A Healthy Constitution: Dr. Amos Evans, Surgeon, U.S. Navy

USS Constitution was constructed in Boston, but also regularly returned to the Boston Navy Yard for repair and maintenance during its active sailing career. This guide describes the steps of the ship’s original construction, and outlines all the subsequent repair and restoration periods since the ship’s launch in 1797.

Feeling bored on a long ocean passage in 1844, Washington Perry Buckner and his fellow midshipmen on USS Constitution concocted a hypothetical brain teaser about the relative motion of a cannon ball fired from a fast-moving ship. In this article, Suffolk University history professor Robert Allison and physics professor Walter Johnson explore the midshipmen’s debate, determine which of them had the correct answer and explain why.

A deeper look at the enslaved people who harvested live oak timbers for use in the construction of USS Constitution and other early U.S. Navy ships.

Vice Admiral George W. Emery, U.S. Navy (Retired) provides a transcription and detailed historical analysis of a journal kept aboard U.S. Brig Vixen, Charles Ludlow, Esq. commanding, documenting events from July 10, 1809 to May 10, 1810.

There are few firsthand reports on the behavior and treatment of British and American prisoners of war during the War of 1812. A study of these accounts, and an effort to sort propaganda from reality, offers a glimpse into POW incarceration in prison hulks, cellars, and barracks on either side of the Atlantic.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, some free black men from the northeastern United States, struggling to make their way in a highly discriminatory American society, went to sea in the merchant marine and the U.S. Navy, including aboard USS Constitution.

This is the story of Dr. Amos Evans, a young surgeon who moved from tending patients in the Maryland countryside to participating in two of the most celebrated naval battles of the War of 1812.

To understand why seafaring was considered a good profession in the age of sail, we must look more closely at the daily routine of seamen in the early American navy.

The specter of starvation loomed large in the minds of sailors, and many of their lurid yarns focused on ghost ships with depleted crews or cannibalistic castaways. To guard against such unfortunate outcomes, naval vessels typically stocked enough provisions for extended cruises.

A description of Constitution’s material culture – the common items of everyday life – that went to sea during the War of 1812.

Like many other aspects of the early United States Navy, recruiting was a somewhat informal affair. Examine the minutiae of the naval recruiting process leading up to and during the War of 1812.