Denied due to wind-powered vessels not being valid suggestions, thought it would be nice to post it anyway for fun. This cannot be a real suggestion and is not a valid addition to the game just thought it would be nice to actually show it off :)
Hark, ye fellow revolutionaries! Cast thine eyes upon the pride of our delicate, newly established republic, the resplendent frigate Constitution, a wooden bastion of unparalleled might, forged to safeguard our hard-won liberties upon the high seas! Though she be laid down in the aftermath of our great struggle against the Tyrant George, she is birthed from the selfsame revolutionary fervor, crafted by the ingenious hands of American artisans to out-gun and out-sail any foreign oppressor that would dare threaten our sacred right to trade. With a formidable hull o’ oak, she repels enemy iron as though it were but mere pebbles. Behold, she stands as a floating fortress of our sovereign states. Under the steadfast hands of her gallant and courageous crew, drawn from the bosom of this fair continent, this indomitable vessel hath humbled the proud crown of Great Britain in fair contest, proving to all monarchs across the Atlantic that the spirit of '76 doth ride high upon the waves, forever undefeated and fiercely free!
History
Launched in 1797, the USS Constitution remains the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat. Her construction was set in action on March 27, 1794, when the first President, George Washington, approved the Naval Armament Act to build six heavy frigates designed to safeguard American trade routes. Masterminded by naval architect Joshua Humphreys, the ship was constructed to be exceptionally robust and heavily armed for its time. Building her at Edmund Hartt’s Boston shipyard proved to be a massive undertaking; her immense weight caused her to get stuck on the wooden launch ramps twice before she finally slipped into the harbor on October 21.
The new frigate quickly proved her strategic value during the late-1790s Quasi-War with France in the Caribbean, followed by service as the flagship in the Mediterranean during the First Barbary War. Her defining moment, however, arrived during the War of 1812, where she went undefeated across three major engagements and bested four British warships. During a fierce duel on August 19, 1812, against HMS Guerriere, stunned onlookers watched British cannonballs deflect harmlessly off her uniquely layered live oak and white oak hull. The spectacular sight prompted crew members to nickname her “Old Ironsides,” an identity she carries to this day.
As the country experienced a period of peace, the Navy rotated the aging vessel between active service and periods of storage, known as being laid up “in ordinary.” By 1830, false rumors began circulating that the ship would be scrapped. Inspired by the perceived crisis, a young Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote his stirring poem, “Old Ironsides,” which sparked an immediate national outcry that essentially forced the Navy to finance her repairs. Newly restored, the frigate embarked on a massive 52,370-mile global voyage between 1844 and 1846, and later patrolled the West African coast to suppress the illegal slave trade, seizing her final prize ship, the H.N. Gambril, in 1853.
On the eve of the American Civil War, the Navy repurposed the aging warrior into a floating schoolhouse for the U.S. Naval Academy. Technicians stripped her interior to fit classrooms and berths for hundreds of midshipmen, and when the war broke out, the entire operation was evacuated from Maryland to Newport, Rhode Island, for safety. Following the war, she spent years training teenage naval apprentices until she was permanently retired from blue-water cruising in 1881. For the next few decades, she sat mostly neglected as a stationary housing barracks at a shipyard in New Hampshire.
By the time she returned to her home waters in the 1920s, the ship’s wooden timbers were rotting severely. To rescue the national icon, the Navy organized a massive fundraising drive in 1924 that famously included the “Pennies Campaign,” in which school children across the country collected small change to raise over $150,000 for her rebuild. As an expression of gratitude to the public, the fully repaired Constitution departed on a prominent three-year national cruise from 1931 to 1934, stopping at 76 ports on the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts to welcome more than 4.6 million visitors.
The ship’s long-term future was secured in 1954 when Congress passed Public Law 523, designating Boston as her permanent homeport and legally binding the Navy to her preservation. Today, she is docked at the Charlestown Navy Yard and works in tandem with the adjacent USS Constitution Museum to educate the public. Kept close to her original 1812 combat appearance through modern dry-dock restoration projects, “Old Ironsides” is still crewed by active-duty U.S. Navy sailors and occasionally takes to the open harbor under her own power as a living symbol of American history.
STATS
Wood: 22 inches at the waterline
Copper: 1/4th inch plate + 22-inch wood below the waterline
24-pounder x 30 (gun deck) range: 1200 yards
32-pounder x 24 (spar deck) range: 400 yards
18-pounder x 1 (spar deck) range: unknown
Propulsion: wind
Top speed: aprox 14 knots
Crew: 450
Length: 305 ft
Width: 43 ft 6 in
Main mast height: 172 ft
Waterline length: 175 ft
Draft: 24 ft
Displacement: 2200 tons
SOURCES
https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org
https://www.navy.mil/uss-constitution/
USS Constitution - Boston National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)
USS Constitution | The Freedom Trail
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-68/pdf/STATUTE-68-Pg527.pdf
Modeler Resources - USS Constitution Museum
- Yes
- No