USS Constitution Audio Guide

USS Constitution: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to USS Constitution

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the USS Constitution highlights Welcome to USS Constitution and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Welcome to USS Constitution, the ship everyone calls Old Ironsides. You are in Boston, at the former Charlestown Navy Yard, where she is berthed at Pier One. She is the oldest commissioned warship still afloat. This is a working vessel as well as a landmark. She is still an active United States Navy ship, and a team from the Naval History and Heritage Command Detachment Boston looks after her all year. She also anchors a stretch of the Freedom Trail, the path linking Boston's historic sites. On the trail she sits between Copp's Hill Burying Ground and the Bunker Hill Monument. In this guide we will follow her from the shipyard where she was built to her great victories at sea. We will see how she has been kept alive for more than two centuries, and what she still does in Boston Harbor today. Take a moment to look up at the masts and along the long dark hull. Everything we talk about began on this waterfront.

2. 02

   Born on the Boston Waterfront

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the USS Constitution highlights Born on the Boston Waterfront and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Constitution's story starts with the Naval Act of 1794, which authorized six original frigates for the young United States. She is the most famous of them. She was named by George Washington after one of the nation's founding documents. The designer was Joshua Humphreys, and she was built at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in Boston. She was launched on October 21, 1797. Hundreds of workers were employed in her original construction here. Almost nothing is known about them, because devastating fires destroyed Navy records in Washington, D.C. in 1800 and again in 1814. The ship stands in for a great many builders whose names have been lost. She was designed as a powerful heavy frigate, meant to outmatch other ships of her type. Her first service came in the Quasi-War with France, from 1798 to 1800. That makes her a veteran of the very earliest years of the American navy.

3. 03

   How She Became Old Ironsides

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the USS Constitution highlights How She Became Old Ironsides and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Constitution's fame was won in the War of 1812. On August 19, 1812, she met the British warship HMS Guerriere in a famous action. That victory is the one most closely tied to her nickname, Old Ironsides, and it showed Americans what their young navy could do. Later in the war, Captain Charles Stewart commanded her and achieved a remarkable result. He captured two British warships, HMS Cyane and HMS Levant, in a single engagement. Those successes cemented her reputation as one of the most formidable warships of her time. Her story has near misses too. In 1905, the Secretary of the Navy, Charles Joseph Bonaparte, suggested towing her out to sea to be used as target practice. A Worcester businessman named Moses Gulesian read about the idea in a Boston newspaper and offered to buy her for 10,000 dollars. Earlier, in 1903, the president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Charles Francis Adams, had asked Congress to rehabilitate her. Public attachment to the old ship was strong, and it helped keep her story going.

4. 04

   Keeping a Warship Alive

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the USS Constitution highlights Keeping a Warship Alive and points out what to notice during your visit.

   A wooden ship more than two centuries old does not survive by accident. Constitution has been repaired and restored many times. A photograph from 1930 shows her in Dry Dock 1 at the end of a major restoration. She was reconstructed again in 1995 and in 2015, and she has also spent time in dry dock for restoration work as recently as 2016. Wood is the constant need. A tract in Indiana was dedicated as Constitution Grove, and its 25,000 acres now supply the majority of the white oak used in her repairs. She has weathered storms too. On September 21, 1938, during the New England Hurricane, she broke loose from her dock and was blown into Boston Harbor. She collided with the destroyer Ralph Talbot and suffered only minor damage. The tradition continues every July 4th with the annual Turnaround Cruise. She is towed into Boston Harbor, performs underway demonstrations and fires a gun salute. She is then berthed in the opposite direction so that she weathers evenly.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the USS Constitution highlights Before You Head Off and points out what to notice during your visit.

   There is more to see around her. The privately run USS Constitution Museum is close by, in a restored shipyard building at the foot of Pier Two. It opened on April 8, 1976. In that same bicentennial summer, on July 10, Constitution led the parade of tall ships up Boston Harbor for Operation Sail. She fired her guns at one-minute intervals for the first time in approximately 100 years. Alongside her you will also find the destroyer USS Cassin Young. She was built in 1943, served in World War Two and the Korean War, and is one of only four Fletcher-class destroyers still afloat. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. As you look back at Constitution, notice the line of her hull and the rigging above, and think about the unnamed workers who built her here. Then follow the Freedom Trail toward the Bunker Hill Monument, and see what other stories the neighborhood has to tell.