1 February 2013 | Author/Destination: Yachting and Spa | Rubric: Tall ships, Museums, Exhibitions, Yacht of the Month
Reading Time: 9 minutes
USS Constitution sails into Boston Harbor during an underway Battle of Midway commemoration
© U.S. Navy – Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kathryn E. Macdonald
USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the
United States Navy. Named by
President George Washington after the
Constitution of the United States of America, she is the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat. Launched in 1797,
Constitution was one of
six original frigates authorized for construction by the
Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed.
Joshua Humphreys designed the frigates to be the young Navy’s
capital ships, and so
Constitution and her sisters were larger and more heavily armed and built than standard frigates of the period. Built in
Boston, Massachusetts, at
Edmund Hartt‘s shipyard, her first duties with the newly formed United States Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the
Quasi-War with France and to defeat the
Barbary pirates in the
First Barbary War.
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