Sea Control - Sea Control 153: USS Constitution with Angry Staff Officer and Dr. Claude Berube

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

1. http://www.angrystaffofficer.com2. Preble Hall Podcast: https://www.usna.edu/Museum/PrebleHall/index.phpThe official podcast of the US Naval Academy Museum3. A Call to the Sea: Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution. @cgberube and coauthor John Rodgaard chronicle the career of, arguably, Constitution's most successful captain.https://www.amazon.com/Call-Sea-Captain-Charles-Constitution/dp/1574885189/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=claude+berube&qid=1578502017&sr=8-3

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today we're discussing the USS Constitution, her history, and what she means to us. My guests today include the Internet's own Angry Staff Officer and Claude Baraby, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. Angry Staff Officer can be found online at P-P-T-S-A-P-P-E-R on Twitter, and Claude can be found online at C-G-B-E-R-U-B-E on Twitter as well. Claude, would you mind starting and providing us a little background about yourself? I've met you electronically, Twitter DM, and we've emailed a little bit here, but I've never actually spoken to you before today, so yeah, any bio that you can provide. Sure. Well, first, thanks for having me on.

I love CIMSEC, been a member from early on, and have published with you guys. I am currently an assistant professor of history at the Naval Academy. I am also my full-time position over there as director of the Naval Academy Museum. My previous life, I've been a Navy contractor for NAVSEA and ONR. I've been a civil servant for ONI, and I've worked for a couple of senators on Capitol Hill. I'm also a commander in the Navy Reserve and just did my last deployment, got back last spring. And like you guys, I really, truly love the Constitution. I am a New Englander.

I remember going by the Constitution all the time as a kid. I went aboard her. And I think that's why what drew me to writing my first book was a bio of one of her captains from the War of 1812, Charles Stewart, that came out in 2005. It's a very special place that the Constitution has in my heart. And I was always a fan that G.I. Joe did an episode where the USS Constitution saves the day during an EMP attack. So there's that. Wait, what? I'm sorry.

New information. That is amazing. This is a true story. So this is what, maybe 86 or 87. You remember the old G.I. Joe cartoon? It was a half hour. and there was one episode where Cobra Commander and the rest of the Cobras are taking out the U.S. ships left and right. They use an EMP and you can't have a metal ship going against them.

So they said, well, we don't have a metal ship. We've got another ship in commission. That's the U.S. Constitution, Old Ironside. So you see the Old Ironside sail. I think it took them all of three minutes to sail from Boston to the Pacific to take on Cobra Command. Man, I know what I'm doing for the rest of the night, searching for a place to stream that. Sapper, and I'm going to refer to you as Sapper if that's okay, both to preserve your anonymity and because it's easier than saying angry staff officer each time. I'm very interested in both your background as a historian and how you've come to be so interested in naval matters. So your threats on Constitution were one of the first things that I really noticed when I started participating in Twitter. I guess participating on Twitter, in Twitter, I'm not sure what the correct terminology is.

I'm sure Twitter will inform me as soon as this goes live. But you have an obvious and genuine love for the ship, but I also see you tweeting regularly about the National Guard, World War I, and the Civil War, in addition to naval matters. What is your background as a historian? Well, first off, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it, and it's good to be on here with Claude as well. My background is varied and strange, as with many things.

My educational beginnings were in North American colonial history. that took a turn into left field into World War One, as I guess will happen. That's that's been my field of research for about the past four, four and a half years or so. Yep, definitely like to talk about the USS Constitution, why I am, you know, I feel a little, I don't know, a little ashamed now proud to be proud. That's that's the word I'm proud to be infiltrating the halls of the Naval Academy in the naval world as an army person, but I'll just sort of shield my face because my uh otherwise i'll draw the ire of other land-based life forms um but i've always really had a deep fascination with of course the age of sail um who doesn't who doesn't like

massive wooden ships with lots and lots of guns on them propelled by the wind and then the uh the uss constitution was sort of a uh a later in life discovery when i first you know you read all about her and okay cool old ironsides that sounds neat and then you go aboard her and you look around and you're like this ship isn't that big why did it do all that stuff for me i just sort of fell in love with her um i joke that she's you know she's she's one of the the uh most wonderful ladies in my life um and i've uh you know anytime you go aboard there is this sort of magical sense of all the history that's happened right there so like in the army our history is spread out everywhere like you have to take long treks to different battlefields and go see all these

