Old Ironsides sails again; Cronkite takes the helm off Marblehead
For 116 years, the USS Constitution had not sailed under her own power, moving only under tow during that time. On July 21, 1997, after being towed about five nautical miles offshore from Marblehead, Massachusetts, a crew raised sails purchased through a national fundraising campaign and let the world's oldest commissioned warship still afloat sail on a south-south-east course across Massachusetts Bay under her own power. The sail lasted about 40 minutes, timed to the approach of the ship's 200th anniversary. The $12 million restoration that made it possible had begun five years earlier.
Old Ironsides survived the War of 1812 undefeated and became a symbol Americans have refused to let become static. The new sails were bought not by the Navy but by a 1990s national campaign of students and citizens pooling small donations, a grassroots echo of the 19th-century public outcry that saved the ship from being scrapped in the first place.
QHow light did the wind need to be for the 1997 sail to even be possible?
Former Constitution commander Tyrone G. Martin laid out the exact conditions required: winds under ten knots, seas of a foot or less, a half-dozen sails at most, and only for a brief stretch close to home. That narrow window is why the sail lasted only about 40 minutes and stayed inside Massachusetts Bay rather than venturing into open ocean. The ship's timbers and rigging, however carefully restored in the $12 million overhaul, simply weren't built to take the stresses of true blue-water sailing after more than a century at rest. The 1997 sail was less a return to sea duty than a brief, carefully bounded demonstration.
QWho actually paid for the new sails Constitution wore that day?
Not the Navy's shipbuilding budget. The canvas that caught the wind off Marblehead came out of a 1990s national campaign that collected donations from ordinary citizens and students across the country specifically to outfit the ship for her bicentennial. The sails were purchased through the fundraising campaign as part of the broader restoration effort that began in 1992 and concluded with the ship emerging from dry dock in 1995, in preparation for the 1997 anniversary sail. So when Old Ironsides moved under her own power again, she wore sails the public had paid for directly.
QWhy did a TV anchor take the helm?
Walter Cronkite, the veteran television anchor, took the ceremonial helm that day, while Commander Mike Beck, who had trained the crew using an 1819 Navy sailing manual, directed the actual sailing of the ship. Cronkite's presence turned a restoration test into a broadcast-worthy event, tying the ship's 18th-century origins to 20th-century American media in a single afternoon on Massachusetts Bay.
