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HMS Victory Commanding Officer Visits USS Constitution

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS071128-08
Release Date: 11/28/2007 2:21:00 PM

By Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class Clay Weis, USS Constitution Public Affairs

CHARLESTOWN NAVY YARD, Mass. (NNS) -- The commanding officer (CO) of the oldest commissioned warship in the world, HMS Victory, joined the captain and crew of USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides," the oldest commissioned warship afloat, Nov. 5-7 in the Charlestown Navy Yard.

Royal Navy Lt. Cdr. John Scivier, who spent three days touring the local facilities with Cmdr. William A. Bullard III, Old Ironsides' CO, is the first commanding officer of Victory to visit Constitution since Royal Navy Lt. Cdr. Peter Whitlock's visit in the late 1970s.

Bullard called the wooden American frigate and the British ship of the line "the most important warships in Western history, if not history itself."

Victory was commissioned in 1765, fought in the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic wars, serving as Lord Nelson's flagship at the decisive Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and now resides in permanent drydock in Portsmouth, England, where she is visited by 350,000 visitors annually.

Constitution was commissioned in 1797, fought in the Quasi-War with France, the Barbary Wars, and the War of 1812. Nearly half a million tourists visit her yearly, and she typically sets sail twice every summer.

Tours of the ship, the USS Constitution Museum and Constitution's maintenance and repair facilities gave Scivier an opportunity to grasp the public and private sides of Constitution's daily life, but it was his address to the crew of Old Ironsides that made an immediate impact.

Scivier's in-depth training on the key structural, historical and practical characteristics of
Victory woke a desire in Constitution's Sailors to visit the ship across the sea.

Whether they're British Sailors visiting Charlestown or U.S. Sailors crossing the Atlantic, either group should recognize the similarities in both commands' missions. Constitution crew members strive to preserve, protect and promote the ship, and Scivier said Victory shares the same goals.

Although Constitution and Victory never went yard-arm-to-yard-arm, which Bullard notes "was lucky for Old Ironsides," they did come within sight of each other off the northern coast of Africa in the early 19th century. Lord Horatio Nelson, then aboard Victory, is credited with saying "[I see] in the handling of those trans-Atlantic ships a nucleus of trouble for the navy of Great Britain."