different things in the navy you have the history right there aboard the ship and then of course what better embodiment of that than uh the uss constitution yeah it is good to get on board a ship that has a historical background i will say that i feel like the army has the benefit of doing staff rides of being able to walk the ground that is a is a much tougher nut to crack for the navy to do a to do a staff ride in the army sense that's that's true but i'll tell you if i could make a plug for the the naval academy and what we've been doing for the past four years jared is uh we have now had yeah four episodes of the war of 1812 a schoolhouse at sea and you can look this up on twitter at hashtag schoolhouse at sea and see some of the things we've done but

essentially we've taken out one or two war of air war of 1812 replica privateers like the pride of baltimore 2 and the links and we'll take them around the chesapeake bay which is where not Not only the Constellation served the constitutional pull-in on occasion, the midshipmen can see Fort McHenry. They can go down to Pax River where Barney's flotilla retreated from the British invasion fleet that eventually went to Washington, D.C. And it gives us a chance to do that staff ride but also teach midshipmen aboard like they were taught 200 years ago. For the record, I'm still waiting on my invite for this because that sounds amazing. We have a rowboat for you. Apparently I have to be a – do I have to become a midshipman for that?

I don't know. No, no, we'll get you a little rowboat that we can tug along. Put a little U.S. Army flag on it. Oh, that would be great. We'll get you a gig. Wacky ship in the Army. Absolutely. Sapper, I got one more question for you that I'm going to hold you accountable for a tweet from a few days ago.

So I'm just curious how much of a – how you came to be such a navalist. You're a sec def for a day tweet, but the thing that you led with was bring back the battleships. It's like, how did you get to become such a navalist as an army engineer? Who doesn't like massive amounts of firepower on a floating platform? I mean, the army has been doing that for a year. Well, I shouldn't say the army has been trying to do that with tanks. And now I'm going to make tank Twitter all mad. But, hey, you can use hashtag tank Twitter and get a whole bunch of followers for this podcast.

But, you know, the Air Force does it with the C-130 gunship. You know, everyone likes a platform with a lot of big guns. I think, I mean, honestly, looking at it, it was a joking tweet, but in some level of seriousness, you know, gunboat diplomacy was a thing, was being able to show this massive thing. Yes, granted, it is irrelevant today, but it is something when you look at it, you go, wow, the nation that produced that must be very able to prosecute war. It's kind of like when you walk into a Gothic cathedral and you look up and you're like, wow, whoever built this is either very holy or very rich. So it's one of those indications that that sort of sends a message visually. As to how I become a navalist, I don't know. I have so many books on the U.S. Navy and I'm still not sure.

I'm really not sure exactly how I'm sort of running down this path. I do remember in college reading this massively long history of the British Navy voluntarily. This was not for a class. This was just sort of because. And then I also just recently finished listening to all of the Master and Commander series because, you know, they're addictive. And I guess there's a part of me that apparently wants to go to sea. Yeah, it's an unanswered question and not something that I want to explore too deeply. Otherwise, it might lead me to down some strange paths to wearing whatever variant of the U.S. Navy uniform that they're on right now.

The uniforms are a sore subject, and I'm not going to touch on those today. But I will use this opportunity to put in a plug for Claude. I know it's not your podcast, Claude, but you are associated with the Preble Hall podcast from the Naval Academy History Museum. that if you are a navalist, that should occupy 30 to 60 minutes of your week listening to that phenomenal podcast on historical matters, all things naval. Thanks. Basic history of the Constitution. We'll start off there with how we, how the United States comes to acquire the Constitution, how we buy the Constitution. Post-American Revolution, the Continental Navy is disbanded. And this leads to the modern day, the U.S. Coast Guard. Every U.S. Coast Guardsman

will tell you that they are the longest continuously existing naval service of the United States. So the Continental Navy is disbanded, leaves us without any sea power to defend ourselves abroad. But on March 27, 1794, President Washington signs the Naval Armament Act, calling for the construction of six frigates to be built all along the eastern seaboard. And the Constitution was built in Boston, launched on October 21st in 1797. The great hero of that story, Jared, has got to be Joshua Humphreys, who comes up with this concept for a super frigate. And by that, what's meant is the British traditional frigate was about 38 gun. And Humphreys realizes that he's not going to be able to build a frigate that can take on a ship of the line,

but he wants one that can escape the ship of the line but overtake and defeat enemy frigates. And one of the problems with designing a ship of that size, and you guys have been aboard the Constitution, is something called hogging. Once you build a ship long enough, if you imagine in your mind the profile of a hull and you see it sort of hump on the underside, and just because of water dynamics, there's pressure that's going to build

