Old Ironsides
Jan 14th, 2002
Spirit of warship returns to Mobile204-year-old vessel set attendance record when it visited Mobile in 1932
By GEORGE WERNETH
Staff Reporter
The now 204-year-old warship USS Constitution, known as "Old Ironsides," last visited Mobile 70 years ago and broke the ship's single day visitation total at that time with 25,397 visitors.
In Mobile, on Jan. 16, 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, the undefeated ship of the War of 1812 broke its previous attendance record of 23,682, according to a spokeswoman for the USS Constitution Museum in Boston. The previous record was set by the much larger city of Philadelphia, spokeswoman Marianne Cohen said.
Starting Tuesday, the spirit of Old Ironsides will return to Mobile, even though the famous warship "no longer leaves the safety of Massachusetts Bay," Cohen reported. Seventy years ago, Old Ironsides was on a tour of 76 U.S. ports and was towed from city to city by the minesweeper USS Grebe.
An educational outreach program known as "Old Ironsides Across the Nation" is touring the Southeast this year and will be in Mobile from Tuesday through the coming weekend. The program will be put on by the Constitution's active duty U.S. Navy crew and members of the staff of the USS Constitution Museum based in Boston. The presentations will include talks by the ship's captain and displays of replicas of Navy uniforms of the War of 1812, as well as replicas of other items associated with that era.
The outreach program will visit area schools Tuesday through Friday but those presentations will not be open to the public.
However, a presentation for the public called "204 Years Aboard Old Ironsides" will be presented free of charge Thursday at the Museum of Mobile, 111 S. Royal St., from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Old Ironsides' current captain, Cmdr. Randall A. Neal, will discuss life aboard Old Ironsides today and answer questions from the audience. There will be a slide presentation of the ship's gallant history.
There will be free hourly demonstrations of a full-size replica of the warship's gun deck at Fort Conde in downtown Mobile from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. During those same hours, Old Ironsides displays will be open to the public and free at the nearby Museum of Mobile.
Cohen noted that the public is invited to enter a lottery from which 100 winners from the Southeast will be chosen to ride aboard Old Ironsides for a tug-powered cruise in Boston Harbor on July 13. Lottery forms will be available at all Old Ironsides public events in the area and on the USS Constitution Museum's website: www.oldironsidesacrossthenation.org.