BALTIMORE, MD (WBFF) — Thousands will flood onto the USS Constellation as part of Baltimore’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary this summer, and with good historic reason.
The landmark vessel is the last Civil War-era warship still afloat. It’s also the last sail-powered warship the U.S. Navy ever built and the biggest example of traditional Chesapeake Bay-style shipbuilding still in existence.
But the story of the Inner Harbor attraction is more complicated than those facts suggest. About 35 years ago, it emerged that the USS Constellation was something other than what almost everyone had long believed it to be. It was a case of mistaken identity that bamboozled many civic leaders and left the public misinformed for more than four decades.
Much of the story is modern, dating to 1955, when two deteriorating wooden warships that were icons of the Age of Sail — the maritime universe before motor power — were moored in Boston, each in need of an overhaul after decades of service.
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