USS Constitution: Live Oak Hull, Jackson's Stolen Head, and a Penny Drive

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Looking at this huge stack of sources you sent over about the USS Constitution, well, there's one detail that just immediately jumps out at me.

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

Oh, yeah? Which one?

SPEAKER_1 (0:09)

So imagine school children across the entire country just emptying out their piggy banks and mailing in their pennies. And not to buy anything and not to fund some new weapon, but literally just to keep a single, totally obsolete wooden ship from rotting away.

SPEAKER_2 (0:24)

Right, the penny drive. It's such a striking image.

SPEAKER_1 (0:27)

It really is.

And so our mission today for this deep dive is to figure out why this specific ship commands that level of devotion from you and, you know, from history itself.

We are looking at the life story of the USS Constitution, which is this 44-gun heavy frigate launched all the way back in 1797

SPEAKER_2 (0:46)

Yeah, 1797 Which I mean, that launch date makes her the oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat anywhere in the world today.

SPEAKER_1 (0:54)

That is just wild to think about.

SPEAKER_2 (0:57)

It really is an astounding fact, especially when you dig into the actual mechanics of naval warfare from that era, because we usually think of these wooden ships as, I don't know, historical props, right? Like museum pieces.

SPEAKER_1 (1:09)

Yeah, exactly. They just exist in paintings.

SPEAKER_2 (1:12)

Right. But they were incredibly fragile machines in reality. The average lifespan of a wooden warship back then was maybe 10 to 15 years before rot or storms or just regular cannon fire sent it to the bottom of the ocean.

SPEAKER_1 (1:26)

10 to 15 years? Wow.

Which makes her survival story even crazier. I mean, how did a vessel built for maybe a 10 year lifespan, outlive the very empires she was literally designed to fight?

SPEAKER_2 (1:40)

Well, to understand that, you really have to look at the geopolitical reality of the 1790s. When you read through these historical texts, what's fascinating is how the Constitution's design perfectly mirrors the situation of the early United States.

SPEAKER_1 (1:53)

Because they were a huge underdog at that point.

SPEAKER_2 (1:56)

Exactly. The country was a massive underdog. They were outnumbered, they were outgunned by European powers, and they were essentially forced to be, you know, radically innovative just to survive on the world stage. The Constitution isn't just a ship. She is the physical floating embodiment of that exact survival strategy.

SPEAKER_1 (2:14)

Okay, so let's get right into the mechanics of that strategy.

Take us back to the 1790s. What is the specific crisis the US government is facing that makes them say, you know, we need to build this specific ship?

SPEAKER_2 (2:28)

So the crisis was piracy. Specifically the Barbary States over in the Mediterranean, American merchant ships were just being relentlessly seized.

SPEAKER_1 (2:36)

Like cargo stolen, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_2 (2:38)

Cargo stolen, absolutely. And pirates were holding American crews for these exorbitant ransoms. The young United States government was actually paying tribute, essentially protection money, to these states just to be left alone.

SPEAKER_1 (2:50)

Which is not a great look for a brand new country.

SPEAKER_2 (2:52)

No, it wasn't. And the protection money wasn't even working. The attacks just continued. So Congress finally authorized the Naval Act of 1794, and that provided funds to build a completely new Navy from scratch. They decided to start with six frigates to fight back and protect American shipping.

SPEAKER_1 (3:08)

And they didn't just like order six standard ships off a menu either. They brought in this designer named Joshua Humphreys, who had a very, very radical philosophy for how American ships should actually be built.

SPEAKER_2 (3:21)

He did. Humphreys looked at the board and realized the US simply could not afford to build a massive fleet of what they called ships of the line.

SPEAKER_1 (3:28)

Okay, remind me, what makes a ship of the line different from a frigate?

SPEAKER_2 (3:32)

So a ship of the line was the giant, slow, heavily armed floating fortress used by the major European powers like Britain and France. They were designed to form a literal line in the ocean and just batter each other with hundreds of cannons.

SPEAKER_1 (3:46)

Right, just massive broadside attacks.

SPEAKER_2 (3:48)

Exactly. And Humphreys knew an American frigate operating alone would eventually run into one of these European monsters. So his design had to be something entirely new. He designed a frigate that was longer on the keel and narrower in width to make her incredibly fast.

SPEAKER_1 (4:04)

Okay, so a sleek, fast ship.

SPEAKER_2 (4:06)

Yes, but he also packed her with much heavier guns than any standard frigate could carry.