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Boston's Ancient Mariner USS Constitution turns 200 and will celebrate by sailing under her own power for the first time in over a century. By Tom Huntington
USS Constitution, is so old she dates from an age when people actually exclaimed "Huzzah!" In a famous incident from the War of 1812, a crewmember saw cannonballs from the British frigate Guerrihre bounce off Constitution's stout oak sides. "Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!" he shouted—and gave the frigate its famous nickname. This year "Old Ironsides" turns 200. When the ship was launched into Boston Harbor on October 21, 1797, John Adams was president, there were 16 states in the union, and the document for which the ship was named was only ten years old. To celebrate the bicentennial, on July 21 the ship will sail under her own power for the first time since 1881. A Constitution fan since childhood, I'm curious to see what it takes to prepare the warship for the sea. I find Constitution at her dock at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston harbor. It would be difficult to miss her. She's the only frigate in town. Walking Constitution's deck, I try to imagine what it was like to sail aboard her. My musings are helped by the mingled scents of wood, the faint whiff of the sea, and—could it be gunpowder? Yes, in fact. Each day at 8:00 a.m. the crew fires off one of the cannons and the gunpowder odor lingers. (When I visit I experience a modern side effect: the cannon sets off a car alarm in the parking lot.)
Constitution carried a crew of around 450, including several dozen boys—powder monkeys—to carry gunpowder during battle. The ship also carried a complement of marines. During ship-to-ship combat they climbed into the masts' fighting tops—flat wooden platforms—and shot at the opposing crew. They also took charge of boarding operations (wearing leather collars to protect their throats from saber thrusts—hence the nickname "leathernecks"). Life aboard Constitution was not luxurious. Crewmembers slept in hammocks slung on the berth deck, could be flogged for breaches of discipline, and ate bad salted beef dispensed from what they disparagingly called the harness cask. One of today's crew-members explains the term to me: "The sailors thought the government was giving them horsemeat," she says. "They said when they got to the bottom they'd find the horse's harness." As the navy's oldest commissioned warship—in fact, the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world—Constitution still has a crew and a captain. Commander Michael C. Beck is the frigate's 64th commanding officer. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1977 (his degree was in ocean physics) and just before assuming command of Constitution got his master's degree in national security strategy from the National War College in Washington, D.C. It seems like a very modern background for the commander of a very old ship, but I am discovering that Constitution is a vessel that belongs to both the past and the present. Beck thinks he may have gotten the job because he was willing to sail the ship. "There's an interview process where four or five people are chosen out of a pool and you interview for the job," he tells me over coffee in his office at the Navy Yard, which overlooks the stern of his command, "and one of the questions I was asked was, 'If the ship could sail, would you sail it?' and I answered yes to that, and I think the other guys in the group thought it was a trick question—if you answered yes you'd be automatically deselected." Beck seems a fairly soft-spoken commander, at least when compared to some of his predecessors, like John "Mad Jack" Percival (who started a diplomatic row with Cochin China when he attempted to rescue a French bishop imprisoned there during a round-the-world cruise in the mid-1840s) or Isaac Hull (who reportedly was so excited as Constitution engaged Guerrière that he split his pants open when he shouted out the order to fire). Beck has obviously done a lot of thinking about the ship and its relevance today. "When I got here I planned a mission for the ship," he said. "I said this ship represents the values and ideals of not only the naval service but the nation, and with that I had a vision that as we went forward into the future she would represent America sailing into the 21st century."
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Copyright © 2001: Primedia Enthusiast Publications, Inc. and Away.com. All Rights Reserved Image: Photo: Tom Huntington | |
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