The 44-Gun Frigate USS Constitution "Old Ironsides" (Anatomy of the Ship)
The 44-Gun Frigate USS Constitution "Old Ironsides" (Anatomy of the Ship)
Conway Maritime Press | 2005 | ISBN: 1591142504 | English | 130 Pages | PDF | 114,4 MB
The Constitution was one of the US Navy's first six original frigates, ordered as a counter to the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean. Fast and heavily built, she was nominally rated as a 44 but mounted thirty 24-pdr and twenty-two 12-pdr cannon. Her most famous encounter, after which she became nicknamed 'Old Ironsides' due to British shot being seen bouncing off her hull, involved HMS Guerriere, which she smashed; the same treatment was meted out to HMS Java four months later.
Now the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world, she is berthed in Boston Harbor.