USS Constitution
Wooden War of 1812 frigate whose thick oak hull turned cannonballs to scrap, earning her the name Old Ironsides.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the USS Constitution in Boston centers on a single afternoon in August 1812, when the frigate met the British warship Guerriere off Nova Scotia and a sailor watching cannonballs bounce off her hull let out the shout that gave her a nickname. You'll hear about Captain Isaac Hull's tactic of holding fire until the ships were nearly touching, and about the dense Massachusetts oak and Paul Revere's copper bolts that built this hull in 1797. Look closely at that hull as you stand before it, still afloat and still commissioned two centuries later.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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