USS Constitution - A Tour from Keel to Upper Deck

Well, it's early July and you might be wondering what land trail has happened with all your stuff from the trip to the United States. Well, the answer is: "It's all still here." I have all the images, but it's taking me a while to go through them. You've shot almost a third of a terabyte of footage, so given the time of year and since some of the footage is already sorted, I thought I'd start with a look at the United States Constitution, now that we've seen the United States Constitution. . earlier in the channel from an analytical perspective of its battles, but nothing beats a look at the ship itself, it was a relatively windy day, but I hope most of the wind noises have died down, so let's go and take a look look at the day I spent with us.

constitution

, which was the second day of the trip, so spoiler alert, the next video of the trip will be on USS Salem, but that won't be for a few more weeks.

Well, this is the second day of the big

tour

of America and we are still meeting. In Boston it's a wonderful, wonderful day even though we're at about the same latitude as the UK, the weather is much better, it's a bit windy but the sky is clear and the sun and everything is fine and, As you can see behind me, we have the second oldest warship in the world, the American Constitution of course, the famous super frigate of the War of 1812 and a variety of other feats that are perhaps not as well recorded and today I'm going to try to do something that no British Captain has ever been able to do and successfully tackle the US

constitution

, so let's take a look inside and hey, there are still no problems with the second amendment, so here we are at top cover.

Obviously, as a frigate, there is no technology room or aft

deck

. etc., the

deck

is flush from bow to stern and this is what obviously, this is not original, but it would have been one of the main firepower elements of the constitution. Now on many frigates on the

upper

deck they would have had light nine-pounder guns. 12 pounder maybe the occasional 18 pounder, but as you can see this one starts here and the barrel ends right here, so it's actually a very short gun and that's because it's a 32 pounder cannon, so which is a much shorter weapon than a cannon.

It has a tremendously long range compared to a long gun that we will see below, but at short range it can launch a bullet much heavier than the average gun on the

upper

deck of an average frigate, without taking into account the fact that the constitution It is already substantially larger. and substantially heavier than an average frigate, so this is one of the keys to the constitutions victories because most of their fights are fought at very close range and at very close range, this thing has a lot of options, not only can you shoot the enemy with Ball um simply to break their beams, but you can also, due to the sheer volume, fire a significant amount of grapeshot or some other type of shot to clear the decks of the enemy borders, which obviously prevents the People attack you as much as they help you. when attacking them it is very useful, the other thing you may notice is that as with most shells and unlike most cannons, these things are not on traditional four-wheeled carts, but on carts that are quite solid , you can see that you have a wedge.

Here to allow you to change the elevation of the weapon, but the actual wheeled part of the weapon is these much smaller wheels and that allows you by means of ropes like this and this handle and these bushings here to adjust the angle of the weapon. back and forth so you can shoot an enemy slightly behind sight or a little four of you instead of just having to wait for them to be directly to the side. Later you'll see a modified version of this cannon that has a thread over here that allows you to raise it with a little more precision than the old wooden wedge, but you know this works pretty well for the War of 1812.

Okay, Up there you can see the Stars and Stripes flying, which is the battle banner of the ship, so this is an important part of the ship because not only does that tell you who the ship belongs to, which is very useful if the paint job hadn't revealed it yet, but it's also the way to tell if the ship is still in action, so if a ship was defeated, your colors will be taken away or lowered, and when the colors are no longer there, that was the internationally accepted signal and to some extent it's still that the ship has surrendered, you don't need to raise a white flag or anything like that, you can just use your colors, that's literally where the term comes from, so having This up there is of vital importance during the battle.

It is considered incredibly dishonorable to wear your colors, falsely recover, and then return to the fight to the point. you could be expelled from your own navy for doing so because it would undermine the reliability, honor and integrity of your entire naval constitution. Of course, she never showed her colors to anyone and her flag still flies, since of course she is a commissioner. warship the second oldest commissioned warship in the world and the oldest commissioned warship that is still afloat because the only ship that is older is HMS Victory and of course she is in obscurity and, just Above where the insignia is mounted, you can see that we have a stern pointing. shipyard coming out of the mizzen mast now this is a very important piece of ship design in the 18th century because the four and aft windows, which is what most of the windows are mounted on the shipyards that are perpendicular to the hull of the boat, which can be seen up the mast, are great for going forward, they are not so good for maneuvering when the wind is not at your stern, so these two stern yards allow you to set a very large sail that it can then catch the wind from the side, which then gives it control and propulsion when the wind comes from strange angles, which helps a boat with a similar build maneuver in all kinds of directions, obviously it still can't sail straight against the wind, it cannot sail.