and it's going to weaken the keel. You're not going to be able to have these heavy guns. And what Joshua Humphreys does in his radical new design is, first of all, putting these diagonal riders to reinforce the ship, But also, he takes something that is a unique resource to the United States, and that is live oak. It's indigenous to the United States in the southeast, and it's one of the thickest woods you can have. And consequently, when he puts this on the ship, and that's why when it eventually goes into battle in the War of 1812,

and these carronades from the British ships can't penetrate the hull, the shot basically bounces off. that's why they call it Old Ironsides, or her sides are made of iron. Interestingly enough, we still have a naval Live Oaks reservation in part to support the USS Constitution whenever she goes in for a refit. So she just came out of the yards, I want to say about a year or a year and a half ago to rehaul her. And so Humphreys comes up with this idea. And as a result of the diagonal riders, the Live Oak and other factors, the ship is larger. She's able to mount larger guns and the long guns. So basically, you're able to keep more or less keep out of the range of some of the British frigates. And, you know, I've always wondered if he had the advantage as a

naval constructor, because he went straight to Henry Knox, who was Secretary of War. And I don't there was no Secretary of the Navy back then, because it wasn't yet 1798, when the Department of the Navy was was established. And Henry Knox says, geez, that's this sounds great to me. Now, Would that have been different if there had been a SECNAV or a Board of Naval Commissioners or an Admiralty, which we didn't have admirals until the Civil War? But I think that's interesting that would this radical new design have gone forward in the acquisition cycle we eventually grew accustomed to? And the second part of that is he did want all six ships, those super frigates, built under his supervision, and fortunately they weren't. Ian Tull tells a great story in Six Frigates, and one of the reasons simply is they wanted to spread the wealth among the various congressional districts, so the ships did not have the same design or designer. And so that's why the Constellation is different from the Constitution, the President is different from them, and so on.

So what you're telling me is that the acquisitions process has always been somewhat politically driven, as long as we've been a nation. And that you should probably have an Army guy approving Navy things if you actually want to get the best stuff is my takeaway from that. Well, I've seen the Pentagon Wars, Sapper, and, you know, the greatest movie ever made. And I think we need a Pentagon Wars for the United States Navy. No, there is something to be said for that. The gunboats under Jefferson a decade later. Any era you see ship construction, you're going to see the wealth spread out among the states. Bringing up the gunboats, I think that's a really good counterpoint to, you know, we have these great, incredible six frigates being rolled out to a country that is incredibly resistant to the expenditure of money that having those type of warships involves.

And so a lot of people ask, why did it take us so long to actually get some good ships out there that could be standing up to the pier, near pier? Well, we were not even a near pier. We were trying to be a competitor, trying to break into the great power competition, I don't know, barking at the edge of it. It costs a lot of money. As we know now, a Navy, a military, a professional military costs a lot of money. And so I love the early period of trying to essentially crowdsource national defense. And, of course, the best example of that is the army with the militia. And, yes, as a National Guardsman, I have to go ahead and say, yes, the militia is very strong.

However, you know, you shouldn't be relying on the militia only for your public defense. And the War of 1812 is a classic example of that. You just don't do it, especially in areas of the country that don't support the war at all, a.k.a. New England, which threatens to secede in 1814 because, you know, the trade is just too good. But then you have I think in the Navy, you kind of have the you have the gunboat piece, the Jeffersonian gunboats of, you know, if we just build this fleet just for home defense, that's not too expensive. That'll be fine. That'll that will will have these wonderful patriotic people who will man these things. I almost see them as like a 19th century drone swarm, like we're going to have all these little gunboats that are just going to swarm all over these frigates and take them down, which, you know, doesn't really equate too well when you're going up against even a frigate, let alone any type of ship of the line that starts showing up in 1814 off the U.S. coast in rather alarming numbers. Yeah, I want to bounce something off of Sapper there because he raises a good point about the army and the militia. But by the same token, the Navy had the same issue with the revolution and going forward for a while because you didn't have just a Continental Navy. And again, this all goes into the development of the Constitution and the creation of the Department of the Navy.

You had several forces at work. You had the Continental Navy. You had privateers, people who were getting letters of marque from not only the various states but from the Continental Congress. You had state navies. You also had the French. And this all becomes problematic, say, during Saltonstall's expedition in the Penobscot in Maine, where they face the British fleet, but they have some continental ships, they have some New Hampshire state militia ships, etc., etc., and it just doesn't work. And you also have a competition for resources. So while you're trying to fit out the Constitution during the War of 1812, you're not only competing against the privateers who are going to make a heck of a lot more money if they capture ships, but so too if you were part of the Navy at that time, you did get money for capturing more ships.

