USS Constellation (1854)

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USS Constellation 1.jpeg
career Flag of the United States (1795-1818) .svg
Commissioned: 1853
Laid on the keel : June 25, 1853
Launch : August 26, 1854
Commissioning: July 28, 1855
Status: Removed from the US Naval Vessel Register on August 15, 1955
Sister ships: ?
Fate: since 1955 as a museum ship in Baltimore
General data
Displacement: ≈1400 t
Length (trunk): 55 m
Width: 13 m
Mast height (main mast): 50 m
Draft: 6.4 m
Drive: sail
Speed: approx. 11 kn
Crew: 285 officers and men
Armament during construction:
  • 16 × VIII- inch bomb cannons
  • 4 × 32 pounder
  • 2 × 10-inch bomb cannons
Armament during the Civil War:
  • 16 × VIII-inch bomb cannons
  • 4 × 32 pounder
  • 2 × 10-inch bomb cannons
  • 1 × 30 pounder Parrott guns (bow)
  • 1 × 20 pounder Parrott guns (stern)

The USS Constellation was a wooden corvette for the United States Navy . She was the second ship of that name to be commissioned by the US Navy. She is one of the oldest surviving ships in the US Navy.

history

Construction and background

The Gosport Naval Shipyard in Norfolk took over the construction of the Constellation , where it was launched on August 26, 1854. In 1853, the first Constellation from 1797 was removed from the fleet and broken up at the Gosport naval shipyard. Sometimes the opinion is expressed, this old Constellation was 1853 just overhauled and thus identical to that set out in that year to Kiel and put into service in 1854 Constellation . This error is based on the listing of the new corvette Constellation as a "rebuild" on the part of the naval administration in order to be able to circumvent the approval of a new building and the approval of funds at the Congress . An investigation by the David Taylor Research Center on behalf of the US Navy has also shown that the Constellation, which was put into service in 1854, was a new build.

period of service

Early years

After construction, the Constellation entered service on July 28, 1855 under the command of Captain Charles Bell. She was initially deployed in the Mediterranean for around three years, where she earned her first merits by rescuing a ship's crew. After a short while in American waters, she became the flagship of the US African Squadron, where she landed a number of slave ships.

Civil war

On May 21, 1861, the Constellation brought up the Charleston-registered slave ship Triton . After the bombardment of Fort Sumter by Confederate troops a month earlier , the Triton became the first prize of the Union Navy. After being re-equipped at the end of 1861, the ship returned for two years to protect American trade routes in the Mediterranean and blocked, among other things, the Confederate privateer Sumter in Gibraltar . At the end of 1864 the Constellation returned to Mobile and after an inspection by Admiral David G. Farragut was designated as a barge in Norfolk.

Training ship

After five years they worked inactive the Constellation in 1870 for moving a training ship for training naval cadets to. There she was nicknamed “ Cradle of Admirals ” (German: “Cradle of Admirals”). From 1894 the Constellation served as a stationary training ship in Newport.

reactivation

The Constellation at its mooring in Baltimore

After the beginning of World War II, the Constellation served as the flagship of the US Atlantic fleet from spring to summer 1942 . From 1955 the ship was out of service and later became a museum ship in Baltimore. Since May 23, 1963, the ship is listed as a National Historic Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places .

literature

  • Howard I. Chapelle: The history of American sailing ships . Norton / Bonanza Books New York 1935, ISBN 0-517-02332-6
  • Howard I. Chapelle: The history of the American sailing navy . Norton / Bonanza Books New York 1949, ISBN 0-517-00487-9
  • Christopher Lloyd: Atlas of Maritime History . Maps and image documents from the beginning to the present. Ed .: Michael Stapleton. Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg / Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-7979-1861-5 .
  • Thies Völker: Lexicon of famous ships - spectacular adventures from Noah's Ark to the Titanic . Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-8218-1625-2 .

Web links

Commons : USS Constellation (ship, 1854)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ USS Constellation, our Oldest Ship
  2. ^ Howard I. Chapelle, "The history of the American sailing navy", Norton / Bonanza Books New York 1949, ISBN 0-517-00487-9 , page 468
  3. ↑ Dana M. Wegner, Colan Ratliff, Kevin Lynaugh: Fouled Anchors: The Constellation Question Answered (PDF) David Taylor Research Center. September 1991. Archived from the original on October 24, 2003. Retrieved on April 5, 2010.
  4. ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Maryland. National Park Service , accessed August 4, 2019.

Coordinates: 39 ° 17 '7.9 "  N , 76 ° 36' 40.3"  W.