The ship can do it at this point in history, but it means that it can maneuver around its opponents in a way that an enemy that lacks this particular configuration perhaps lacks a sail that at this size couldn't do it, of course it could. . a point of vulnerability because if someone shoots at the miz and the mast and that vent disappears, then it lacks a bit of agility, but the designers were not completely stupid, they included other vents of this type throughout the entire rig of the boat , particularly in the suburbs. of the bow, but as you can see, with these lines running from the highest parts of the mast to the lower parts, you could also, if necessary, mount similar sails to and aft between the masts and, as you can see, the another thing.

The constitution he has about victory right now is that she is, in fact, fully rigged, so you can see the true beauty of a fully rigged warship from the late 18th century and early 19th century. There is a lot of rope that must be attached to the boats. Marston Yards high because this is its source of propulsion, all the weight of the guns, the crew, the ship's hull, etc., all of that has to be pushed through the water and, as a frigate, it has to move through of the water pretty fast and all that force is. transmitting through these masts if they were not rigged as heavily as they are, although these masts are several feet thick, they would break like matches the moment the wind picks up, so all this rigging helps keep the mass in its place, not only when under propulsion, but also when the ship pitches and rolls, because you can imagine those combat platforms up there and their great height, if the ship rolls, that will create incredible forces left and right or port and starboard, which could result in the mast. it would simply break and that was a very significant danger in battle, many times when the mass collapsed in battle, it was not necessarily because the enemy was shooting at the mast, although that could happen, and did happen, it could also be because the Enemies fired after having cut. enough rigging that when the boat healed the mass it would just fall over with a good gust of wind, so it's definitely something worth seeing, but of course, I doubt anyone would let me go up there, I'd be perfectly willing to try. but I have a suspicion that the health and safety risk assessment would probably be a volume almost equal to Constitution's battle log, so I have a feeling I'm going to say well down here on the main deck, so this It's the ship's well, spelled whale, most people.

Call it artillery and this is part of the ship's protection system. You can see here, we have some networks. You could fit all sorts of things, usually hammocks in here too, obviously as you can see the sides of the boat are quite thick. slightly frequently repeated myth the constitution is not built to the specifications of a ship of the line, its ribs are a little closer together than those of an average frigate, so it has the rib structure of a ship of the line, but The thickness of the hull, although quite thick, is not up to the standards of a ship of the line, but to be fair, it is a large frigate, which is not exactly a mark against it, it is still immensely strong and the fact that it is still here is testament to that among other things, but the purpose of this is as you might imagine, to protect people from incoming fire, the boat is built from a mix of live oak and white oak , which is a very strong wood that also helps protect the crew and, at long range, 12- or 18-pounder frigate shots could ricochet or embed.

They go into the helmet, but it's not like iron armor from the late 19th century. At close range, even a 12 or 18 pound bullet will go through this oak tree with many splinters. It's not a particularly good thing to have happened to you. but you know that no armor is perfect, the fact that if you like this wooden armor it could fail again at close range is not a mark against the constitution, the fact that she has it and has that protection at longer distances a stockings is a big plus. it outperforms most frigates and this is where its name old ironsides or its nickname old ironsides comes from because it is much easier to survive a naval battle if you are on one of the six original frigates, whose constitution is obviously one without too many . injuries and too many deaths among your crew when you have this type of protection.