Some captains got very wealthy from that. So I think there's that commonality with the Army at the time as well. I've been in the midst of reading B.J. Armstrong's Small Ships and Daring Men. I did not – one, phenomenal read, so shout out to BJ for his scholarship there. But two, I did not appreciate to what extent the quest for prizes was a motivating factor for officers on board at that point. He talks very specifically about John Paul Jones' crew, and he's got these guys from New Hampshire kind of just in it for the money, and they don't want to do some of the stuff that he wants to do as far as taking the fight to the British Because it'd be more lucrative to be falling on merchants instead of raiding John Paul Jones' hometown.

And not to digress too much, but that eternal quest for prize money is one of the reasons that it kind of takes so long for English colonization of the Americas to kick off. Because the ships that are going to Jamestown, the Jamestown colony in the 17th century, they're supposed to be, they've been contracted essentially to go drop off the settlers, go back, pick up more, pick up supplies, and, you know, actually dropping them at a good point where you'd actually want to settle a colony. Instead, what they do is they ditch the settlers at the earliest possible point, which is, you know, Jamestown next to a swamp, which works out really well. It doesn't. Thousands die from it. And then they go off chasing after Spanish fleet treasure fleets. And this sets American colonization in the Virginias off by by decades and also causes them to settle on a swamp where they sort of get hemmed in by the surrounding inhabitants or all the natives going, why are you settling in a swamp? you're all going to die. And so I just think it's ironic that this search for prize money is just something that keeps coming up, always through, running all the way through. I don't know. When did prize money stop becoming a thing in the U.S. Navy? Do you know?

You know, I think the last recorded one might have been during World War II. No way. I could be wrong on that, but there was some ship that captured a German merchant ship, I think, but I got to double check on that. That is so cool. So I want to divert back here a little bit to Constitution. We talked about her size a little bit here, and it's relatively small. And, you know, someone who spent his career on cruisers, destroyers, yeah, my first impression of her was that she's small.

Then I go to visit the Navy's website, and her displacement is 1,900 tons, which is almost as much as a World War II destroyer. I know she's not comparable to a ship of the line, but I think I underestimated a little bit as I was thinking about her being small. And she did get stuck coming down the docks on her way out just because of her size. Yeah, and just to give a sense of comparison, so a rated ship during the Age of Sail meant you rated a captain. Anything below that, a schooner, a sloop, you could be a lieutenant or even a midshipman commanding that. The first through fourth rates were ships of the line. A first-rate ship of the line, and this is where we get the term first-rate, is a ship that had 100 guns or more. So think of HMS Victory, if you're ever in Portsmouth, I was going to say Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Portsmouth, England.

I know, we'll get it someday, I swear. But if you go to Portsmouth, England, you'll see HMS Warrior from the mid-19th century, but you also see HMS Victory, which is the oldest commissioned warship in the world. Constitution is the oldest commissioned warship afloat because Victory is dry docked. So these first through fourth rate depends on the size of your guns. And then the fifth and sixth rate were the frigates. And the Constitution was considered a fifth-rate ship of the line. It had 44 guns. However, because she held often 50 guns when she went to sea, that's why the British said that she was a light ship of the line.

So she really falls in the bottom two-thirds of the size of ships at that time in terms of what they're carrying. But keep in mind, she is a fast ship. She's designed to be that way because she's restricted on her hogging. That means she has a couple of knots faster speed. she can go about 13 knots on a good day so she can out sail almost anything out there and she has those powerful hulls and the long guns so she's got incredible advantages and yet still during the war of 1812 you have a captain who almost loses her who had lost several ships before so we'll get into that i'm sure that's a yeah my favorite are we going to talk about bainbridge at

some point oh god do we have to do we have to we do have to we named a ship he's so bad that an army guy thinks he's bad like i don't even know anything about things yeah just i mean how how do you like so yeah in the army we've we have a great track record during the civil war of um of continuing to hang on to bad commander like mcclellan anybody brought him back for a second time but eventually we got rid of him we didn't keep giving mcclellan the army of the potomac Eventually, we were like, all right, man, you've already messed this up enough. Right, well, you know, what do you do when you can't beat the rebels? So Bainbridge, failure after failure after failure, and then the ego that he brought along with him to boot is just sort of incredible.

