Old Ironsides sails again

Would love to have seen that. Surprising no video of it, yet. Having grown up in San Diego and seeing the "Star of India" landmark go to sea after it's restoration was really exciting.

I twice tried to build the large scale Revell model of Old Ironsides, once in full sail trim, and once in furled trim, but both times, an unfortunate mishap occurred after over 3/4 of the rigging was installed, damaging both models beyond repair.
 
Any word on the crew? Are they volunteers or perhaps midshipmen at the Naval Academy? From the link above, I get the impression it is crewed by Navy personnel. Wouldn't that be a neat bullet on an efficiency report?

While at a military course at Fort Mead, Maryland in 92 or so, I took a day to drive up to Baltimore and saw the wooden frigate USS Constellation (similar class of frigate as Old Ironsides) as well as Fort McHenry, the fort that inspired the Star Spangled Banner during the War of 1812. Made for a wonderful day.

As an aside, my father has always been an avid ship model builder and built that large scale model of the Constitution when I was in grade school. The Denver Post had a photo contest for Father's Day that year and you had to submit a photo of your Dad engaged in his hobby. First prize was season tickets to the Denver Broncos. I managed to win the tickets with a nicely composed black and white shot of him rigging the ship model. I wish I still had that photo.
 
The normal crew is regular Navy personnel on their shore duty tour and yes they are all volunteers. You have to be very squared away to be selected for duty on USS Constitution. Reading the article, they brought extra hands onboard to help sail her.
 
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