BALTIMORE – The only Civil War-era vessel still afloat left its mooring in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on Tuesday and made its first voyage to the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 111 years.
The venerable USS Constellation can no longer make the 30-mile trip on her own power, so the sloop of war was moved to the academy by tugboats. The six-day visit is part of a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Constellation, launched in 1854.
It’s the ship’s first time out of the Inner Harbor since 1955, said Christopher Rowsom, executive director of the USS Constellation Museum. “The ship is in good shape for this. But she is old,” Rowsom said.
The Naval Academy band greeted the ship when it docked on the Severn River at Annapolis.
The ship served in the Mediterranean Squadron before becoming the flagship of the African Squadron, which was charged with stopping the illegal slave trade.
While patrolling the African coast off the mouth of the Congo River from 1859 to 1861, the ship captured three slave ships. The Constellation was sent in 1862 to protect U.S. merchant shipping from Confederate raiders during the Civil War, according to museum records.
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