One of the ways you can really tell that this type of damage occurred at close range is that when you look at the victories of Constitution, Java Gurier and the Macedonian being of Of course, most famously when the British ship is beaten into submission, she he doesn't immediately accept the surrender constitution, he actually walks away for a while to repair his own damage, which of course tells you that he had taken damage, which is a bit of a giveaway, but the main thing is that yes, she had taken damage, but she didn't take as much damage as the other guy because they were the ones who surrendered, so it's effective, if you imagine a fight in a bar, if someone "Yeah, you know, it's okay for me to surrender, maybe you have them on the floor or whatever, just because you step back to catch your breath, clean up some cuts and bruises that you have before you go in and move on, okay and no.” Don't do that again, that doesn't mean you've lost the fight, it just means that you know you're being a little sensible about things and you have to remember that this is not only part of protecting the ship, but it's also part of the hull of the ship that obviously goes all the way to the bottom, so only a fool after a battle would immediately start worrying about seizing the other ship when there are potentially holes and other forms of damage to his own ship, you know you have, this has to stay. being afloat after the battle and just winning the battle and sinking because you left a hole in the waterline is not a good thing, but obviously she was repaired correctly and repaired enough and was able to tow a lot of prizes, so here we're at the bow of the ship apparently obligatory patriotic music um and what you can notice are a few things one of them we have a position here for a bow chaser so obviously if you're chasing your opponent your broadside weapons are not the most useful weapons in the world you can when you're chasing an enemy turn port and starboard and basically weave and fire your broadside but of course that means you're describing a much longer course and since you're driven by the wind, you may be entering areas where the wind is.

It does not propel you with the same efficiency, so you must have a lot of speed advantage over your opponent to be able to achieve this and, given the main prey of the constitution, are other frigates,She might be faster than them, she's not much faster than them. You can easily risk that all the time, so the bow hunter position on most vintage warships for sale is an absolutely excellent idea because it means you can have a gun here and you can shoot your opponent with a minimal or no course change, as long as you only have one position here, a position on the opposite side, but the enemy will be similarly restricted with his stern pursuers and of course he is already fleeing from you, so you have no to worry too much about that, another thing that is quite interesting to note here. on the bow, you can see these little steps now, obviously there's a little bit of modern anti-slip on the steps, but that gives a little clue and you know some of the pads that are in this yard on the other side of the front would or could there would be another sale and that sale would have to be fully managed, etc. and there is also some manipulation there so if that gets damaged people would have to go and fix it and you can't just wait to get back to port to order these sorts of things have to be sorted on the spot while the ship is at sea That's where someone would have to go and now there's a modern safety line running down the side, but in the past the ship would not only move and pitch and roll and roll and potentially have people shoot at you too, but they would also you ran up there without the non-slip, probably barefoot because you know there is a minimum of safety compared to wearing shoes at that time, but you would have to run around the thruster to do whatever the captain needed you to do and So I hope you can come back now There's a little more wood construction here beyond the structural bow of the boat, giving it a little more forward peak, but that's not structural, just good design.

I would say for aesthetics, but partly also for seakeeping, so that's the bow here and obviously we've got this big block and rigging system with a bunch of really nice thick ropes going up to the main mast. so for reference, on most ships at that time, which most ships have, whether frigates or ships of the line, they will have three masts, so you have the four masts, which is obviously the most masked towards Forward, you have the main mast, which is a center ship, which is usually the largest mast, and then there is the mizzen mast, which is usually the after mast.

Now obviously you can get a ship with four or five captains and then they have other names for that, mostly based on early medieval terms, which was the last time anyone built a warship with more than three Mars, three Mars became the standard, but if you only have two masts you are classified as a brig, so you are not a ship, you are now a brig, and this also explains. Why on later warships, maybe a WWI battleship, a WWII battleship or a cruiser, you'll see a mast somewhere around the bridge or just after the bridge and those will be the four most ?

That's perfectly understandable, but then you see another mast on an iron or steel vessel and it could be right aft, before behind the funnels it's actually, you know, up to the aft turret and it'll be called the main mast and you might think why the main mast is right at the back and that's because the master always counted from the four in front so the first master is the main master of the previous second master and if you don't have a third master you don't It matters where you are. The second mast is still the main mast and the only thing you shouldn't do is stand in front of the mask because normally that means someone is about to hit you with a whip and right now we have shanties in the sea so if you can listen which you can try to figure out which one it is anyway, this is another 32 pounder shell, so you've already seen one of those on the starboard aft quarter, but here we see a long gun and you can immediately tell the difference, while the Carnage Cannon basically stops at this network at its current position.

