Fourth of July is when they do the “turn around”
cruise. Constitution gets towed out into
Boston harbor and turned around so
that the sun gets to dry out the other side of the ship. This spreads the weathering by sunlight more
evenly and presumably helps the ship to last longer. Fox said some nice things about enemy cannon
balls bouncing off her live oak sides, and her 35-0 record in single ship duels
over her career.
Constitution was
bigger, faster, and more heavily armed than Royal Navy frigates. In those days the biggest warships, line of
battle ships, or just “battle ships” had two gun decks and carried a lot of
guns. Nelson’s Victory had 100
guns. Run of the mill line of
battleships carried 74 guns.
Any large warship
with just a single gun deck was called a frigate. Constitution fit this definition; anyone
could see thru a telescope that she only had one gun deck. But Constitution carried 44 guns and they
were big 24 pounders, battle ship guns.
The usual frigate was smaller and only carried 28 or 32 guns and the
guns were 12 or 18 pounders. In short
Constitution had a lot more firepower, and was faster to boot, she could catch
anything afloat and out run anything stronger than she was.
However Royal Navy
captains felt honor bound to engage any American frigate even one much stronger
than they were. The Royal Navy had been
very successful in single ship duels for years and years and her skippers in the war
of 1812 figured that Royal Navy discipline and seamanship could beat
anything. Well not so much in the case
of Constitution. Her heavier gun battery
blew down British masts and slaughtered British crews. The American crew was all good men with a grudge
against the British, usually connected to impressment. They fought with enthusiasm.
Anyhow, after
Constitution’s many victories; the British government was forced to issue
orders to their frigate captains to avoid getting into fights with
Constitution, or her sister ships, unless they outnumbered the American by three
to one.
The Brits have a
long memory. In the 1930s the Germans
launched Graf Spee, a very large ship armed with 11 inch guns. By the standards of the day Graf Spee was a
cruiser, heavy cruiser to be sure, but a cruiser. But, the British called Graf Spee a “pocket
battleship”, so that British cruiser captains did not feel honor bound to
engage. And this worked. In 1939 Graf Spee was out in the oceans
commerce raiding. A squadron of three
British cruisers, two 6 inch and one 8 inch, located her and engaged. In the furious gun battle that ensued Graf
Spee took enough damage that she took refuge in Montevideo
harbor in Ecuador. Ecuador
was a neutral country, and the laws of war limited a hostile warship’s stay in
a neutral harbor to a day or so. So Graf
Spee steamed out to meet the British cruisers again; only the German skipper
scuttled rather than fighting. He
committed suicide after getting back to shore.
To the British, sinking the Graf Spee counted as sinking a battleship,
and they made a big deal out of it. Only
for the memory of the damage “frigate” Constitution had done all those years
ago did the Brits succeed in promoting Graf Spee from heavy cruiser to
battleship.