But that whole era, I just finished reading a work on Stephen Decatur, another fascinating individual associated with the Constitution. But all these guys who are striking out on their own in this fledgling U.S. Navy really – it feels like to get by, you had to have an incredibly powerful character to be able to survive the Navy itself at that point and to be able to sort of rise to a point where you could command a ship like the Constitution or in the case of Bainbridge, I don't know, who you knew or the fact that you're – just consistency of always screwing up. And you're risking more. I think that's what differentiates the commanding officers of that era. Because of the prize money, because of what was at risk, because of what was in store for them, I think they had to risk more. Now, to get back to Bainbridge, I mean, in one sense, he was justified. I mean, he had a great career as a merchant sailor, very heroic under a couple of firefights. But when he becomes commander of the USS Retaliation during the Quasi-War with France, that is actually the first ship to be lost during the war to an enemy. I'm going to stick a pin in Bainbridge. I am going to divert back to Constitutionator. So first service really in the Quasi-War. So war with France, 1796, 1798. Correct me if I've got the dates wrong there. Trade disputes with the French in the Caribbean, sort of an undeclared war. She captures the French ship Niger. her captain actually works together with the british down there so kind of the first anglo u.s cooperation and wins a sailing competition against hms santa margarita so you've alluded several times to her sailing abilities here and this is kind of the first time that the british

are getting a taste of this and she heads to the mediterranean 1803 as captain preble's flagship bombards tripoli blockades tripoli captures three ships pieces concluded on her decks on june 3rd 1805. And this is one of the first instances I see like the Germans have a phrase Boatschafter in Blau, which means diplomats in blue. But this is kind of like the Navy has thought of itself ever since and really from its beginnings as America's floating diplomats. And I think this is one of the places where that stems from. It's an important period for the Constitution and for the country. I mean, this is the first time during the Barbary War, consider that we are conducting long-term operations overseas for four years. We have three squadrons, several

commodores, and Preble is the most significant of them because he's the one who's there for the blockade, for firing on Tripoli, for the gunboat action. We won't mention that Bainbridge had already lost Philadelphia. But by the way, if any of your listeners come by the Naval Academy Museum, we have Preble's desk from the Constitution where he was issuing those orders. And he develops this new cadre of officers these junior officers who are 24 25 years old who are captains they're lieutenants but they're captains of their ships their sloops of siren vixen nautilus etc but these are called prebles boys and these are the captains eventually who would command the u.s navy ships during the war of 1812 and that's uh hull and porter and stewart decatur etc so that's

why i think it's it's a really important for the period for the constitution operating in the Mediterranean. Yeah, I was going to say not only that, it's every service wants stories, right? The Marine Corps is, of course, the best example of that. They sell themselves on a, how do we say this? They are Department of the Navy, so I have to be politic. You told me it was a myth. No, so what I would tell you is like the very first course, if you attend the PME at Marine Corps University, the very first briefing that you get from the Marine Corps is they pull all the non-marines into a room and a marine phd gets on the stage and tells you he's like look all this stuff is a lie here's the truth behind it and why we why we tell ourselves these myths and it's like

i understand why they tell themselves these things it builds esprit de corps it's very important to their mythology but exactly yes it's like it is the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves and it's important to esprit de corps right we all have to give ourselves reasons to wake up in the morning and for the marine corps it's uh you know riding on the coattails of the army and navy the uh i didn't go that far oh man i'm gonna get so much hate mail huh it's fine uh i already already talked about bella wood in a blog post so the uh but what they get right is that people are drawn to stories and what you get out of the first uh the first barbary war is oh boy you get stories and uh and i know claude you don't want to talk about steven decatur but you can't avoid

the fact that he becomes the navy's first superstar he is all over the papers he if you can if you can't if if you can go through the u.s like if you can go through a state and find a town that's not named decatur i mean that's that's pretty good because there are so many towns uh townships counties named after him and he lives a very short life because uh dueling and it's uh not exactly the most healthy sport but he his impact uh that he has uh you know burning the philadelphia the engagements aboard escape all this other stuff it makes for really really good stories and so as you have the navy pursuing diplomatic actions you also have them beginning to tell this american story of american exceptionalism and bravery and look at our

our courageous tars and everything they're doing and that rallies the public who by the way at the time still need to be convinced that paying that money for this navy is going to be worth it because there's a whole section of the country that's voting for a political party that says, you know, we don't really need a powerful military, which of course is going to come back and kind of bite us in the butt in the war of 1812. This was one of the first instances where I kind of experienced like, all right, history is a matter of perspective. I actually pulled into Algiers, Algeria back in 2007. I was an exchange officer on a German frigate. And so they put us in a bus And they take us under heavily armed escort over the Military History Museum.