This cannon, as you can see, the carriage is pretty much in the same position to the rear, but first of all, the basket of this gun is right at the back of the carriage, while the basket of the cannon is about two three feet further forward and then you have another three or four feet of gun going through the net, so it's a long gun, so this is part of the ship's main armament, obviously this gun is a much longer range weapon for a given length value. range, after all, it is the age of sale and as you can see it is also on a much more traditional naval carriage, so large wooden wheels like four of them, two slightly larger forward, two slightly smaller back, the same type of strings to restrict the recoil, and you can go for the rings that there would be if this weapon came into action, the same with the shell, considerably more strings, you wouldn't have just one because, apart from everything, only this on its own will prevent the weapon from recoiling, but it gives you no chance to swing the weapon forward again once you've reloaded it, so this is somewhat reduced compared to your full rope rig's build.

The main advantage that we will see on the lower deck of the gun compared to other frigates was not only its speed, its size and the material with which it was built, it was also its armament because the average fifth or sixth class frigate of that day would carry a weapon less than it because it is large, but secondly, the main guns, the long guns of the majority. frigates would be 12 or 18 pounders, some ships would actually have quite small nine pounders, although it is very difficult to get a nine pounder armed ship rated as a frigate, but 12 and 18 pounders are fine, many frigates 12-pounders and some 18-pounder frigates. but the long constitution guns on the main gun deck are 24 pounders, so they are the same weight as guns you would find on the amidships deck of a ship of the line or possibly sometimes on the gun deck further up.

It descends from two stories like a third lightning bolt and that gives it a much stronger hit at long range than other frigates of the time. For the most part, there are a few other frigates with 24-pounders, but you have to build a fairly large and heavy frigate to be able to accommodate a 24-pounder, and frankly, most of the big navies at the time, France, United Kingdom, Spain generally did not have time to invest in large quantities of this type of super frigates, they prefer to have slightly less capable but much larger frigates. numbers because they could afford it, that's why we only have one long gun here, so this long gun, for example, would be a bow hunter because it has a range that you wouldn't really go after with a bow with a bait, but we'll go. go down to the main gun deck and take a look at your main battery and now it's time to go down to the gun deck so now we're on the lower deck one deck down from the main deck so we're on the main deck. covered in weapons and they take off their sunglasses because they discover that Boston Sunshine is now safely trapped behind a layer of wooden planks and as you can see, we are in addition to the 24 pound main armament, nice thick weapons and, like I said on the top deck, this This is really what gives Constitution its firepower.

This allows you to attack virtually any other frigate in existence with a very high probability of success because you simply outgun them, we forget about the speed and durability advantages, even if Constitution was built exactly like any other frigate, these guns on their own they will give a very significant advantage when it comes to shooting the enemy because they are much heavier, it doesn't mean you can take on a ship of the line okay for those of you who think oh. Can the constitution assume victory? No, this 24 pounds is approximately equivalent to and transfers the center deck battery of HMs Victory.

She has a third weapon deck under which she has 32 pounds, which are much heavier than even these and she has a full weapon deck. weapons deck on top of that and it has a top deck that wouldn't have the same weaponry that we saw there, but it has even more weapons and a couple of sixty-eight pound grenades that you really don't want to mess with. Ask the blue centaur, but still, maybe it would give Constitution a fighting chance against a fourth rate ship of the line. Now, the fourth way for when the Constitution is in service has gone out of fashion, but there are still several of them, 52 gunners. 56 gunners and 64 gunners still in various fleets and constitution, when fully equipped, it has almost the same number of weapons and its firepower is probably equal, so a very large frigate fights against a very small ship of the line, possibility of victory now, one of the other things that you might notice is that if you watch videos of me in victory or elsewhere, if you're on the main weapons deck, you have to crouch down a little bit or you have to find a convenient section between the beams to stand on one of the good features. of frigates is that because someone is ringing a bell, one of the best features of frigates is that because they only have one gun deck, they can afford for that gun deck to be a little higher than anyway and because the constitution is, as I said before, a bigger frigate.

On top of that, it means my six-foot tall nothing can happily walk directly under the rafters without even risking hitting my head. I mean, I have my glasses on my head and even if I stand on my tiptoes I can't even take my glasses off, so I really like this particular design feature, and you can see on the sides here again, like we saw on the gunwales , the size of the ship is quite thick and each of the cannons now appears to have a name plate on it, so that's not to help the gunners determine where they should be because you know where they should be, they live, fight and sleep here , but it helps a little bit of familiarity with those weapons, uh, and you can just see how heavy the ship is built is critically important, though look and then you can literally see the bow there, you can see all the way to the stern, There are no bulkheads on the line's natural tail boat, so water does get into the gun. ports you are in trouble, but that is another benefit of being a frigate and a constitution style super frigate.

