On This Day 28 July

[Coog]

On 28 July 1854 USS Constellation, the last all-sail warship built by the US Navy, is commissioned.

USS Constellation constructed in 1854 is a sloop-of-war and the second United States Navy ship to carry this famous name. According to the US Naval Registry the original frigate was disassembled on 25 June 1853 in Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia, and the sloop-of-war was constructed in the same yard, possibly with a few recycled materials from the old frigate. USS Constellation is the last sail-only warship designed and built by the U.S. 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.

[Berthier]

Did she serve in the ACW?

[Coog]

Did she serve in the ACW?



From 1855-1858 Constellation performed largely diplomatic duties as part of the US Mediterranean Squadron.

She was flagship of the USN African Squadron from 1859-1861. In this period she disrupted the African slave trade by interdicting three slave ships and releasing the imprisoned Africans.
On December 21, 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 September 26, 1860, the Constellation captured the "fast little bark" Cora with 705 slaves, who were set free in Monrovia, Liberia.
On May 21, 1861, the Constellation overpowered the slaver brig Triton in African coastal waters. It held no slaves, although "every preparation for their reception had been made."

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

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

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.

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 US Atlantic Fleet, but spent the first six months of 1942 as the flagship for Admiral Ernest J. King and Vice Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll.

Constellation was again decommissioned on 4 February 1955 and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 15 August 1955 — about 100 years and 2 weeks from her first commissioning. She was taken to her permanent berth — Constellation Dock, Inner Harbor at Pier 1, 301 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, Maryland (

39°17′07.95″N 76°36′40.28″W) — and designated a National Historic Landmark (reference number 66000918) on 23 May 1963. She is the last existing American Civil War-era naval vessel and was one of the last sail-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 drydock at Fort McHenry in 1996, and a $9-million 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, lasting six days, marked the ship's first trip to the city in 111 years.

Tours are regularly available, self-guided or with the assistance of staff. Nearly all of the ship is accessible, and about half 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.

The ship is now part of Historic Ships in Baltimore, which also operates the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Taney (WHEC-37), the WWII-era submarine USS Torsk (SS-423), the lightship Chesapeake, and the Seven Foot Knoll Light. The Constellation was designated a National Historic Landmark on May 23, 1963, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. The Constellation and its companions are major contributing elements in the Baltimore National Heritage Area.

[Berthier]

Thanks Bobby for the quick reply and information, you have seem to have access to the knowledge of all things US navy :)

"Constellation spent much of the war as a deterrent to Confederate cruisers and commerce raiders in the Mediterranean Sea." Presumably this was as much symbolic as real? Being sail only powered would she have been much of a threat to the CSN steam/sail powered vessels? The only commerce raider of CS I am familiar with is the Alabama (which I think visited my home town of Melbourne on it's various cruises, though I might have confused that with a different ship) which was of course steam and sail powered.

[csadn]

"Constellation spent much of the war as a deterrent to Confederate cruisers and commerce raiders in the Mediterranean Sea." Presumably this was as much symbolic as real? Being sail only powered would she have been much of a threat to the CSN steam/sail powered vessels? The only commerce raider of CS I am familiar with is the Alabama (which I think visited my home town of Melbourne on it's various cruises, though I might have confused that with a different ship) which was of course steam and sail powered.

_Constellation_ would have been at a disadvantage mainly in that a steam-powered commerce raider need only stick its nose into the wind in order to lose a sail-only pursuer (or destroy it with impunity).

Firepower was not an issue -- http://www.hnsa.org/ships/constellation.htm lists:

Armament (1862): Gun Deck (Main battery): Sixteen 8 in. chambered shell guns, four 32-pdr. long guns; Spar Deck (Pivot guns): one 30-pdr. Parrott rifle at the bow and one 20-pdr. Parrott rifle at the stern; three 12-pdr. boat howitzers ;

which is a sight more than any Rebel commerce-raider carried. (I'm eliding for the moment possibilities like the "dud" shell _Alabama_'s crew found in the ship's sternpost after destroying USS _Hatteras_ -- said "dud" being a shell will not with black powder, but black-painted sand. Hmmmmmmmm....)

As to other CSA commerce raiders: _Florida_ spent most of its career in the West Indies; _Shenandoah_ operated mainly in the North Pacific, _Sumter_ and _Nashville_ operated across the Atlantic, but only briefly.

[Coog]

(I'm eliding for the moment possibilities like the "dud" shell _Alabama_'s crew found in the ship's sternpost after destroying USS _Hatteras_ -- said "dud" being a shell will not with black powder, but black-painted sand. Hmmmmmmmm....)

The North did seem to have a problem with getting shoddy or fraudulent merchandise from Northern manufactures out to make a buck.

[csadn]

The North did seem to have a problem with getting shoddy or fraudulent merchandise from Northern manufactures out to make a buck.

The South wasn't much better -- war-profiteering was endemic to the period.

And to the periods before it; ship captains and admirals were forever having to deal with "the harpies of the shore", to misquote Holmes. I understand one of the reasons Horatio Nelson was so popular with his men was: He made sure they didn't get poor-grade clothing and food.