And we're walking through and we stop as part of the tour in front of this picture of the Constitution facing off against a small Algerian ship. And the tour guide proceeds to tell us is like, oh, Algiers at the time had many, quote unquote, agreements with these other governments here to protect their ships. And, you know, this was the Algerian Navy. And then the U.S. Navy come in here and the Algerians fought bravely. and i leaned over to one of my german colleagues and like i'm trying to tell them in german it's like yeah i don't think that we share the same perspective on this conflict and there is no german word for bullshit so i said that and the tour guide looked at me like the tour became notice the climate became noticeably chillier in the room as we moved on but fast

forwarding now beginning of the war of 1812 constitution is sitting in port boston and and start sailing down to New York to join an American squadron. And, Clyde, this goes back to your – yeah, I called you Clyde. That's great. That's okay. Sorry about that. I've been called worse. Sorry. So she encounters a British squadron route, and this is where we see the sailing abilities that you've talked about before.

She's becalmed by wind, looks like she's going to be captured, wets her sails to better catch the wind, puts out boats to tow the ship, and then uses a ketching anchor to pull the ship along. Can you describe the process of ketching for those who don't understand what I'm talking about? Sure. And for listeners who have watched Master and Commander, this is the chase of the Constitution by a British squadron.

The Constitution is under command of Isaac Hall. One of his officers is Lieutenant Charles Morris. And if you remember during the movie, the wind dies, so Russell Crowe's ship can't escape. So he gets his men out into small boats, and they tow the ship into a fog bank. Well, what had happened was Hull thought that that was an American squadron, so he turned toward them. But when he realized what was going on, he turned away from the British squadron. The wind dies, so now he gets his men to pull, but the British do the same. Morris comes up with this idea of hedging.

And there's two different kinds, several different kinds of anchors. A sea anchor is something – consider it like an umbrella that you'll throw astern like I used to do on my sloop in the Chesapeake Bay in heavy seas, and you want to kind of stabilize things. But when you're kedging, it's almost when you would throw an anchor overboard, and you would pull on it to pull you from port to starboard or starboard to port or basically give you some sort of leverage. So what Morris says is, why don't we take those ketching anchors as far ahead as possible, they release as much line as possible, they're tying the anchor to this, they let it go down, and I don't know if it was about 30 or 40 fathoms of water, and then they basically pull themselves forward as much as possible, and they keep repeating this. And that is how they are able to escape. And eventually the wind picks up again and they're able to to pull away from the British squadron. But again, this is a case of use what you have to win the battle or to get away when there are superior forces against you. This chase is going on for hours. And the British are not far away. The Americans can see them. They can see over there. Occasionally, the British are firing at them. And we're just used to engagements being decided within minutes. I'm just trying to picture the tension of that exchange stretched out over hours and, in some other cases, days. Hard to fathom when we consider modern warfare. It is, but again, I think Master and Commander catches that beautifully when you see Russell Crowe. He has the French ship behind him, but he knows that he's about 30 or 40 yards out of their gunshot range from their bow chasers, and he's just sipping tea casually on the quarterdeck just waiting for the right time to engage with them. And I think it's also important to note that when it did come time for engagements, they could be very alarmingly suddenly decided quickly.

There's some that were done in half an hour and just immense loss of life, catastrophic damage. But like you said, that tension to build up, I think you hit the nail on the head, Claude, with the Master and Commander reference of the people sort of accepting it because, you know, that's normal when you don't know alternatives. Yeah, and it really puts history in context when, again, at the Naval Academy, some of your listeners may be Academy grads and may remember Mahan Hall has all those flags or used to have all those flags. Well, all the ships that the Constitution captured, we have their flags, like when Stuart captured Kyene and Levant or when all the other ships, the Hornet, et cetera, go down the line. The Macedonian was captured. Those came to the Academy because the Naval Academy Museum is the official repository of all flags captured by naval forces. Have the British ever asked for those back? They asked, I think, at one point for the British Royal Standard, and we said we're taking very good care of it.

And we invited them to a wonderful ceremony. It was great. And actually, we do have the flag from the Mashouda, which was that Algerian ship that was captured, that was destroyed, basically, by the Constitution and Decatur. I mean, it is all fair. In the tower, they have captured American flags from the War of 1812, although they do have one regimental standard that is missing from that war because it is hanging in West Point. So I guess I took a little bit of happiness from that. So then following the chase, there are really two engagements that enshrine Constitution, U.S. Navy history forever. And the first is with a – Claude, you're going to have to help me with the pronunciation of the HMS Guerriere. Guerriere, yeah.

