The Constitution was called a forty-four-gun frigate, although she actually carried thirty twenty-four-pounders on her main deck, and twenty-two thirty-two-pounders on her spar deck. She had one gun deck instead of two, and her cannon were heavier than were usually carried on foreign war ships of her own class. She was twenty feet longer and about five feet broader than the far-famed thirty-eight-gun British frigates. In comparison with a modern war ship, she was less than one half as long as the armed cruiser New York, and not far from the size of one of our gunboats.
The British naval officers made much sport of these new ships; but after "Old Ironsides" had destroyed two fine British frigates, and had outsailed a large British fleet, they went to work and made over some of their line of battle ships into large frigates.
The Constitution was built of the best material, and with unusual care. A Boston shipwright was sent South to select live oak, red cedar, and hard pine. Paul Revere, who made the famous midnight ride to Concord, received nearly four thousand dollars for the copper which he furnished for the new frigate.
From the laying of the keel to the final equipment, the Constitution was kept in the shipyard fully three years. Her live oak timbers, having had two years to season, were hard as iron.
After many delays, the stanch ship was set afloat at midday, October 21, 1797, "before a numerous and brilliant collection of citizens."
In 1803, a fleet was sent to the north of Africa, to force the pirates of the Barbary coast to respect the persons and the property of American citizens. Commodore Preble was made commander, with the Constitution as his flagship. He had under him the Philadelphia, a fine new frigate, and five smaller war ships.
Preble was a remarkable man, and his "schoolboy captains," as he called them, all under twenty-five years of age, were also remarkable men.
For two years or more, there was plenty of stubborn fighting. Within forty days, five attacks were made on the forts and the war ships of Tripoli. In three of these attacks, the Constitution took part; and once, while supporting the fleet, she silenced more than a hundred guns behind the forts of the pirate capital.
Even from the first, the new frigate was lucky. She was never dismasted, or seriously injured, in battle or by weather. In all her service, not one commanding officer was ever lost, and few of her crew were ever killed.