It all seemed like very good news to me! Maintenance! That’s what keeps a wooden ship alive, and any wooden ship of this size should be a site of constant repair and replacement. This is a job that is never ‘done!’ Any time you see a big wooden ship like this that ISN’T under some sort of construction/reconstruction, sanding, sawing, painting, nailing, etc, etc, that is a ship that is dying… My guess is the spar deck lost its camber when they repaired the hogging to the keel back in the early '90’s (with a wooden ship, if you change the shape of one part, you will invariably change the shape of other parts too!)… So on he whole, I’m glad to see that the Navy et al are still willing to pump in the bucks necessary to keep ‘Old Ironsides’ up to snuff!
One can only hope the Navy will keep on the ball with this vessel, unlike the sad fate of the SS America, which was basically allowed to rot away during the last years of her life at the US Naval Academy.
I may be wrong, but as I recall the racing yacht ‘America’ was indeed in pretty rough shape at Annapolis, but that the Academy had hauled the boat out and put in a big wooden shed with an eye towards doing a full restoration, but then WW2 intervened, the plans were put on hold (though $100,000 had been appropropriated by Congress for the restoration), and then a big dump of Winter snow in 1942 collapsed the shed and crushed ‘America’ into toothpicks… In other words, neglect (and before she was donated to the Navy, ‘America’ had been essentially abandoned for 15 years!), combined with bad timing caused the end of that famous schooner…
Hey-
I went to see the Constitution back in March not knowing it was undergoing restoration. Initially I was disappointed, but it turned out to be fascinating. For one, the upper masts and spars were lying on the dock next to the ship. It was very interesting to be able to see them up close, especially all the fittings, etc. On board the ship it was pretty interesting to see all the rigging that was disconnected from the upper masts hanging with neat little tags on them explaining what they were and where they went. I took plenty of pictures if there is any interest.
Phil
Besides installing a new spar deck they will be removing the solid bulwarks amidship and installing hammock netting. One more step closer to her 1812 look. They are shooting to get this restoration segment done by the 200th anniversary of the 1812 war.
That’s correct.
Up to that point, she was a sail training ship at the Academy. Her rudder is in the NEW YORK YACHT BUILDING at Mystic Seaport.
Garth