It was previously a captured French ship, and this was not uncommon during the Age of Sail. You really couldn't do this today. You would capture an enemy warship and basically put your flag on that ship, and you would then have that as part of your fleet. And in fact, that's what happens later to the USS President when Stephen Decatur loses the president to the British and it becomes HMS President. So my favorite detail about this battle is actually in its opening, which the commander of the British warship raised three British ensigns as an invitation to duel. And the American commander responds with four American ensigns. That's like the very first instance of America, in my opinion. He's like, no, no, guys, we're going to turn it up to 11, four American ensigns.

But Constitution, you mentioned, she's rated for 44 guns. She's carrying 55 at the time of the battle. Garrier is rated for 38, but carrying 49. And it's during this battle that a sailor observes 18-pound British cannonballs bouncing off Constitution's oak sides and exclaims, Huzzah, her sides are made of iron. And at this point, Sapper, I kind of want to point out to you, Stolen Valor for the 1st Armored Divisions, a.k.a. Old Ironsides. There's only one, and it's the Constitution.

It's an homage. It's an homage to the— Well, it's it's everyone. Everyone wants to be associated with old Ironsides. She is. That is her moment where she sort of steps onto that world stage of of, oh, wow, this is a this is a cool ship. And it's it's interesting because, you know, we talk about all the advantages of the ship. I mean, honestly, in Claude, you both might disagree with me. I see the Constitution's advantage in that engagement in her crewing. She has a full crew and she has some very, very good officers and well-trained gunners. versus a understrength crew on the Guerriere, as they see a little bit later on with the Java.

But the fact that an American frigate can go toe-to-toe with a British frigate and kind of just, I mean, she's, the Guerriere is left without a mast. You know, double-shotted grape is a hell of a thing. And that's one of those things where you, I'm an engineer, but, you know, if you look back in the Army lineage, the engineers and artillery used to be on the same branch so i guess i have a little bit of artillery envy and when you suddenly put like you know some heavy guns on board a warship and then called double grape shot um that can literally tear a mass down uh that's really cool it is a frightfully bloody engagement uh on the especially on the british side um the blow to the british psyche is one that we cannot really downplay at all yeah that's it's absolutely true that look

This does two things. In a very short period of time, the US frigates, the United States has taken Macedonian. You've had the Constitution, which has taken on Java and Guerriere. And as a result, number one, it validates Joshua Humphrey's idea that, hey, let's build these super frigates for one-on-one action because we can overpower the British. Number two, the British reaction is, OK, here's our order to the fleet. If you are a frigate and you see an American frigate, do not take it. You are to wait. There should be three ships to every one American frigate. That's why you start to see these chases. And even during the end of the war, you will have a squadron that's designed to chase the Constitution across the Atlantic and very narrowly captures her. It's just one of those engagements that that first engagement is also here. we talk about the constitution's better range with guns and everything like that i mean it boils down

to a close range slugging match with a mass all entangled and they're just going in circles just battering each other which is to my mind sort of insane but that is again when we talk the importance of a story uh that is something else that is going to propel uh hull and the constitution together into a to a country that is desperate for any type of good news because over on the army front during the War of 1812. We're not doing so hot. This is what happens when you go to war with a nation that's not divided and ask the nation to provide volunteers. And our professional army is around 4,000 or 5,000 troops. Any type of good news is greeted as a massive sign of relief in years that are going by that are considerably difficult for the American psyche.

Yeah, you both, I think, mentioned there kind of the second major battle for constitution with the java and we just celebrated the anniversary of that battle on december 29th bainbridge your favorite commander redeeming himself there encounters java off the brazilian coast fire from the java actually disabled constitution's helm which i mean that's a drill we still run today on u.s navy warship is having to steer locally eventually capitulates and following this battle is what claude was talking about british admiralty says no more one-on-one engagements with American frigates? I should point out that not just these two engagements, they certainly solidify Constitution in the eyes of the Navy and the popular literature.

But there's another engagement, and I only say this, I guess, because I wrote the book on Commodore Charles Stewart, but he commanded Constitution for longer during that war than anybody else, than either Bainbridge or Hull. And it's toward the end of the war, and keep in mind the Treaty of Ghent has been signed, and a lot of our ships are deployed. But because of communication, nobody really knows that that's happened. The Battle of New Orleans happens after the Treaty of Ghent is signed. And in early January, Stuart is chasing a convoy off of Europe, and he finds out from a German ship that the Treaty of Ghent's been signed, and cheers erupt on the Constitution. And he said, no, no, no, according to the U.S. Constitution, the war has ended only when a

