Copper Bottomed- USS Constitution Restoration 2015-17 by Margherita M. Desy, Historian, Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston, and Kate Monea, Archivist, USS Constitution Museum, Boston She may be "Old Ironsides," but she sails on a copper bottom. USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship in the US Navy, is nearing completion of a major restoration and will be refloated from Dry Dock 1 at the Charlestown Navy Yard in late July. Until then, visitors to the navy yard can see the ship out of the water and, on a sunny day, can't help but notice the blindingly bright copper plating covering the ship's hull below the waterline. The copper sheathing serves as an anti-fouling agent, just as bottom paints do today on more modern vessels. The practice goes back to the late eighteenth century, and when Constitution was launched in 1797 from the same dry dock where she is now, she was sheathed with a copper bottom then as well.
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n 27 March 1794, Congress passed the ''Act to provide a Naval Armament," which authorized President George Washington to create the United States Navy. Each of the six frigates that made up the new US Navy was to be "copper bottomed," i.e., sheathed below the waterline with thousands of overlapping sheets of copper. The copper barrier would prevent boring mollusks, Teredo navalis, from destroying the wooden hull, and allow for greater ease in cleaning marine growth from the ships' bottoms. In a letter dated 21 April 1794, shipwright Joshua Humphreys from Philadelphia, who was the principal designer of the original six frigates, included "An estimate of the quantity of Timber Plank &c for a frigate . .. ," which listed the materials for Constitution, including the copper needed-"12000 feet of sheet copper for bottom." On 2 July 1797, just months before Constitution was to be launched in Boston Harbor, Secretary ofWar James McHenry wrote to George Claghorne, Constitution's naval constructor: It being of importance to the United States that the Frigate Constitution should be coppered on the Stocks before she is Launched into the Water- you will therefore be pleased to cause the said Ship to be coppered as high as light water mark as soon as the Bottom is prepared, as it will prevent heaving down afterwards and a Consequent heavy expense ... 1 Constitution's original copper sheathing was British-made, as there were no metal rolling mills yet established in the new United States. Each sheet measured 14 inches by 48 inches, and, given the 12,000 feet of copper sheet specifications by Humphreys , approximately 3,000 sheets of 1 Secretary of War James McH enry, to George Claghorne, 27 July 1797. N aval Documents... Barbary Wars, Volume 1, 2 05 .
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Recoppering the Constitution by Aiden Lassell Ripley, c. 1965. 20th-century rendering ofPaul Revere and Commodore Edward Preble, 1803, when USS Constitution was re-sheathed with Revere-made copper plates.
copper covered Constitution's lower hull when she was launched in 1797. Paul Revere, long retired from his famous "midnight ride" in the American Revolution, was by then a sixty-year-old silversmith, merchant, and foundry man. He contracted with Henry Jackson, the Boston naval agent in charge of acquiring materials for the construction of USS Constitution , to provide the copper and brass fittings for the ship "as cheap as anyone and as well." Revere's foundry drew down some of the British-made copper spikes used to fasten Constitution. The Revere foundry also provided a 242-pound bell and other fittings between 1794 and 1798. In early 1803, USS Constitution was readied by Commodore Edward Preble for a lengthy deployment to the Mediterranean Sea against the North African Barbary corsairs. Only six years old, the frigate 's original copper sheathing was already worn out, and new sheathing was needed before she headed out across the Atlantic. Enter Paul Revere again; by the 1803 re-fit, he
had a copper rolling mill in operation in Canton, Massachusetts, and was able to provide the thousands of sheets of copper needed for the ship. While copper deterred mollusks from boring into the wood and thus destroying the lower hull of a sailing vessel, it did not completely prevent marine growth from fouling the ship's bottom. In the summer of 1810, Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton, disappointed with Constitution's demonstrated sluggish sailing performance, instructed Captain Isaac Hull to take the ship up the Delaware River, where the fresh water would kill the salt-water shellfish. In August, Hull conveyed to Hamilton the following news: Since the ships [sic] arrival in fresh water, the mussels on her bottom h ave all opened, and the inside entirely washed out with the run of the tide, and they are fast falling off-The oysters I find do not feel the effect of the fresh Water so sensibly, yet I have great hopes that SEA HISTORY 159, SUMMER 2017