USS Constellation

USS Constellation was built at the Gosport Navy Yard in Virginia in 1853–55, using oak stockpiled decades earlier, and is the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States Navy. Her most important service came in 1859–60, when she was flagship of the Africa Squadron, patrolling against the illegal Atlantic slave trade: on 26 September 1860 she captured the slave ship Cora with 705 captive Africans aboard, who were freed and landed at Monrovia, Liberia. During the Civil War she hunted Confederate raiders in the Mediterranean, and she later served for decades as a training and receiving ship.

For much of the twentieth century, people believed she was the famous 1797 frigate Constellation, launched in Baltimore and commanded by Thomas Truxtun in the Quasi-War with France, merely rebuilt in the 1850s. Historian Howard Chapelle argued in 1949 that they were different ships, and a 1991 Navy study confirmed it, finding the 1854 ship was new construction – and that some 25 to 30 documents supporting the “rebuild” story were forgeries. The Navy’s official history now records that the original frigate was broken up in 1853.

That matters for the ghosts. The ship came to Baltimore in 1955 and became a museum, and over the following decades watchmen, crew and visitors told stories of figures in old naval uniform on her decks, of footsteps and voices below, and of a sailor and a commodore from the frigate’s days still keeping watch. Many of the best-known tales concern men from the 1797 frigate – the sailor Neil Harvey and Commodore Thomas Truxtun among them – which means they are attached to a ship they never served on; others, such as the watchman Carl Hansen from the museum’s early years, belong to the Baltimore ship itself. Today the museum offers after-dark “Maritime Macabre” lantern tours drawn from the Civil War diary of the ship’s yeoman, Moses Safford, including a ghost story from that primary source.

The ship was restored between 1996 and 1999 and again in 2014–15, and is a National Historic Landmark at Pier 1 of the Inner Harbor, operated by Historic Ships in Baltimore alongside a Coast Guard cutter, a submarine and a lightship.

Stories describe figures in nineteenth-century naval uniform on the gun deck and berth deck, a sentry seen at his post, footsteps, voices and the smell of gunpowder below decks, and cold spots in the hold.

The lower decks – the gun deck, berth deck and hold – especially at night. Lantern tours in October visit all four decks.

The Constellation is a centrepiece of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and appears in Maryland ghost-lore collections and Halloween features. Its anti-slave-trade service is now a major part of the museum’s interpretation.