These gun ports are quite high above the water, so the chances of water coming through the gun ports and coming down Mary Rose style are pretty low, it also gives you a slight advantage against some ships of the line. The combat between amazon intervatical and waterhook delam comes to mind on a small ship of the line, a 74, for example, could not keep the lower ports open. in rough seas, whereas a frigate could, so if you're talking about something like a 74 gunner, something like the Constitution could potentially outgun a ship of the line if the weather was bad because it would be able to operate these 24 pounders when a 74 would be stuck with just 12 or 18 pounders on the upper gun deck, okay, here we can see the main stove, pretty much the only big stove, so this is the ship's galley now, while On a liner ship you can find this pair of decks. down, possibly even lower of course, again on a frigate with much fewer decks, you have to fit everything in as best you can and therefore in this case it is here at the front of the gun deck, of course they would put the Shoot before any kind of combat because the last thing you need on a wooden ship is a cannonball going through the side of the ship, hitting this thing and kicking a bunch of boiling embers all over the ship, which you can see both sides.

In the kitchen are these things that are for anchor cables. You can see that one of them is wrapped loosely here and there's another one there and it lets the ship's anchors out through this block that you can see here that has a screw on it. motorized turnbuckle and comes out through that green plate you can see right behind it, that's how you keep the boat at rest and no, you're not doing any battleship movie style handbrake turns with them, frankly, in most water It'll be too deep anyway and Even if you did it in shallow water, you'll most likely break the rope or rip these things off the hull before doing a point turn, whether you'll ever get the chance to do it. at all without causing massive damage to the ship.

The sale age frigate is probably one of the best candidates, but what you can also see down here is another bow chaser position and of course there will be a matching one on the other side and you.You can also see the bow splits going down here, so you only have the two positions on the upper deck that have the best visibility, so if you're at long range, those are probably the two that will give you the best opportunities. but down here you have a couple more, so maybe if you get to medium or close range in your chase you can supplement your firepower, in theory you could place bow hunters there for the entire chase and try to shoot your opponent, but one you're slightly lower down and two as you can probably tell the visibility is not as good so the chances of you getting accurate shots from down here are much lower than if you're up top um and again you know this is the front of the ship which is literally where the ship and its guns end from here to the end, so this is the aft section of the gun deck and as you can see it is not completely the end of the gun deck. weapons, there are actually weapons ports here, so everything.

A lot of this furniture, which of course is for the ship's senior personnel, would be removed in combat time to allow the ship to carry more firepower in there, as you can see , it's not a tremendously large amount of the ship if they have done it. I have seen some of the clips I took on HMS Victory. This whole ship's office area is about the size of the Victory's big cabin, but obviously somewhat subdivided, so you have a bunk there and you can see some of the glass just above. stern, so its constitution another way to differentiate it from the British, French or Spanish frigates in the War of 1812 is its stern structure, it is quite distinctive, most European frigates would have a much more rounded top in their constitution stern, it's almost not quite but almost flush at the top and that gives it a very distinctive stern profile and the fact that it was painted in black and white also helps, obviously the British colors from the War of 1812 are ocher yellow and black, the nelson checker, the french at this point have almost begun to adopt some sort of uniform color procedure as well, although the sides of their hulls are much more monochromatic, the color scheme of the US navy .at this point, black hole with white stripes, we now pause at this point to allow a group of

tour

ists. passed and I started trying to record a segment about this wonderful ammunition display.

As I did so, other tourists saw me vaguely presentable and decided that of course I must work for the ship and started asking questions. They asked me questions about ammunition and I couldn't resist giving them what should have been a relatively brief lecture on the old guys selling ammo and I think it ended up turning into about a 40 minute discussion about ammo guns and everything else, so yeah, poor thing. The old cameraman here was relegated to the back while he occasionally took candid photos of me talking to a group of tourists who had no idea I didn't actually work for the Constitution Museum, but anyway, anyway , continue with the usual route.

