship for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, but spent the first six months of 1942 as the flagship for Ernest J. King and Vice Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll.

Post-war restoration

She was taken to her permanent berth – Constellation Dock, Inner Harbor at Pier 1, 301 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, Maryland and designated a National Historic Landmark on 23 May 1963,[5] and she was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on 15 October 1966.[1] She is the last existing intact naval vessel from the American Civil War, and she was one of the last wind-powered warships built by the U.S. Navy. She has been assigned the hull classification symbol IX-20.

In 1994 Constellation was condemned as an unsafe vessel. She was towed to a drydock at Fort McHenry in 1996, and a $9 million rebuilding and restoration project was completed in July 1999.

On 26 October 2004, Constellation made her first trip out of Baltimore's Inner Harbor since 1955. The trip to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis lasted six days, and it marked her first trip to Annapolis in 111 years.

Tours are regularly available, self-guided or with the assistance of staff. Nearly all of the ship is accessible, and about one-half of the lines used to rig the vessel are present (amounting to several miles of rope and cordage). A cannon firing is demonstrated daily, and tour groups can also participate in demonstrations such as "turning the yards" and operating the capstan on the main deck to raise/lower cargo.

The ship is now part of Historic Ships in Baltimore, which also operates the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Taney (WHEC-37), the World War II submarine USS Torsk (SS-423), the lightship Chesapeake, and the Seven Foot Knoll Light. Constellation and her companions are major contributing elements in the Baltimore National Heritage Area.[6]

Identity controversy

There had been (from shortly after World War II until 1991) controversy over whether the 1854 sloop was a new ship or a rebuilt version of the 1797 frigate. It was determined beyond any doubt to be a new ship (see below).

Much of the controversy was created when the city of Baltimore promoted the ship and even rebuilt sections of the ship to resemble the 1797 frigate. Geoffrey M. Footner maintained the view in his book, USS Constellation: From Frigate to Sloop of War, that she was, in fact, the original frigate though greatly modified. Additionally, when the ship was to be rebuilt in the 1990s, naval historians who favored the theory that the ship was indeed the 1797 original relied on three main points:

  1. Some of the funds used to build the sloop were originally allocated to rebuild the frigate.
  2. Some timbers from the broken-up frigate were used in the construction of the sloop (see Ship of Theseus).
  3. The frigate was never formally stricken from the Naval Vessel Register — a wooden, sailing man-of-war called Constellation was continuously listed from 1797–1955.

Supporting the position that they are different ships are the facts that the sloop was designed anew from the keel up (without reference to the frigate) and was planned to have been built even if the frigate had not been in the yard during that period. In March 1989, researchers Dana M. Wegner and Colan Ratliff from the David Taylor Research Center came upon the builder's half-hull model of Constellation in the U.S. Naval Academy Museum. This was important because half-hull models are only built for new designs, not rebuilds, and the use of half-hull models was introduced after 1797.

Besides evaluating the half model, the researchers also reviewed all the evidence used in the debate to date, concluding (with the help of FBI and BATF forensics) that many of the rebuild-supporting documents were forgeries. In 1991 they published their findings in a paper titled, Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered and concluded that the current Constellation and the original frigate are two different ships.[7]

Awards

See also

References

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  • This article includes information collected from the Naval Vessel Register, which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain. The entry can be found here.. The Baltimore Sun. Saturday, February 7, 2015

External links