Date: 2024-10-31 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00019389
Military / Navy
HMS Victory and USS Constitution
How would the USS Constitution have fared against HMS Victory?
Peter Burgess
She was quite elderly by the Battle of Trafalgar, but an absolute bruiser of a battleship even then.
The Constitution was a frigate, and as such rated several classes below the Victory. She was generally rather more powerful than a typical British or French frigate, and had a larger crew. It would probably be fair to describe her as being designed as a “frigate hunter”, but not a Ship-of-the-Line (SOL).
[Update: Note that Victory has more guns per deck than Constitution’s entire broadside. Many of Victory’s guns are heavier, and the higher decks give the upper guns a slight range advantage as well.]
To understand the difference in firepower and damage resistance this represents, consider that it was regarded as unsporting and disreputable for a ship-of-the-line to engage a frigate unless the frigate opened fire first (or made other aggressive moves). While the frigate would generally be faster and more manoeuvrable, the range of her guns would be no better, and there was no real chance that she would manage to seriously damage a heavy warship before being utterly destroyed.
All of Constitution’s engagements during the War of 1812 were against merchant vessels or (fifth or sixth rate) frigates of the Royal Navy, and most of those seem to have been inferior ships and/or with second-rate crews.
Within her specific role, Constitution was an excellent ship, and she was fortunate in having good crew and officers. But that only worked because American waters were a relatively trivial backwater, and the War of 1812 only an annoying sideshow for the British Empire at the time. Once the Royal Navy was freed up from fighting Napoleon and blockading France, their heavier warships had nothing to fear from the American frigates.
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