Once everyone had moved on, here we have some of the shots the constitution would use. You have a 24-pound round shot, pretty standard all-purpose ammo. You can load it two or three times for close range combat if you really want to and of course you have your round shot caliber because if it's been made it's not even close to being perfectly spherical, I mean it's never going to be perfectly spherical but you don't want to. make it too oblong because then it could get stuck in the gun. barrel and uh, yeah, well, that does bad things because you effectively invented a very large three to five ton pipe bomb and well, that never ends well for whoever does that, so the shock meter is always very important, you pass it over the shot. to make sure it fits, you have a cartridge for medium and medium range anti-personnel purposes, use smaller balls like this, all wrapped, as you see, in cloth, put on a platform, that platform goes in the gun, all this cloth and the rope disintegrates when you fire the gun, these will go flying like a big shotgun blast, this will damage rigging, holes and sails, they pierce people, quite a nasty anti-personnel shot, you have your double headed shot, like a slash, you also get a double headed shot which is literally like a slash with basically two round shots stuck together, this is good for damaging masts, very good for damaging masses, actually, I mean all of this was also very good for damaging to people in various horrible ways, but ideally.

This is what you shoot at a re-fired mast star, all closed up so it can fit in the barrel when fired. These will open, hence the name star. This particular model, as you can see, has heavy weights on the ends of the bars. Other models. If we don't have these weights, we will have smaller weights but we will have more of these and the idea of ​​this is to punch a hole in the sail of a ship, although again you don't want to get hit by one, but if you punch a hole in the sail of the ship, so you know, three four foot holes, that's not brilliant.

Ok, the mast or the sail on the mast may be the size of a tennis court, so you might think that's not a big deal, but there is a huge amount of energy. enter that sail and when that happens, the energy that passes through that gut, being pushed into that cell by the wind, will find a weakness like, for example, the shot that you just made, the hole that you just made with a star shot and you go through it and that will blow out the sail so the weaknesses will start and the wind will exploit them.

Shot of pellets. Your short-range anti-personnel shot. There is no real ability to penetrate the hull of the ship, but the fragments are like grapeshot from a large shotgun. The shot is an even larger shotgun blast, almost exclusively for anti-personnel use, so this is what you use to clear enemy decks before boarding them or, if they are massing to board you, we will eliminate the boarding party before they arrive . That's always a good idea and then you have the rod grab and this is great for removing the rig again. He would also love to hang clothes on anyone who got in the way, but this will be expanded into a very long series, as the name suggests. bars and that will snag and break the boat's rigging and that is good in multiple ways because one, and a lot of ropes flying around is bad, two means that if there is damage to the sails or the mast from any of these things if the rigging is cut then the enemy ship's sailors can't get on the rigging to go and repair it and also as we mentioned when we look up at the upper deck the bar shoots out, if you cut enough of the rigging the masts could collapse. and go over the side anyway, we are now one deck lower than the gun deck and as you can see the height of the hull has gone down a bit so now I have to take shelter between the main beams as you will remember if He seen the video about hms unicorn very similar to hms unicorn where again i was able to stand in the gun deck area.

Now I can't be a day closer. This whole level is a little bit shorter and like the later class, you can see. This is another accommodation area, so like the later class, there is not enough space on the gun deck for the entire crew, some of them will live, sleep and fight there, but a good portion of them will be housed here below and you can see how. the hammocks would be stowed away when not in use and you can see here how a hammock would be deployed when in use and this is a pretty important area of ​​the boat because obviously we're not completely underneath now. the water line, but this is completely enclosed and this is where a good portion of the crew will spend a good portion of their time and the reason why there is so much similarity between the later class that I commonly drink at unicorn today and the constitution is that, to a greater or lesser extent, the later class is actually built in response to ships like the constitution, so the fact that they have very similar accommodation methods, very similar types of main battery should not be a surprise especially since at the moment when the last class is actually undergoing mass production, the British are taking notes from the US president.

