A Strong Constitution

She is proud, she is strong, she is trim and she is graceful beyond most mortals’ understanding of the term. She is also ready, eager for her first taste of the open, unassisted sea in 116 years. On July 21, the Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship afloat, will mark her 200th anniversary with a five-mile, downwind sail. Her course toward Marblehead on Massachusetts’ North Shore will be the frigate’s first free voyage since 1881.

Aboard ship, a palpable sense of excitement grips a crew that draws on ancient, wholly unmechanized sailing techniques to raise the largest topsail in the world: 5,000 pounds, between fabric and the huge, heavy yard--or beam--that holds it in place.

“I’m psyched,” said 18-year-old Seaman Recruit Kevin Kane, part of Constitution’s 60-person crew. “I’m awe-struck.”

These emotions are shared not only by Kane’s fellow sailors, but by the sizable civilian staff that has spent close to four years and $12 million restoring and rehabilitating the ship that never lost a battle. From 1803 to 1805, Constitution bombarded the Barbary pirates at Tripoli, the victory commemorated in the U.S. Marine Hymn. Her Aug. 19, 1812, defeat of the British ship Guerriere off Nova Scotia marked the first occasion that the royal navy had ever hauled down its colors to the upstart Yankees. The feisty yet indomitably fair spirit of Constitution and her crew was noted by Guerriere’s commander, James Dacres, who boarded the American ship to present his sword in surrender.

“I will not take your sword, sir,” replied Constitution’s captain, Isaac Hull. “But I will trouble you for your hat.”

It was George Washington who in 1794 persuaded Congress to allocate funds for a Navy to protect American trading vessels from the vagaries of Barbary Coast pirates. “If we desire to avoid insult, we must repel it,” the president argued so effectively that Congress authorized construction of six warships. The Constitution was built in Boston, following the design of Joshua Humphreys. Relying on sturdy live oak trees from St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia, Humphreys crafted a frigate so resilient that admirers and enemies alike believed her to be made of metal.

“Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!” a seaman called out as he watched a British cannonball bounce from Constitution’s side. At that moment, her nickname was born.

The hardwood was only half of Humphreys’ secret. Constitution’s hull was built with heavy diagonal riders that rely on the same principles as the vaulted arches of Europe’s Gothic cathedrals. Their use in a warship was revolutionary in itself. But over the decades, then the centuries, the riders rotted and were removed. The ship’s hull was in serious danger of caving in when the current restoration, the first effort to replace the riders, began in 1992.

Replacing the diagonal riders was not unlike arthroscopic surgery, said Don Turner, a 40-year civilian employee on Constitution, since it was far more of a challenge to snake the tremendous timbers through the existing boat than to build them into it in the first place. Naval architects canvassed the country for suitable material before settling on laminate white oak from Wisconsin for the replacement riders, said Turner, who, as production manager during the restoration, oversaw the construction of full-sized templates for each rider.

The process was cumbersome, he said: “I would say there was a half-day spent with eight to 10 people working every time we put one diagonal rider in place. You had to kind of twist them in, and then some of them had to be cut in.”

On some days, Turner said, “It was like building the boat in the cellar, then not being able to get it out.”

A Maine sailmaker, Nathaniel Wilson, manufactured four of the new sails; two others were made at the naval shipyard in Boston’s Charlestown, alongside Constitution herself. Eight miles of running rigging and 27 miles of standing rigging, the lines that remain in place at all times, were also installed. The ship also received 229 new blocks for pulleys.

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On an average 19th century day, Constitution glided the waters with a complement of 36 sails. This enabled the 306-foot craft to maintain a comfortable speed of more than 13 knots (about 15 miles) per hour. But in the century or so that has passed since Constitution’s retirement as an active warship, those sails have served primarily as decoration. Constitution’s occasional ceremonial appearances in Boston Harbor have given the illusion that she was under sail, but the ship’s former captain, retired Cmdr. Robert L. Gillen, said appearances deceive: The frigate was actually propelled by tugboat.

To maintain the vessel’s dignity, Gillen said the Navy followed the POSH rule--port out, starboard home. “We always put the tug on the port side out, then shifted to the starboard side for the trip home,” he said. “People viewing it from the city of Boston could not see the tug.” Even when Constitution made longer trips in the 1930s, Gillen added, “she was always under tow by a tug.”

Earlier this week, Constitution unfurled her new sails for a nine-hour “sail training under tow” practice for the July 21 free sail. The ship remained tethered to a tug throughout the voyage.

The sails that billowed on Constitution following her last major restoration, from 1927 to 1931, were purchased with pennies contributed by American schoolchildren, many of whom grew up to be among Constitution’s 1 million visitors per year.

“During the time I was on board as commanding officer,” from 1978 to 1980, Gillen said, “I can’t begin to tell you how many times some elderly person would come up and tell me--some emphatically, others more quietly, but all sincerely--that it was their nickels, their dimes, their pennies, that saved the ship in the 1930s. I was always struck by the ownership they felt for Constitution.”

