Summary of the USS Constitution

     USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-mased heavy frigate of the United States Navy. Named after the Constitution of the United States of America by President George Washington, she is the oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat in the world. Constitution, launched in 1797, was one of the six orginal frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794. Joshua Humphreys designed these frigates to be the Navy's captial ships, and so Constitution and her sisters were larger and more heavily armed and built than the standard frigates of the period. Built in Boston, Massachusetts at Edmund Hartt's shipyard, her first duty with the newly formed United States Navy was to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the quasi War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.