Well, now we are three decks down on the ship and, as you can see, we are running quickly without boat, this is the We separate the stern, so we have the mizzen mast going down there, obviously it's also being used as a water storage area, but you can see part of the structure of the boat, so this is a of the parts of the ship's structure that are raised. I have several of these and you can see they are absolutely huge timbers, it's part of what gives the boat so much strength, but you can also see how sloped the stern is because you know, yeah, this is probably the lowest single continuous deck on the boat , but if we're not that close to the stern above us, actually directly above us is the end of the gun deck, so we're still basically below the division between the gun deck and the officers' quarters and the officers' quarters go. back up a considerable distance that way so you know that this sinks very quickly under water and this is part of the secret of the constitution speed and the speed of its sister ships when they are properly trimmed the hydrodynamic shape of its stern is very much has a much sharper pitch than many frigates of the period and that helps the water flow, of course there is no propeller but there is a rudder so it also helps the water flow over the rudder which helps them with its agility because the constitution is A relatively rare beast in the sales era as it is fast and quite agile most of the time, you could get one but not the other, so British ships of the period tend to to be more agile.

The French and Spanish ships of the period tend to be a bit faster, every once in a while a unicorn comes along that can do both, but the constitution and her sisters, when they are being trimmed properly, can actually do it by design and This is one of the little secrets, the fact that the hull is so shaped underwater but of course, as you can also see, the deck has become even lower, which is why I bring you this leaning against the side on instead of standing, because even if I'm between the main beams here, that's what I am if I'm standing. up, that's fine, so I can stand up vertically if I'm basically headless, which isn't really a situation I particularly like to find myself in, so that's right after the constitution, let's look at some others fragments down here. the lowest deck where the precious good is and now we are actually under the last deck, we are literally in the empty spaces of the constitution. um there's nowhere under here other than probably 15 feet from Boston Harbor that I'd rather not be.

So apologies for the slight noise you might hear but of course they have the HVAC systems running constantly here for pretty obvious reasons but like I say this is literally the lowest you can go on the boat before we were on the . lowest part of the deck area, but these are the lowest planks on the boat. I'm standing with my right foot here on the

keel

, so that's the center column of the ship running behind, obviously, and this is the deck we were on a minute ago. just above us you can see the hull rising um here again we are close to the stern and right down here when the ship was in service this is where the ballast would have been this is where the stores would have been and it's not just in terms of water and of course alcohol, because the US Navy wasn't dry at this point, the food on some of the ships is fine, most of the ships, rats would live down here too, like, of course , with any boat, cats or dogs whose job it was to make sure the rat population was kept under control, as would have been seen in other times from sailing boats we visited, spare rope storage ammunition, so the shots barrels, etc., would be stored near the guns, but there would be more down here in the magazines and, of course, the other stuff.

It would be down here, well, not literally where I'm standing now, but right above us and a little further ahead would be the main magazine where the gunpowder is stored because well, it's the only safe place to store it, so this platform and the Well , this empty space and the deck we were on are below the waterline and there's a very, very good reason to keep all that gunpowder down here, I mean, obviously, other than the fact that you need to use it to fire the guns. , but a boat. like this could carry dozens of tons of gunpowder, so aship like this, if it carries dozens of tons of gunpowder in the main magazine, you don't want it to catch fire, it catches fire, this is just so much hope that it flows and splinters, so it has to stay under water, it has to stay safe, of course, iron ammo has no explosion risk, you can store it wherever you want, but the gunpowder should definitely be kept down here and the copper line magazine, pretty much like the people on HMS Victory would do. passing the charges through a sort of airlock system, it's not actually an airlock system but it's the closest modern equivalent we can imagine or maybe you call it a locking system to ensure no sparks get in and, well, if a tonne of gunpowder can destroy the houses of parliament 30 tonnes of gunpowder, yes, you'd be lucky to pick up pieces of the master a mile away and of course the fact that we're here means that that never It happened because, unlike certain people, the US Navy crew on this ship understood porter safety procedures, and speaking of porters, the crew was incredibly helpful during our tour of the ship and pointed out where one of the ship actually was. the ship's porters, so this and they also allowed us to come in now, as you can see, this is, of course, me.

He said everything is copper clad except for the modern light bulb there and this is at one end of the ship and of course being in the deep you can tell it's a little claustrophobic, we're basically taking these pictures lying down on our sides and that's why I didn't record any live video in the magazine, it would have been a hilariously undignified way to talk to people and you might notice there's a lot of white paste in there because they're in the process of cleaning it up so it can see in some areas where it has been cleaned, somewhere it has accumulated patina and in some areas where this cleaning chemical is currently in the process of cleaning the existing patina and of course on the magazine you want to store. anything that can go off, there will be cases of grenades and fuses for those grenades, and as you can see, various types of gunpowder would obviously have to be divided into individual charges, but they will be stored long-term in these barrels.