When it came time to raise funds for new sails in the current restoration, “it was a no-brainer,” Gillen said. “I said what we’ll do is replicate in the 1990s what we did in the ‘20s”--that is, a “grass-roots campaign, where kids throughout the country have had a chance to buy into a new era of dedication and devotion to country.” Gillen’s fund-raiser bought about $75,000 worth of new sails and rigging. The overall $12-million restoration was financed by the Navy.

Gillen grew up swimming in Boston Harbor, right alongside Constitution. His feeling that the ship is the personification of American patriotism is echoed by Constitution’s current chief officer, Cmdr. Michael Beck.

“I’ve commanded other ships, but when I took command of Constitution, I was struck by this sense of awe, this feeling that I had taken command of our Navy’s heritage--and to an extent, our country’s heritage,” Beck said. He paused to shout an order--”Brace all yards!”--to his crew. “The story that this ship tells really does represent our history.”

Hauling up the halyards, agreed one of Beck’s crew, Fireman Recruit William Conser, 27, “you actually get this feeling in your gut, you really think about what it was like back in 1812 and what the sailors had to go through then. I feel this sense of history--that without this ship, we would not have had a Navy, and we might not even have had a country--every time I step out of the barracks and see Constitution.”

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But until just three months ago, Conser and the rest of the crew hardly knew a halyard from a halibut. Most were assigned to Constitution as tour guides, looking quaint and often adorable in their 19th century-style uniforms.

They regaled visitors with stories of how Constitution must have felt (and smelled) in 1797 with a full crew of 450. They showed off the 220-foot mainmast and the 6,000-pound guns. They described Constitution’s brazen strategy of aiming for enemy masts. They explained that the flooring of the surgeon’s gallery (which doubled, handily, as a barbershop) was painted red to reduce the terror of the ship’s powder monkeys, 8- to-12-year-old boys who often happened upon an amputation in progress while darting to the lower decks to fetch gunpowder

The guides might explain that powder monkeys were typically orphan boys, and in the beneficent mind-set of early America, their jobs aboard Constitution represented kiddie workfare. They had a place to live, they had food and they had a useful apprenticeship for future work at sea. They also had ample chance to steer clear of the ship’s Spirit Locker, so named because that’s where the surgeon stored dead bodies, amputated body parts and the all-important rum supply.

But when it came to hauling lines, the contemporary crew was at a loss. Upon taking over the ship on April 1, Beck recalled, “the first order I gave was, ‘Brace all yards square to the wind.’ There were 100 people looking at me blankly.” Two hours later, he said, “all those yards were braced.” With pride, he pointed out that the same cast of characters now raises and lowers Constitution’s sails in 45 lean minutes.

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Beck, a shameless philosopher, views Constitution a metaphor for much that is strong and honorable about America. In training the crew to master the sails, he said, “what we had to do was, through chaos, create a system.” The same holds true for the document from which the ship draws her name, Beck maintained. In his mind, the parallels abound.

“Without the diagonal riders, we were afraid the ship would break in half. The restoration of the ship’s most basic system allowed it to regain its integrity,” Beck said. “That’s why we should think hard when we mess around with the structure of the Constitution”--that is, the document that forms the foundation of this country’s government.

Beck is no less reflective as he ponders the significance of Constitution’s first free sail in more than a century. Releasing the ship to the wind and to the sea, even for a brief anniversary cruise, is more than just good PR for the Navy, the commander insisted.

“When she sails, the question that I would pose is: What will it mean to all of us, what will it mean to the American citizenry?” Beck asked. “To me, I would have to say, watching this crew as it has learned to master these sails and this ship, that it means we can still do hard things in this country. And I would hope it would cause all of us to think in that regard about just what our responsibilities are as we sail into the 21st century.”

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Old Ironsides, Ever Valiant in Battle

When the Constitution was about 30 years old, her timbers were rotting and she needed extensive repair. Reasoning that it would cost more to restore the old frigate than to build a new one, Navy officials ordered her destroyed.

In Boston, a young student was incensed when he read in the newspaper about Constitution’s impending demise. The 1830 poem that Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in protest, “Old Ironsides,” was published widely in newspapers. It sparked such a huge flood of letters defending the warship that the Navy reversed course and decided to rebuild the ship.

“Old Ironsides”

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Beneath it run the battle shout,

And burst the cannon’s roar:

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more!

Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,

Where knelt the vanquished foe,

When winds were hurrying o’er the flood

And waves were white below.

No more shall feel the victor’s tread,

Or know the conquered knee:

The harpies of the shore shall pluck

The eagle of the sea!

O, better that her shattered hulk

Should sink beneath the wave;

Her thunders shook the mighty deep,

And there should be her grave;

Nail to the mast her holy flag,

Set every threadbare sail,

And give her to the god of storms,

The lightning and the gale!