The 44-Gun Frigate USS Constitution 'Old Ironsides'

A comprehensive visual history of an iconic American ship, naval heroine of the War of 1812.

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 thw world, she is berthed in Boston Harbor.

Featuring superbly executed line drawings, both the conventional type of plan and explanatory views, with fully descriptive keys, this Anatomy of the Ship provides the most complete documentation of this iconic American vessel, supported by technical details and a record of the ship's service history.