Deep in the magazines, deep in the ship, the magazine's copper sheets would, of course, be accompanied by the use of copper and wooden tools. Absolutely no iron is allowed in any form to avoid sparks and that would allow you to handle the charger safely. gunpowder and convert it into ready-to-use bag loaders. You can also see the deepest and oldest part of the ship around this area, so it's part of the original

keel

and planks, as you can see, narrowing quite significantly at this end of the ship where this charger is located and just Outside the magazine you have spikes that are useful for priming weapons.

Various tools you can see, most of them are copper and some that are not, would not be allowed in the charger. with some empty cargo bags and they have shovels and such, a spare bag of powder and of course some pre-made charges ready to go and the different colors would signify, as far as I was going to understand, the different weapons that those charges would then be would use to get off the ship. We also found this lovely little creature, which is why this is the subject of many memes online from people who took photos of it or found photos of it at various periods.

This is Constitution's little mascot tugboat. ship yes, it is a US Navy ship and it is the most adorable tugboat on the planet. She lives just to starboard of Constitution. Now I was there thinking to myself, well, this has been a really successful day. We've toured Constitution from top to bottom. Well, with the exception of the battle shirts, the gear has been absolutely wonderful. Now I should go buy a US Constitution baseball cap, but then they mentioned they had something special in mind for me, okay, I thought this should be good, let's get back to the ship, I wasn't expecting what was about to happen. about to happen, okay, we're all here after hours aboard USS Constitution and, as you may notice, this weapon.

He seems a little more active than everyone else because we're going to shoot it and, well, I would say he helps me shoot it, to be honest, he knows what he's doing a lot more than I do. Hello everyone, I'm GMT Nieves. 2nd class graduate of naval petty officer in the United States Navy I am a gunner's mate here in my hand I have a 40 millimeter 200 gram bullet that I am going to load into our mark 11 mod 2 salute battery the purpose of this is run the colors of the evening as we lower our American flag and then for all the military members lost and not just us the US constitution lower our American flag but the sound of this gun also the national park services NP and the coast guard base go to hear this, this gun to run your colors too, the colors are at sunset, the evening colors at sunset and the time today, April 10, 2022, is 7 20 p. m. right now, what I'm doing, I'm checking my sites, of course, I'm Checking my sites before and the gutters, man, you always make sure the gun is clean and safe before you play with it, so I have an active bullet.

I'm going to insert it into the swing battery. I have permission to fire when the batteries are released. and now the gun is loaded, we have two minutes for colors. I'm going to double check the colors in a minute, make sure the sights are clear at 30 seconds and that's standby and the wonderful people at Constitución have let me have the great It's an honor to shoot the gun today, so , on command, I will absolutely shoot the gun, which will be the first time I've fired a gun of this caliber before this goes back to like a 40 millimeter, 200 gram bullet.

This gun has a concussion. clear radius, what I'm doing is checking 30 degrees left and right of the canyon and 100 feet down just for safety measures and I'm looking for personnel in the water, kayakers, small boats, anything here, views are unclear , I hope this cdm now and we will hold on in flames until we clear it there is my airport a CEO wait wow oh and that concluded an absolutely wonderful day aboard USS Constitution again, very much, thank you to the USS Constitution group that resolved that and obviously provided I had the honor of firing the gun that signals the colors for that particular day, it was certainly something I wasn't expecting but something I enjoyed enormously and of course respect and of course I was able to add my own signature to the book of the american constitution. gunners, so it's a little permanent record that's pretty fun, so there you have it, a quick look aboard USS Constitution, the second oldest commissioned warship in the world and the oldest floating commissioned warship in the world .

I highly recommend you go visit him in Boston Harbor. there is also a Fletcher class destroyer, the young casino right behind her in this picture is also definitely worth a visit, although we were only able to see it from an outside perspective because there was limited time, of course, the world's cutest tugboat there on the right and the US Constitution Museum, so it's definitely a full day if you can make it to downtown Boston, so with one boat down, let's get on with the rest of the US trip throughout the year. That's all for this video, thanks for watching.

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