treaty has been ratified by the Senate. We've been given no knowledge of that. So we're going to continue the fight until we find out about this. And so he continues on. And for several weeks, he finally engages the Kyene and Levant. It's the only time during the war that a U.S. frigate has successfully taken on two ships at the same time, which is kind of funny, because just before he deployed, he got married to the Belle of Boston, Delia Tudor. And she said, bring back a frigate and he kind of arrogantly said i'll bring back two well here here was his attempt to get two frigates now of course one was a light frigate and one was one was a sloop so it wasn't quite that but still if you read we don't have time here but if you read in the engagement

how he backs the constitution and i used to try back in my ship excuse my sloop on the chesapeake it is kind of tough for me to do i'm sure better sailors have no problem but he is able to back this 1900 ton uh super frigate and the way he does it is masterful and he's able to take these two ships out very quickly so quickly in fact that when the two captains uh falcon and gordon come aboard his ship after the battle they're arguing about who lost the battle and he said and he's just tired of this and so stewart just tells the two of them look i'm sending you both back to your ships right now we're going to start the fight again the results are going to be the same. And they sort of just kind of cut it at that point. And he sent them off to Halifax for,

I think, a court-martial, though there was a court of inquiry. But I think had that engagement happened before the Treaty of Ghent was signed, I think in that case, Stuart, a person we really don't hear that much about, would have had a name like a Hull, a Decatur, or Bainbridge in our annals. Yeah, it's interesting. It really does seem like we got some of our best licks in after the treaty was signed so maybe maybe we shouldn't have signed oh no it's a good it's a good thing we should have signed yeah that's true yeah the last battle i think the last sea battle was sometime in june of 1815 i mean considering that we still had most of our northern border and half of maine still otter british occupation for 1816 i want to say so a little bit a little bit difficult

And so I'll fast forward a little bit closer to present day, too. I mean, it took a lot to keep the Constitution in commission in shape. And she gets refurbished again in 1934. The ship's almost 140 years old, and she does a three-year, 75-port tour of the nation. I'm not sure that's something most people appreciate, like the effort that goes into something like that with a ship that old. Yeah, that's got to be a record. I can't think of a ship in the British inventory or Dutch or anybody that had a ship that old sailing around. That had to have been incredible just to – yeah, 1934.

I mean it's wild because that's one of those weird points in time where you are in between wars, mid-ish, depression, but you still have Civil War veterans around. And you're less than – you're six, seven years out from World War II, this really defining moment in American history. And so I think I feel like it's a really symbolic time for that cruise as well to kind of, I don't want to say restore hope, but show a little bit of this idea of what is Americana. I mean, the USS Constitution is one of the key, I don't want to refer to her as a piece, but I mean, key players of our story that we tell about ourselves. Again, the Marines can say, ha-ha, you're going back on yourself. But sometimes it's not important that it's true, but it's a story that we tell about ourselves that drives us to be better. The U.S. Constitution can usually back up all the stories that she's been a part of. But in popular legend and myth, I think she's taken on a much larger role than, say, that one would have thought when she was first laid down.

Absolutely. I was just going to ask, Claude, you asked this on Twitter the other day. Did you ever get resolution on whether ships are she's or it's? Yeah, according to the poll, I think there were something like 271 people who responded, and 89% say it should be she slash her, not it. I'm not sure if my publisher is going to agree with that. I know one of the reviewers preferred it to she, so we'll see whatever – if they're publishing the book, I'll do whatever. I'm like LeBron James in China. I'll do whatever they say.

Yeah. So I'd like to thank my guests for joining us today. Angry Staff Officer can be found online at at P-P-T-S-A-P-P-E-R and at his blog, angrystaffofficer.com. Sapper, any upcoming projects you'd like to mention? Nothing right now. I'm just trying to survive command and hopefully get into some actually finishing a book at some point. Claude Berube can be found online at C-G-B-E-R-U-B-E on Twitter. He also plays a major role in organizing the U.S. Naval Academy History Museum's Preble Hall podcast.

And again, I'd advise you to check out Preble Hall on Stitcher Apple Podcasts. Claude, I do understand you have a new book coming out. Can you tell us the topic and when we can expect to see it? Sure. That should be out December or January. And it is on the Navy during Andrew Jackson's presidency. So you will see the Constitution appearing along with the rest of the fleet. And I'm looking forward to that finally coming out. I'm just doing the final edits and citations on it.

Excellent. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen, again, for coming on. And for our listeners, thank you for listening. We'll see you next week. So help me, Bob-omb, put it in the alley. Way, hey, put it in the alley. Help me, Bob-omb, put it in the alley. Put it on the shimbo now.

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