1812 Battle at Sea

The United States went to war in June 1812 with a handful of frigates against the largest navy in the world, and on paper the odds at sea looked hopeless.

Then came the autumn. On August 19, USS Constitution, under Captain Isaac Hull, met HMS Guerriere in the North Atlantic and left her so badly damaged that she had to be sunk. By the story told ever since, British shot bounced off the Constitution's oak sides, and the nickname Old Ironsides stuck. On October 25, Stephen Decatur's USS United States captured HMS Macedonian and sailed her into New York. On December 29, in the South Atlantic, the Constitution, now under William Bainbridge, destroyed HMS Java.

The Admiralty's answer was to order its captains to avoid single-ship fights with the big American frigates. The Constitution is still afloat in Boston, the oldest commissioned warship in the world still on the water.

The picture names no ships, but it shows the kind of duel those frigates fought. The nearer ship, the Stars and Stripes flying from her stern, fires a broadside, a burst of orange flame and smoke along her hull, her sails glowing like old brass. The second ship sits farther off, half lost in smoke, on dark green swell under a sky torn open by gold light.